If you like bicycling the wide open spaces, but don't want to risk running out food and water in the desert, One Awesome Tour Bike Ride Across Nevada (OATBRAN) sounds like a good bet.
When I lived in California, I used to pass over Nevada at 30,000 feet heading back East. As I'd gaze out the window, I always wondered what it would be like to cycle over that arid, brown landscape. I could just make out zigzagging switchbacks over passes and straight-as-an-arrow highway through the basins.
A writer for the Pacifica Tribune Online recently wrote about the OATBRAN bike tour, an event that takes cyclists some 435 miles across the desert on US 50, “the loneliest highway in America.”
The guy must like the tour, he's done it 5 times. He talks about climbing 7 mountain passes — a total 17,000 feet — during the 5-day tour, visiting abandoned Pony Express stations, renovated mining settlements, and coasting 12 miles downhill after the final ascent.
The 2006 OATBRAN begins in Lake Tahoe and runs from Sept. 24 – 30. It features overnights in Fallon, Austin, Eureka, Ely, Great Basin National Park, and back to Lake Tahoe. See the OATBRAN bike tour website for more information.
See Across State Bicycle Tours for more multi-day bike rides.
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