When thinking of organised bike tours, Harley tours around Sydney Harbour or perhaps a jaunt along Victoria’s Great Ocean Road may spring readily to mind. For those wanting more, there are now several operators running longer trips through various exotic parts of the world, and then – towering over other trips like Mount Everest over the Himalayan foothills, there’s the Globebusters Trans-Am…
This is a tour truly worthy of the tag ‘expedition’; indeed its first challenge is simply getting your head around the scale of the thing. From the top of Alaska to the southernmost tip of Argentina, it covers 12 countries and 32,000km over 19 weeks. In the process it takes in every conceivable environment, from Arctic tundra to scorched deserts, soaring mountains to steaming jungles.
This veritable biking feast is laid on the by original ‘globebusters’ themselves, English husband and wife duo Kevin and Julia Sanders. This couple has notched up two Guinness World Records for endurance motorcycle rides – one for circumnavigating the world in 19 days, the other for riding the length of the Americas in 35 days. But in between running BMW UK’s rider training facility in Wales, and their never-ending promotional duties, they run Globebusters Motorcycle Expeditions.
I’d previously driven the Globebusters support vehicle on the company’s five-week High Andes tour of South America, and when the opportunity came up to do the same for the North and Central American legs of the company’s Trans-Am monster, I didn’t need to be asked twice. The only downside I could see would be that I’d be behind the wheel of a Ford Transit instead of behind the ’bars of a bike for much of the trip, but then with a decade of bike journalism behind me, I figured I couldn’t have all of the fun all of the time...
With the 16 starters coming from as diverse a range of backgrounds as the cultures of the countries we were set to discover, the sense of excitement as everyone uncrated their bikes at the airfreight depot in Anchorage, Alaska, was palpable. After all, this was the proverbial trip of a lifetime, and after months of counting down the Trans-Am was now all systems go!
GOING ‘OUTSIDE’
When you leave Anchorage by land, locals say you’re ‘going outside’, and when you consider Alaska is ‘bigger than Texas’ – over twice as big, in fact, at nearly 1,500,000 square kilometers – yet only has a population of 663,000, you begin to get an inkling of the scale of the wilderness up here.
After a night in Fairbanks, our first major test was upon us – conquering the Dalton Highway. Depending on the season, it’s 663km stretch of dust-choked dirt or a serpentine morass of mud. In reality it’s little more than a service road for Alaska’s North Slope oil and gas fields, the Alaskan oil pipeline following it just about all the way.
After a dry run to Coldfoot Camp, a tiny truck stop, the heavens opened for the remaining kays north. The road isn’t technically difficult, but it's the region’s isolation that weighs heavily on your mind. If things go pear-shaped up here, it’s inevitably going to be a long wait before you can be choppered back to Fairbanks, and the nearest hospital.
Trans-Am rider Dick felt the Dalton’s wrath when he lost the front end of his BMW R 1200 GS on a sweeping bend. He was okay, but he’d sustained ligament damage in his shoulder. His damaged bike safely stowed in the Transit, Dick was later flown from Coldfoot back to Fairbanks to be checked out, where he later rejoined the group on its way south.
The sense of space up here is incredible, and the fir trees shrink the further north you go – for half of the year they hardly receive any sunlight. Sure enough, after we crossed the Arctic Circle the trees became evermore stunted and withered, and before too long they disappeared altogether, making way for the seemingly endless expanse of Arctic tundra.
The magnificent Brooks Range intersects the Dalton up here at the 1432m Atigun Pass, and while we won’t bothered by avalanches, the battered and twisted Armco was a constant reminder that not everyone gets through here unscathed.
A collective sigh of relief was heaved upon reaching the outpost of Deadhorse, the entirely prefab town on Prudhoe Bay that services the North Slope, and marks the most northerly point on the North American continent accessible by road. We’d done it; after some 800 miles we’d reached the Land of the Midnight Sun – and the spiritual starting point of the Trans-Am.
By way of a celebration we decided to take the short local tour to the shore of the Arctic Ocean, where we – or so we’re told – proceeded to broke the record for the biggest group skinny dip in its icy waters. What was that like? Try reaching down your throat, and ripping your lungs out through your mouth – you’d be halfway there.
HEADING SOUTH
Carefully picking our way south back down the Dalton and then the Alaska Highway, we moved on into Yukon Territory, Canada, at Beaver Creek. Staying the night at Watson Lake, home to the bizarre signpost forest, we tackled Route 37, the Stewart Cassiar Highway, and headed into British Columbia.
This 720km stretch is real back of beyond country, where in parts the bears outnumber humans in a ratio that gives plenty of food for thought – and plenty of potential food for the bears. Bear sightings were common by now – this was no place for a rider to break down. According to locals, if attacked, you fight a black bear and play dead for a grizzly – or was it the other way around? Needless to say, either option was pretty grim.
A highlight towards the end of the Stewart Cassiar was the town of Hyder, which is actually about 50 miles off the highway and is a lonely outpost of Alaska, accessible only by road through the nearby Canadian town of Stewart, or via boat or seaplane. Just up the road from Hyder is Fish Creek, where we watched grizzlies roll in to hungrily devour spawning salmon, while just beyond that lies the adjective-defying Salmon Glacier, and a stupendously scenic ride along an adjacent dirt road.
From this point we headed inland, through Smithers and Prince George, passing the 3954m sentinel of Mount Robson and crossing into Alberta, before enjoying the sublime beauty of the Rocky Mountains, and Jasper and Banff National Parks. We were joined by the madding crowds here, at Jasper in particular, but the nearby sights and vistas were worth the fight.
Athabasca Falls is stunning despite the hordes, while Route 93 is a biker’s delight – a racetrack-smooth road that winds its way through the mountains, alongside turquoise lakes, emerald rivers and snowcapped peaks and glaciers. You couldn’t dream up anything as scenic as Lake Louise, a gorgeous lake framed by two mighty peaks, with Victoria Glacier sandwiched in between.
LAND OF THE FREE
After a night in Waterton, Alberta, we bade Canada farewell, crossing into the USA and Montana’s Glacier National Park. The Road to the Sun clings perilously to the steep mountainsides here, a small guardrail being the only thing between us and a drop of a couple of hundred metres below. Glacier National Park was the first of many parks we’d experience down this inland western corridor of the United States, and although its world-famous views were partially obscured by a smoke haze care of a massive outbreak of nearby Montana wildfires, it was still unforgettable country.
Our progress through the United States was swift. Racing through ‘Big Sky’ Montana, we crossed into Wyoming to check out Yellowstone National Park, which receives nearly three million visitors every year. The bikes were able to thread their way past the traffic jams, invariably caused by Hank and Audrey from Florida, who’d stopped their Space Shuttle-sized RV dead in the middle of the road to get some snaps of a passing bison.
After watching the crowds watching Old Faithful, which – true to form – sends a geyser of water shooting high into the air every 90 minutes, we retired to the immense Old Faithful Inn, a remarkable timber and stone construction built back in 1903. The next day we pushed on to the cowboy town of Cody, of Buffalo Bill fame, taking several outstanding roads before dropping into Utah and following the Colorado River into Moab, and nearby Arches National Park.
After the chilly backdrop of the Arctic not even a month before, we were now sweltering in furnace-like desert heat. Thermal linings had long since been packed away, but retained because they’d be needed again in the Andes, and in the southern section of South America.
After a couple of impromptu parties were cut short by Utah’s Mormon-influenced drinking regulations – the taps turn off across the state at 1.00am – we continued south into Arizona, where we checked out the wonders of Monument Valley and then the big one, the Grand Canyon, before we pushed on to Tucson.
LATIN AMERICA LOOMS
The roads in America really have to be seen to be believed. The surfacing is superb and although once out of the mountains in Montana the going was open and straight, a gem of a winding road was never far way (like the one from Jacob’s Creek to the north rim of the Grand Canyon, or the snaking road through Wind River Canyon). For the dirt hounds, the red sandy track through the aptly-named Valley of the Gods was a sheer joy, as it looped its way through massive pillars of red rock, shaped by wind and rain over eons.
So far incidents had been few and far between. Sadly Evan’s Honda Dominator died back in Jasper, rider and bike seeing out the rest of the northern Trans-Am leg in the back of the van, while bike-mounted guide Jeff nearly had a head-on with an RV after he hit a deer. He was shaken (not stirred), but after a few bashes with his magic hammers (Jeff’s a fitter and turner by trade), his R 1200 GS was ready for more.
After a week in Tucson, where the bikes were thoroughly serviced, it was time to tackle the many challenges of Latin America. For the last month we’d enjoyed smooth roads, top notch services and the ease of communicating in our native tongue. Now, just over the other side of a tall, steel concrete and barbed wire barrier, all that was set to change. For the last 9500km we’d had nothing but non-stop warnings of Mexico’s myriad dangers. Now we’d see for ourselves how accurate those warnings really were.
We were crossing into Mexico at Naco; a small outpost we thought would be free of the lengthy queues of the major crossing at nearby Nogales. A quick web search from our hotel in Tucson revealed it would probably be deathly quiet in fact, thanks to ongoing fears of a major gunfight in the area between drug cartels and the Mexican military.
With the US border guard’s farewell words of “Stay safe” ringing in our ears, and under the watchful gaze of a machine gun post, we rode through the S-bend of barricades and fortifications, and found ourselves in a semi-deserted town and a very closed and boarded-up Mexican immigration office. Having officially exited the US but not having stamped our passports and registration documents into Mexico, we were now faced by our first Latin dilemma: we were now gringos in Mexico who – officially, at least – didn’t even exist!
HIGH ADVENTURE WITHOUT THE HASSLE
Globebusters runs a full Trans-Am expedition every two years – if you’re an experienced rider you can either complete this epic motorcycle adventure in full, or you can elect to ride a certain section as time and money dictates. You provide the bike, Globebusters handles the bike freight, the route and the accommodation – and provides bike-mounted guides and a support vehicle every step of the way.
For more information contact Globebusters Motorcycle Expeditions, tel +44 8452 304 015, or visit GlobeBusters.com.