Angus Young’s European Divide Packlist

compose Miles Arbour
time Jul 14, 2022
comment 6

Words and photos by Angus Young (@angusyoung139)

When I stumbled across The European Divide trail on Instagram three years ago, I was blown away by the ambition of the project that Andy had embarked on. At that time, the route was still in its formative stages. Over the course of the next year or so, I was occasionally treated to a glimpse of some forest doubletrack or a twisting alpine meadow. The excitement only grew, and when the full route was finally released last year, it jumped straight onto the top of my list.

After staring yearnfully at the komoot files for the route, it seemed clear that Andy had created something special and immensely valuable to the community. It seemed like it was Europe’s answer to the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR). The route covers 7,600 kilometres from Kirkenes in Norway to Cabo San Vincente in Portugal, crossing eight countries in the process. From what I can tell, it covers every type of terrain with about two-thirds of it off-road. Naturally, I started wondering, “Just how fast could it be done?” This idea wormed its way deeper and deeper into my head until I eventually decided that I would give it a crack and committed to it last October.

My logic for setting a goal time was questionable. In reality, I knew that I had a window of around 40 days between finishing teaching for the summer and my brother getting married. With some time on either side, I set myself 35 days as the goal. I figured that its about 1.7 times the length of the Tour Divide, so 2.5 times the FKT wouldn’t be an unreasonable goal. Only time will tell if I’m overestimating my ability, but that’s part of the magic of trying something new.

As the months passed and I got closer to the date of departure, my prep ramped up considerably. I was feeling fairly fit, but after a rough HT550, I took a few weeks off the bike and focussed on the mental prep, hoping that I would ride into fitness once I started. So, I started trawling through the route on Komoot and marked down key resupply locations and big climbs. If anything, this will function as a way of setting micro-goals. Just focussing on arriving at the next town is much easier than constantly reminding myself that I have another month of hard riding.

The beauty of self-sufficient bikepacking is that you leave with your bike and bags loaded up and have everything you need to reach your destination (barring some resupply along the way). Naturally, that leads to a lot of planning needed to make sure that your bike and kit is up to scratch. The video below outlines some of my key choices:

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