Singletrack/MTB
Gravel/All-road
Dirt-road Touring
Fat-bike
Tracing the 2026 Tour Divide (Part 2): The Final Push
In the second installment of his 2026 Tour Divide field report, photographer Eddie Clark follows the race deep into New Mexico, capturing the defining moments of an unforgettable year—from Victor Bosoni’s composed march to victory to Meaghan Hackinen’s dominant ride and Felix Laberge’s remarkable singlespeed performance. Find a striking set of photos, a unique perspective on the riders, and behind-the-scenes stories from nearly 5,000 miles on the road here…
PUBLISHED Jun 30, 2026
Picking up from my first report at Brush Mountain Lodge, I loaded up refreshed and ready for some driving as I headed south on the route to work through the pointy end again. The mountain air in the Park Range had a distinctly spring-like smell that made for a nice start to a long day of driving. I made it another late night and pulled into some free camping near Salida just after 11 p.m., in a spot with cell reception for a morning dot-stalking decision.
Laurens and Angus were pretty close, with a 20-ish-mile gap between them at this point, and neither was exactly where I wanted them for morning photos. The area west of Saguache is plenty nice and remote, but light, timing, and their positions were working against what I really wanted that morning. Another day of getting what I could instead of what I wanted, and that’s just how it goes a lot of times. At least this time I wasn’t on the back foot and had a plan of different spots to photograph Angus coming out of the haunted Cochetopa Hills. Yes, haunted—a story for another time…
Angus pulled off the highway to chat and have a snack. He was quite soft spoken as the dry Colorado mountain air was having its way with his breathing and voice, and no doubt the elevation wasn’t making the effort any easier either. He munched on a Halls cough drop as he rode off in seemingly good spirits while I reveled over his trailside ingenuity with a photo of the Coca-Cola strapped to his pannier.
From the side of Highway 114, I looped around the Carnero Pass section to catch up with Laurens Ten Dam out near Penitente and again on the south end of the Old Woman Creek section just north of Del Norte. The sun was already quite high, and it was getting hotter than I’d experienced since leaving home in Boulder almost a week and a half prior. With the exception of the irrigated farmlands of the San Luis Valley, the high mountain valley is quite dry throughout the year, which accentuates the heat when you’re in the sun.
Rolling out of the Everyday Gas Station with an ice cream cookie sandwich in hand, this was the last time I’d see Laurens during the Tour Divide. He maintained an extraordinary pace to take second overall with his “live slow, ride fast” approach, which had him sleeping wherever he could for most of the route.
I spent a few hours out of my truck catching up with some friends in Del Norte after photographing Laurens, which was really quite nice. After some yummy sandwiches at the Vault 730 Cheese Shop, I said goodbye to my friends and pointed it toward Alamosa for a grocery store restock and a car wash before switching to road warrior mode for another day of driving. Grants, NM, was the next destination, where I would reassess my chances of catching up with race leader Victor Bosoni. After topping off the gas tank in Grants, it was off to the south side of El Malpais National Monument to sleep for a few hours.
Based on everything I’d seen with Victor’s race and social media account, it was safe for me to assume he’d spend the night in Grants, which would set me up just perfectly for sunrise photos on a lonely stretch of the route that I have an affinity for. I didn’t stop with a simple assumption, though. To be safe, I also pulled up Robin Gemperle’s 2025 Trackleaders page to study his times from Grants to Pie Town, which was something I’d already been doing since the start. I slept no more than two hours at a time so I could refresh Trackleaders in case he got an earlier-than-usual start, and all in, I got maybe four hours of sleep. It was an early predawn start, with just a couple of quick photos and a hot pot of tailgate-brewed coffee to get me going.
The interesting thing about the Tour Divide is how much it has evolved since its early days in 2008. As everyone knows, yes, the navigation is much easier now, and yes, there are far more stores, hotels, resupply points, and “trail angels” available to racers too, but I wouldn’t say the race itself is any easier—just different. You’re still pedaling a bike for 2,700 miles with nobody but yourself to rely on, and if you want to win it, you have to go a whole lot faster than ever before. In the last couple of days, I’ve seen more than enough crotchety posts about how the Tour Divide shouldn’t allow hotel stops or even phones, and all I have to say to that crew is: go race the 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail or the Silk Road Mountain Race, tough guy.
I’m here for the race and the racing. If anything, the evolution of the Tour Divide has been something else to see firsthand, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. Trying to regulate when or where someone sleeps and to force them to ride more slowly is, quite frankly, boring and not really racing in my book. That said, the ride from Victor this year wasn’t something I thought possible, but here we are. The training, preparation, diligence, and mental fortitude required to maintain the speed and distance he did each day to get a quality night’s sleep and recovery while maintaining the bike are what champions are made of. Going back to Matthew Lee, Mike Hall, and Robin Gemperle just last year, there has been a continual evolution of what it takes to win the Tour Divide, and Victor sure did show us what an amazing winning ride looks like.
Probably the part I was happiest about was a race winner stopping for pie in Pie Town! Victor had a blueberry pie, and I had a breakfast omelet with (more) coffee and a sweet cherry pie to go. It was the first real chance I had to sit and talk with him during the race, and the biggest thing I recall from our short conversation was how happy he was about cleaning his bike in Grants the night before—a clean bike is a fast bike!
I’d normally go further down the route to photograph the Plains of San Agustin, but the noon-day light wasn’t so agreeable for those photos. Instead, I opted to photograph Victor one last time on his next-to-last day of the Divide as he blazed around the northwest corner of the Plains of San Agustin. Of note, his bike was all about aerodynamics with no dangling wires or loose straps flapping in the wind to slow him down. Without question, it was the fastest bike to ever show up for the Tour Divide, purpose-built to suit his strategy of speed. With him guiding and powering it, they both slipped through the air in a way never seen in this race. A thing of beauty.
The rest of the afternoon was spent driving the bumpy winding rural highway roads of New Mexico around the Gila to get to Silver City for the night. At one point, I saw 102°F on my truck’s outside temperature reading and knew a room with air conditioning would be mandatory for working on the laptop and actually getting some sleep before another long day. I worked on the laptop until my 11 a.m. checkout time, restocked and refueled my truck, and then headed to Lordsburg, where I’d wait for him to get to Hachita before I drove to Antelope Wells. It hit 108°F on the drive there and was 105°F when I parked to wait at the finish, where he arrived maybe 20 minutes later.
Victor’s older brother flew in to meet him at the finish, which was very special considering they now live in different countries and rarely get to see each other. For Victor, a large part of the love of racing comes from sharing that passion with his friends and family. Of course, they got on a FaceTime call with their mom to celebrate with the rest of the family too.
As the sun got lower on the horizon, I stopped in the road to grab a couple of lonely highway photos. Looking south on Highway 146 toward Hachita lies a region of the route I seldom photograph. Between the rattlesnakes, Border Patrol, and oppressive heat, it’s not much of a place to spend your time during the Tour Divide, but every now and then the light hits it just right to be enticingly pretty for at least a short moment.
When I got to the I-10 entrance, I pulled over to strategize about my next move, and decided on a risky run east and north up I-25 to rejoin the race near Cuba. After dinner and a gas stop, I soon realized I didn’t have much driving left in me, so I got a hotel room in Socorro, NM, which wasn’t my best decision of the race. The hotel was fine, but by the next morning, Cuba was the wrong destination, and Grants was where I’d be heading back. There’s a small chance I could have gotten more photos of Laurens and Angus if I’d instead just gone back to Silver City, but I honestly wasn’t into photographing the same section again or spending more time in 100+ degree temperatures. I napped for a couple of hours in a city park in Grants while waiting for some slightly better light before heading up the route.
Felix Laberge was the first racer I’d cross paths with, and he was in the aero bars and trucking as he rode by. He showed up for the singlespeeders and set a new record with some very impressive riding.
Next up was Meaghan Hackinen, who was back at the Tour Divide not just to win another Tour Divide but to claim a record time for the women. Her riding was outstanding and more proof that with experience, training, and dedication, great things are possible. A funny memory of her ride was hearing her tell me, while in Lima, MT, that she had forgotten her socks and had only some short non-sponsor ankle socks to wear. They were giving her sunburnt ankles, and, jokingly, she was worried about being mistaken for a triathlete.
Of course, like clockwork, I usually don’t see any vehicles on these remote roads until someone drives up as I’m trying to take photos, which was the real reason for the far-left composition in the previous photo of Meaghan. I hopped in the truck after taking that photo, drove down the road a bit to try again, and was rewarded with this moody cloudy background. It was the start of a changing weather pattern, with small thunderstorms becoming larger storms in central New Mexico. Fortunately for the racers, there wasn’t enough moisture to turn the dusty dirt roads south of Grants into peanut butter mud, but the shade provided a welcome respite from being baked all day by the hot sun.
I headed to Cuba, NM, and lucked out by finding Brian Elander at the Circle K. It was his first Tour Divide, and as a resident of Moab, UT, he was right at home in the heat. The headwinds to Grants, though, not so much, and he opted to get a hotel to rest and wait until the early morning when the wind would die down before riding to Grants. After Grants, it was one big push to Antelope Wells to become the first American to finish the race in 10th place.
That night was spent camping outside of Abiquiu, where I had a little time to work on some photos like this 120-second exposure. I’ve seen some neat lightning in the past in the area, but not this night, which was just fine.
While talking to Colin at Bodes, he said he was really enjoying the Tour Divide this year and even going a little faster. Unfortunately, an eye infection sidelined him with just a couple of days of riding left, but no doubt he’ll be back.
The original plan was to ride into the CDT section again to photograph whoever was there. As a mountain biker, I think this is a great section of the route that’s fun to ride, and it sure is pretty to photograph too. I got there just as Scott Petrie had finished.
Instead of taking the fast way on Highway 285, I took the scenic route through Chama, NM, and over Cumbres Pass to see where the route heads down into New Mexico and up onto Brazos Ridge. It’s a special place for me, and one of these days I’ll get back up there to say hi to my old friend.
While heading back up the route toward La Garita and Carnero Pass, I came across this old donkey in the road. I stopped to grab some photos, and then he walked right into the middle of the road toward me, so I got out to give him a scratch and a head pat. The only problem was he didn’t want to get out of the road. I got an apple, cut it in half, and used it to tempt him out of the road. It was a slow process as he was old and just wanted to eat the apple without having to follow me for it. While all this was going on, a local man drove up and told me he always sees that donkey out here and that the donkey doesn’t like being fenced in. It was a pretty easy sentiment for me to agree with, and I told that old donkey, “I get it, I don’t like being fenced in either, buddy. Just stay out of the road, and have a nice day.” I think that might just be what drives a lot of folks to spend their time out here on the Divide.
I just missed getting some racers coming over Ute Pass at sunset, so I did a little evening 4x4ing to see this view looking down on Badger Creek. The route crosses the actual creek at the southern end of what is known as South Park (not the town), one of Colorado’s three geographically defined parks known for high-elevation grasslands. These days, there’s a bridge to cross, which makes for an easier and less muddy endeavor. In the early days, it could be a knee-to-waist-deep creek crossing with mud on both sides, and one year, I almost got my old Tacoma stuck trying to get through it—that was a bit sketchy.
My last morning of the Tour Divide was spent rolling up the route and photographing racers from Badger Creek to Hartsel. It’s one of the easier sections to photograph as there’s plenty of room to work, and it looks a lot like southern Montana through here.
This was another long, hard year of photographing the Tour Divide for me, and it was great getting to live on the Divide and see all the neat places in the American West. Photographing folks racing it was the best part. No doubt, the racing will continue to be exciting, the weather unpredictable, the landscapes beautiful, and the people wonderful, and with any luck, I’ll be back to do it again. For this edition, I was on the road living out of my truck for 18 days and covered 4,937 miles, which made this Tour Divide quite the whirlwind.
Great job to everyone out there who’s finished and those still tackling this route. Ride fast, have fun, and be safe!
Check out the 2026 Tour Divide Tracker page to follow along on the live tracking map, and stay tuned in for more event coverage. Find it here.
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