Scotland Bikepacking
June 2023

For over a decade now, my outdoor output (I daresay “training”), job, and life have largely revolved around at least one annual expedition or big trip. These trips are as much about the international travel and experience as they are about the climbing and skiing. By definition, they offer far different qualities than anything that could be replicated closer to home.

When the Covid pandemic ruined so much, it had what was a seemingly unimportant side effect: my inability to test myself at my highest levels in places with high “relative exposure,” to borrow a term I love from my friend and alpinist Graham Zimmerman.

Like anyone else, I looked at this fact and thought, “Well, it’s only climbing and skiing that I’ve temporarily lost. There are a lot bigger issues in the world.”

But fast forward three years, and the lingering effects of the pandemic on my life show themselves in more than just my respiration. The identity crisis that many of us have faced in the wake of the inability to do our thing—whatever that is—has also impacted me, as it’s now been three years without an expedition. Coincidentally, going into the pandemic, I decided to take 2019 off from an expedition simply because I hadn’t taken a spring off in many years. I spent that spring closer to home. I still skied in New Zealand that year, climbed in Tasmania, and had plenty of outdoor challenges…but none of them were a proper expedition. This led to my time away from expeditions starting not with the pandemic in 2020, but in 2019. And only four years later, in 2023, did I finally feel comfortable and responsible resuming risky intentional expeditions.

I spent the late winter and early spring of 2023 planning an expedition with dreams of climbing and skiing mountains on shrinking glaciers that most folks don’t even know offer steep ski descents. As always, I put a lot of work into planning. The partner I had hoped to share a rope with bailed on the trip. I quickly found a backup partner who dangled the carrot of commitment until the last minute before bailing and leaving me partnerless. This expedition would have to wait.

My happiness, mental health, identity, ego, career, sponsors, everything…it all needed me to do something. My friend Joe, with whom I biked across Montana alongside Quinn Brett a couple years ago during the first adaptive ride of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, was down to go bikepacking literally anywhere in the world. So was Matt. And Joe’s friend, Jeff. The trip came together quickly among a group of motivated but busy people. Matt created the route from a mishmash of Gaia maps and other bikepacking routes we found online. Jeff had never been bikepacking before, but was all-in and stoked. I figured out logistics and gear for the group. Joe did literally nothing except ride his bike. JK.

A giant counterclockwise loop took us from Edinburgh to Inverness to Loch Ness and back to Edinburgh almost entirely on gravel. A healthy amount of hiking trails, singletrack, bike paths, and sheep pastures rounded out the terrain. We slept in hotels for two nights and camped the other six. The midges, small biting insects, weren’t as bad as everyone led us to believe. In fact, they were barely a problem at all. Likewise, the rain that absolutely clobbers Scotland on an annual basis decided to take a two-week hiatus that aligned perfectly with our stay, allowing dry pedaling for all but a few hours of the trip (though those hours were some of the hardest rainstorms I’ve ever seen). The uncharacteristically high temperatures kept warm clothes stored in our bikepacking bags for the entire trip.

Joe got a flat tire.

Jeff enjoyed bikepacking, even with mechanical disc brakes.

Matt’s affinity for ice cream had us stopping for at least a cone a day.

My handlebars literally snapped.

The gravel, which my friend Abby Levene turned me on to at a POW event the day I realized I wouldn’t be going to Asia, was phenomenal. It’s a good thing I decided to buy a ticket to Scotland, on a complete whim, an hour later, at her urging…because it was really good.

And though it wasn’t an expedition in any sense of the word, it was, in other ways, exactly what I needed.