Trail updates<\/p>\n
Day 5 | Overland Summit, NV | KM 2388<\/p>\n
Lachlan overslept this morning. He is human, after all.<\/p>\n
He set off half an hour later than planned into a pleasant Utah morning. The air in Saratoga Springs was already warming up, and everything pointed towards a good day in the wilderness.<\/p>\n
By the time the crew caught up with him 30 kilometers down the road, Lachlan had climbed out of the valley with two dot-watchers by his side, and the temperature had dropped by 20 degrees Fahrenheit. He was freezing again. A familiar, yet still unpleasant feeling after the past few days in Wyoming.<\/p>\n
He pulled on a few extra layers as the sun crept over the mountains and pushed on. One of his new companions punctured, while the other kept him company for another 50 miles. After they parted ways, Lachlan was on his own again, with no one to be seen until he reached the Great Basin Highway 300 kilometers later.<\/p>\n
The going was good over Dugway Pass. With barely a breath of wind, Lachlan put his head down and went all out. He knows he has to make the most of conditions when they\u2019re in his favor. A storm is forecast to sweep in from the Pacific on Sunday, bringing the threat of rain to the desert. If it arrives before he\u2019s through, these dusty trails could turn into a sticky, sandy mess that would make progress painfully slow.<\/p>\n
By the time he reached Callao, deep in the Nevada desert, the easy miles were well behind him. The trails turned rocky and rough, and a fierce, dry headwind picked up across the open desert. He drank more than on any previous day of the ride, trying to keep up with the heat and the dryness.<\/p>\n
Then he reached a section of the original Pony Express Trail.<\/p>\n
What looked like a trail on the map was little more than a dried-out marsh. The ground was so rough and broken that Lachlan had to dismount and push his bike through long stretches of it. The crew expected to find him exhausted and frustrated when they finally caught up.<\/p>\n
Instead, he was grinning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what I thought it would be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For as hard as the day was, Lachlan\u2019s spirits were as high as they\u2019ve been since leaving Missouri. These are the kinds of places he came to see, following the old mail route through country that has changed remarkably little since the days of the Pony Express.<\/p>\n
Ahead lay the highest point of the route. The climb was steep and rough enough that Lachlan was forced off his bike once again, walking the final stretch to the top. A coffee provided a welcome boost before he got moving again.<\/p>\n
Another dot-watcher soon appeared to keep him company.<\/p>\n
With the hardest terrain still ahead and a storm looming on the horizon, Lachlan is making every kilometer count.<\/p>\n
Day 4 | Saratoga Springs, UT | KM 2026<\/p>\n
After a late night battling his way through the Wyoming wilderness, Lachlan allowed himself a little extra sleep this morning. He didn’t make it to camp until almost 11 p.m. last night, and the cold and rough terrain had taken their toll. He set off again at 5 a.m., greeted by more of the same.<\/p>\n
The Wyoming cold was relentless. When the crew caught up with him, he began swapping his bidons for bottles filled with hot water and tucking them inside his jersey, hoping to bring some feeling back into his frozen body. It helped, but only so much.<\/p>\n
After a quick breakfast at sunrise, he pushed on into the vast emptiness of Wyoming, following remote doubletrack trails that have seen little traffic in decades. Some sections were washed out and barely distinguishable from the surrounding desert. Lachlan had to carefully pick his way through the shrubs, dodging hidden rocks and holes on his Cannondale Topstone gravel setup with Vision Metron SC 48 i25 wheels and 50-mm Vittoria Tirreno T30 tires, all while trying to keep his speed up. Other stretches were smooth and fast, with occasional sections of tarmac where he could switch to his Vision Metron 45 RS road wheels and 32-mm Vittoria Corsa Pro tires, stretch his legs, and make up some time.<\/p>\n
He had expected today to be easier. It wasn’t.<\/p>\n
Despite calling it “the hardest day terrain-wise yet,” Lachlan’s spirits remained high. He covered another 440 kilometers today during his 17 hours in the saddle and on the trail.<\/p>\n
As he rode, Lachlan found himself thinking about the people who had traveled these same paths before him. The Pony Express route followed major emigrant trails west, once busy with wagons, horses, cattle, and people in search of a new life. He reckons some of the trails might actually have been in better condition in 1860, when regular traffic kept them worn into the landscape. Today, many are little more than forgotten tracks through the sagebrush.<\/p>\n
And then there was the cold.<\/p>\n
Lachlan couldn’t help but imagine what it must have been like for the Pony Express riders to gallop through this country in the depths of winter, with snow falling and temperatures well below freezing. He’s had some of the coldest experiences of his life in this part of Wyoming. The thought of doing it on horseback, at full tilt, in the middle of a snowstorm is hard to comprehend.<\/p>\n
By the afternoon, the wilderness started to get taken over by towns and summer turned into fall \u2013\u00a0changing leaves colored the landscape and a crisp breeze filled the air. Riders started appearing along the route as Lachlan approached Salt Lake City, joining him in ones and twos and sometimes larger groups. By the time he reached Emigration Canyon, he had barely spent a moment alone for the better part of 100 kilometers.<\/p>\n
A brief rain shower brought a rainbow over Emigration Pass, before Lachlan descended towards the city.<\/p>\n
It was a remarkable change of scenery. This morning, he had been riding through the empty Wyoming desert, with little more than sagebrush and distant mountains in sight. By evening, he was navigating the busy streets of downtown Salt Lake City, surrounded by buildings, cars, and people.<\/p>\n
Tonight, Lachlan and the crew have traded their camper van for the comfort of an Airbnb and a proper night’s rest. Tomorrow, they’ll leave civilization behind once again. There are another 800 kilometers of remote country between here and Reno, with few towns and certainly no hotels along the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We ride at dawn.<\/p>\n
Day 3 | South Pass, Wyo. | KM ~1,650<\/p>\n
Lachlan has been riding since 2 a.m. this morning and is currently bushwhacking his way through desert shrubs to try to make it to the crest of South Pass, Wyoming, where he plans to camp under a canopy of stars. It is going to be a shorter night than he’d hoped.<\/p>\n
This morning got off to a wonderful start. A dot-watcher from Utrecht, in the Netherlands, who is studying at the University of Wyoming, caught wind of Lachy’s adventure on the trail of the Pony Express and drove out to Glendo, before riding the final 60 kilometers to the motel where Lachlan was fast asleep. The crew met him and told him that Lachlan was going to set out just after 2 a.m., so he grabbed a room and got a couple of hours’ sleep before joining Lachlan on the road.<\/p>\n
The two of them swapped stories and took turns in the wind \u2014 headlamps bobbing down the highway in the cold of the night. At dawn, he had to turn back and sprint to his car to make it back for class.<\/p>\n
Lachlan pushed west into a ferocious headwind, nodding at the cowboys tending their herds.<\/p>\n
Ahead of him lay the Bighorn Basin, where Lachlan nearly suffered hypothermia and lost all feeling in his fingers for months during his record-setting ride on the Tour Divide in 2023. Thankfully, the sun was on his side this time around until it fell.<\/p>\n
When day turned to dusk, Lachlan’s trail disappeared. He tried to reroute but was soon lurching through deep, loose sand in the dark, his pedals and wheels getting caught in scraggly brush. He will have to ride deep into the night to make it to the summit of South Pass, where a cold bed is waiting for him. From there, it is another 400 kilometers to Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n
That’s tomorrow’s destination if all goes to plan.<\/p>\n
Day 2 | Guernsey, Wyo. | KM 1,105<\/p>\n
After 1,105 kilometers on the trail, Lachlan stopped for a few hours of shut-eye in Guernsey, Wyoming, at about 6 p.m. this evening. He needed a rest after last night’s orienteering mission in the dark and a battle with a headwind all day. Raccoons, jackrabbits, and opossums were out overnight, their eyes glowing in Lachy’s Knog headlights, as he tried to stick to the windy, rutted trail across Nebraska and Colorado, rolling through endless farmers’ fields in the dark. Dodging them as they bolted across the track kept his mind occupied and his mood up. He only stopped every 100 or so kilometers to take on food and refill his bottles.<\/p>\n
Dawn brought a block headwind that dampened his spirits. Lachy pushed on regardless, getting on with the job, like those Pony Express riders over a century and a half before him.<\/p>\n
This is no country for quitters.<\/p>\n
Tonight, Lachy passed the 1,100-kilometer mark well ahead of record pace. It will be galloping up on his wheels as he enters the tougher land ahead. His plan was to gain as much time as he could during the first two, easier days.<\/p>\n
Just take a look at the terrain map. Lachy’s dot is about to move from the mellow yellow of the prairies into the rippled, mountainous green of central Wyoming. We don’t know what the trail is going to look like. That mystery spurs Lachy on.<\/p>\n
So do the stories we’ve picked up from locals on the route of the Pony Express. Today, Lachy rode past Scotts Bluff in western Nebraska. Over 250,000 westward emigrants passed by Scotts Bluff between 1843 and 1869 on their way to seek their fortunes and build lives in America. It was tough going.<\/p>\n
Like them, Lachlan will rise before dawn and push hard tomorrow towards the setting sun.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo far, so good,\u201d Lachy said. \u201cIt\u2019s still early days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Day 1 | Kenesaw, Neb. | KM 440<\/p>\n
Lachlan arrived in Kenesaw, Nebraska, in time for a quick evening meal, interrupted by the local tornado alarm sounding its monthly test. He has already put 440 kilometers behind him on his quest to break the old horseback record that was set in 1861 on the route of the Pony Express.<\/p>\n
So far, it’s been fast going on good gravel, rolling past cattle ranches into soy and corn fields, on hardpack with a few sections of softer dirt. Lachlan is keen to cover a lot of ground early to get ahead of the old record. He left the Pony Express stables in downtown St. Joseph, Missouri, at 4:03:45 a.m. local time, destination Sacramento, California, with a special message in his lightweight mochila.<\/p>\n
To beat the riders who carried Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address the distance of the Pony Express by horse in seven days and 17 hours back in 1861, Lachy will have to cover almost 420 kilometers per day on rougher and rougher terrain. He expects to ride 17\u00bd hours every day for the next week, averaging about 24 kilometers per hour, including the time to stop and refuel and change bikes.<\/p>\n
The camper van following him with his mechanic Tom Hopper, his brother Gus, and his film crew is his traveling station, carrying food and drink and fresh steeds. So far, Lachlan has switched bikes three times, jumping between his Cannondale Topstone with Vision Metron 45 RS road wheels and 32-mm Vittoria Corsa Pro tires and his Topstone gravel setup with Vision Metron SC 48 i25 wheels and Vittoria Tirreno T30 50-mm tires. He’s saving his SuperX for the really gnarly gravel to come and his Scalpel mountain bike setup for the Sierra Nevada.<\/p>\n
With harvest season in full swing, lots of farmers are out in their trucks and tractors, trundling through the fields. They honk their horns and wave as Lachy races past, pushing hard into the west, with some diversions to skirt deep patches of mud left over from recent thunderstorms.<\/p>\n
The Pony Express is the stuff of local legend. Lachy has passed old trail markers and stations preserved from its Old West heyday. The nearest highway is named after the Pony Express, but Lachlan is sticking to the original route, inspired by the riders who carried post across these prairies and plains long before the invention of the combustion engine.<\/p>\n
Tonight, he is riding into a crisp October night, undaunted by the dark.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been thinking about doing this route for over 12 months now,” he said. “So, it is quite surreal to be out here. It is very sweet to be on the route finally.”<\/p>\n
Keep checking back here for updates from the trail. Lachy will keep you posted.<\/p>\n
Background<\/p>\n
On October 5th, Lachlan Morton<\/a> will set out on his next challenge: racing across the American West on one of the nation\u2019s most fabled routes.<\/p>\n Lachlan is going to try to ride the route of the Pony Express faster than the horsemen who carried mail from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, during the heyday of the legendary 19th-century postal service.<\/p>\n He admires the courage of the young riders who signed up for that wild, high-speed horseback relay across the prairies and mountains that connect the western states.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe way they could get mail across the country at that speed \u2013 before there was any railroad connecting it \u2013 was revolutionary,\u201d Lachlan said. \u201cThe idea of people traversing such massive distances just captured my imagination, especially knowing a lot of that terrain. Think of these big open spaces \u2013 huge plains, mountain ranges \u2013 and you imagine a slow transition, but with the elevation and the vegetation it’s always evolving, and when you’re covering big distances you get a really diverse variety of riding. It’s a great canvas for adventure. It’s existed there for so long, and you feel like you’re participating in what the country is all about.”<\/p>\n The Pony Express was founded in 1860 with the promise to deliver mail across the West by horse in 10 days or less. The fastest recorded time for the 1,966-mile (3,164-kilometer) route, which crossed Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California, was set in 1861, when young horsemen carried Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address the distance in seven days and 17 hours, changing horses every 10 miles (16 kilometers) and riders every 75 to 100 miles (120 to 160 kilometers). They carried the message that helped persuade California to remain in the Union.<\/p>\n The postal route ceased operation in October 1861, when it was eclipsed by the first transcontinental telegraph line. The Pony Express only ran for 18 months. And yet, stories from its early letter carriers \u2013 galloping across the range, day and night, whatever the weather, whatever the danger \u2013 inspired Americans long after those early postmen had delivered their final envelope out of its mochila, on time to its final destination, of course. Their heroism, their willingness to do something hard to help unite the United States when it was most divided, represented America at its finest. Legends from the Pony Express have connected Americans more than any single letter they ever carried could.<\/p>\n Now, our Australian adventurer, whose past exploits include riding the entire route of the Tour de France, plus the transfers, faster than the pro peloton<\/a>; setting the fastest time for the Tour Divide<\/a>, a rugged bikepacking odyssey from Banff, Alberta, to Antelope Wells, New Mexico; and breaking the around-Australia record<\/a> by bike, wants try to ride the route of the Pony Express faster. He will carry letters from citizen to citizen, delivering them between stations on the route.<\/p>\n “The appeal for me is the history of it,” he said. “It’s wild to get into that mindset \u2013 you’re a kid trying to make some money, and there’s this opportunity to ride a horse with a mochila full of mail through the night for 75 miles (120 kilometers) flat out, across remote, gnarly terrain that no one else has been crossing. It’s quite a courageous thing. It’s hard to imagine, and that’s why I want to go out there and try to get a better understanding of what that would have been like, and the difficulties they faced doing it over 150 years ago.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Lachlan’s plan to cross difficult land at pace was inspired by the strategy adopted by the Pony Express during its heyday. Just as those young riders switched horses, riding thoroughbreds on the plains, pintos across the middle section, and American mustangs through the Sierra Nevada, with quick pit stops at remote stations en route, Lachlan will swap between his Cannondale TopStone<\/a>, SuperSix<\/a>, and Scalpel,<\/a> choosing the best bike for each stretch of country that he will encounter.<\/p>\n “The idea is to mimic how they used to switch out horses,” he said. “I’ll be swapping between a gravel bike, a road bike, and a mountain bike depending on the terrain. The route I’ve put together tries to get as close to the original as I could. I’m excited because it’ll use all the different disciplines I’ve raced.”<\/p>\n Lachlan will travel light, resupplying and switching bikes from a truck that will follow him across the West with his brother Gus, who will document the trip on film. Nights in the desert and mountains will be frosty, and there will be hot days where Lachlan only has tumbleweeds for company under the October sun. Most of the Pony Express route is very remote, so there will be long stretches where Lachlan will have to fend for himself, pushing on and on towards the setting sun, like those early riders on the range.<\/p>\n “You start on the plains, essentially, coming across Kansas, then across the basin through Wyoming, into Utah,” Lachlan said. “The real crux is the Nevada section \u2013 the stretch from Salt Lake City across to Carson City \u2013 because it’s incredibly remote and very exposed. There’s a lot that could go wrong there, and you’re very much on your own. That’s probably the hardest part. Then you cross the Sierra Nevada on the southern side of Lake Tahoe and drop through the foothills, which I know well because I live out there now, and finish in Sacramento.\u201d<\/p>\n The first Pony Express riders were early American heroes \u2013 brave, young souls who helped knit the country together by carrying messages back and forth across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n Follow Lachlan \u2013 and his dot \u2013 on his journey as he seeks to better their times and understand their role in forging the United States.<\/p>\n He will be posting daily updates from the trail on this page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trail updates Day 5 | Overland Summit, NV | KM 2388 Lachlan overslept this morning. 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