Singletrack/MTB
Gravel/All-road
Dirt-road Touring
Fat-bike
Pot of Coffee: Riding the GDMBR (Video)
Dedicated to his late friend Nat Wilson, “Pot of Coffee” is Matt Westfall’s self-shot video from his time riding the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route between Jasper, Alberta, and Antelope Wells, New Mexico. Find a short reflection and photos from Matt and watch the nearly two-hour video he made here…
PUBLISHED Nov 8, 2024
Words, photos, and video by Matt Westfall
Growing up with my friends, I was fortunate enough to learn whitewater kayaking. Eventually, we did some multiple night trips where we carried all our camping gear inside our kayaks. It was a tight fit, to say the least, and the nimble, responsive kayak turned into what felt like a water-logged wooden ship with all the added weight inside. The simple act of having what you need in your one-person craft gives you quite a feeling of self-reliance. Over a decade later, when I was first going about getting all my camping gear onto my gravel bike, I couldn’t believe how much I was comparing it in my mind to self-contained kayaking. The most glaring and best difference in the world is that once you’re all loaded with gear, water, and food, the bike rolls.
Whatever bike you have is the bike to try out bikepacking with. Even if you end up wearing a backpack with the majority of your gear inside, it is a liberating excitement when you’re pedaling down the road knowing you are also going camping. Overnight trips are the way to get dialed in. Packing your gear onto your bike and rolling down a bumpy road, what works and what doesn’t becomes evident quickly. If you wear a small hole in one of your bags or the paint on your bike, rest assured, you are bikepacking. Making big or small changes after each trip prepares you for a longer trip.
The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route is packed with amazing dirt roads, big views and climbs, and massive open spaces. Adventure Cycling Association did an outstanding job linking this route together. When packing gear onto my bike, there has always been space allotted to camera equipment. Having a camera in my travels has always been important to me. I love travel and adventure documentaries, so it was inevitable that I would be shooting some on my bikepacking trips. I was lucky enough to do the GDMBR for the first time in 2023. I had my Sony mirrorless camera, but I broke a GoPro and lost an SD card with a bunch of Canada footage. I would say I was mainly focused on making miles and actually completing the trip. Watching the movie I made from the 2023 trip, there were a lot of things I wanted to improve on.
Three months before I left on the 2023 Great Divide trip, a good friend Nat Wilson died in an avalanche while snowmobiling. Looking back, I know I wasn’t dealing with it on the 2023 trip. I put my head down and focused on making miles for the most part, waking up as early as I could in hopes of completing the trip. These days, Nat is certainly present in my thoughts. Late last winter, it felt like I had the first decent idea in awhile; I would take my time on the route in order to shoot as much as possible and make an edit that is a worthy tribute to Nat. Nat was the most talented person I have seen on a snow machine. Nat also snowboarded, shaped terrain parks, rebuilt the snow cats used to do the shaping, and raft guided in the summer. He was a humble sole with many talents.
Slowing down to take footage wasn’t always the easiest thing to do, but I tried to stay stoked on the little things. It is quite easy to feel anxious about how many miles you should make a certain day or how far you have left in the trip. Getting a solid sunset drone shot or my first halfway good night lapse on the trip was motivating. Great motivation to continue at my slow pace and get lots of footage that I could hopefully assemble into a fun travel documentary. Knowing I still have a great deal of room for improvement, I am stoked about the footage I took on the 2024 GDMBR trip, and I think the edit would put a smile on Nat’s face.
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