After following Across Andes from home in 2022 and 2023, this year, we made the most of a trip to America by spending a few extra days in the Chilean Patagonia Verde, where the unsupported gravel event took place. Unfortunately, we didn’t participate, but covering the race with a camera on hand was also very enjoyable.

On our arrival to Coyhaique, in the Aysén region, we met Pauli and Mariano. They are the race directors of what is now one of the most coveted gravel events. The setting is difficult to beat, and additionally one could see that it is internally very well organized. They take care like no other event of both the participants—even if once the race started everyone did it in an unsupported way—and the audience following it from all over the world, which grows year on year. The crew also counted on a talented media team, volunteers for the checkpoints, and a rescue team.

The shake-out ride, the check-in procedure, the race briefing… One could feel the excitement among the 120 participants that would later start on Sunday, November 24th, at 7 AM, the 960-kilometre-long challenge along the Patagonia Verde.

Similar route, similar weather?

The route was similar to the 2023 edition, and the riders who took part in Across Andes for the second year in a row—there were many—were hoping to enjoy the landscapes that last year’s downpour partially truncated. All of them, including the rookies, learned the lesson, and we could see they were well prepared with latex gloves and all types of weatherproof clothing. It was cold, but everything was relative after learning that a record-breaking -21.9°C was recorded in the neighboring Balmaceda five months earlier.

The first checkpoint was 198 kilometers ahead, and the field quickly strung out. They knew it would be a long push, but they had more than five days, until November 29th at 4 pm, to complete the route. The terrain was great, and the surface was perfect for gravel bikes, with wide paths and a constant rolling terrain. It was open to traffic, but they could probably count on one hand the number of vehicles they came across outside the Carretera Austral.

After that first anticlockwise loop, they ended in Ñireguau, where they got the first stamp in the brevet card and filled their stomachs after a long stretch with nowhere to resupply. They had just gone through a tough headwind section in an extremely exposed area at high elevation. After Checkpoint 1, they headed to el Valle de la Luna, an equally remote stretch with a particular landscape that made us stop several times with the car to appreciate what we had around us. It was our first encounter with the many-leaved lupine flowers that would add a purple touch to the remainder of the route.

The road that crosses the southernmost part of the continent

The famous Carretera Austral was the link between the checkpoints. During peak season, there are too many vehicles covering parts or the whole 1,240-long itinerary, but Across Andes takes place just before the start of summer in the southern hemisphere. The Carretera Austral featured its own highlights, with the Parque Nacional Queulat being a good example, and not all of it was paved.

We spent the night in Puyuhuapi, a fishermen’s village located on the way to La Junta. We had overtaken all the riders, but we knew that the next morning, after waking up, we would check the tracker and see that many of them had pushed through the night. Andrés Taigle was already in the lead and on his way to a second win in a row.

At 5 am a rider knocked at the door of the cabin next to ours, and the locals welcomed him with open arms and offered him food in addition to a warm bed where rest before resuming his race. We let the 20-year-old from Ecuador Gabriel Cazares sleep and jumped in the car to follow the riders approaching Checkpoint 2, 468 km into the route. Just outside the village, Leonardo Guzmán stopped briefly at a bus stop to eat and take a quick nap.

This Checkpoint 2 was a virtual one, meaning that there was no one there waiting for them to stamp their brevet card. The tracking system would detect that they arrived at the river crossing to Raúl Marín Balmaceda and they would have to return following their own path back to La Junta, 62 kilometers away. That out-and-back was all over gravel and parallel to the Palena River.

Riders spread all over the Patagonia Verde

At this point, riders were so distant apart that some could be enjoying blue skies while others might be facing the rain. Whenever they crossed each other – because the route had some parts that had to be covered in both directions -, they waved with euphoria and even stopped to share their experience so far.

La Junta became for the next couple of days the meeting point of riders. Whether they reached the village coming from the Carretera Austral or any of the remaining Checkpoints, riders took over the local restaurants and filled the limited accommodation spots available. All the sockets and stoves were highly coveted, as all the participants needed to charge their electronic devices and dry their clothes. They dressed up with conventional – and not-so-conventional – layers to face the cold and rain and continued counting down the kilometers until the next finish line, whether it was the official one or an internally set goal.

Laguna Verde was 75 km east of La Junta, a long way for the already tired bodies. A big share of the elevation gain – a total of 14,800 metres for the entire route – was contained there, so the gymnasium at the end of the hilly segment was not only the place where to get the second-to-last stamp but also the sleeping spot for many riders that were not confident enough to return to La Junta in one go.

We returned to Puyuhuapi for the night, where there were riders who still had to arrive at La Junta for the first time. Their morale was high, but coming across riders who were already heading back to Coyhaique must have been discouraging.

Closing moments of coverage

Covering a bike packing event on its third day requires some extra planning. You can be waiting in a good spot for hours and no riders will pass by, and you need to factor in the fact that mobile data in Patagonia is only available in or around the few villages one can find along the way.

It was impossible to arrive on time to see Andrés Taigle crossing the finish line, as he was absurdly fast and reached Coyhaique in 1 day, 23 hours and 34 minutes. Also worth highlighting are the performances of Cristian Auriemma and Marcin Barwiński, who completed the podium. On our way to Coyhaique, we saw Cynthia Carson – who was at that time second in the women’s ranking – struggle up the difficult Cuesta Queulat. She probably did not realize she was riding along giant nalca plants, native to southern Chile. Cynthia would end up scratching from Across Andes as the knee pain she developed during the race became unbearable.

We caught the leading woman Becca Book as she was entering the last gravel segment before the finish. She was sixth overall for most of the race, but she lost a couple of positions in the closing hours. We were later in Coyhaique for her arrival and celebrated with her a remarkable achievement. Sami Sauri came in second, redeeming herself after her DNF last year, and the local Adele Lecocq finished third.

They would all collect their deserved prize during the podium ceremony and closing party, which we unfortunately could not attend as our stay in America came to an end a couple of days before. However, we spent enough time to check how cool it is to be involved in a bikepacking event. The participants had a lot of fun, despite the hurdles found along the way. The media crew had a lot of fun, despite spending countless hours in a car and pushing through sleep deprivation. The race directors had a lot of fun, despite the responsibilities that organizing such a well-known event entails.

Active tourism is the best tourism

Across Andes is nowadays a very important component for the tourism of the region, Aysén. We could see firsthand the positive impact of the event on the local economy. Starving cyclists spend a lot of money on food, and many of them already stayed for a week in the region before the event or are extending their stay once they cross the finish line. Several alliances between the organization and public institutions like Sernatur will make sure that the event grows sustainably and keeps promoting active tourism in Aysén. Because there is no better way to show what a region has to offer than with a cycling event, is it?