In June Steve Muir completed the first crossing of the Old Ghost Road towing a bike trailer. It was the middle of winter with a marginal weather forecast, so felt the need for a decent amount of gear to keep warm & have warm dry clothes at night. Short days mean long nights so a couple of books to keep me entertained were also very handy. I also hate carrying stuff on my back, so that and the fact that I’ve always wanted to give my hand crafted bike trailer a really hard thrashing to see if it would take the punishment, meant the Old Ghost Road was the perfect opportunity to try it out.
Most of the time the trailer handled perfectly, with the load being low it didn’t disrupt my balance as much as having the same weight in panniers. I was faster on the up-hills than my companion (who in fairness did have a cold) so didn’t create a noticeable extra drag. The only tricky bits were the REALLY sharp switchbacks. Most switchbacks I got around fine but there are some extremely sharp ones where I got off and walked around with the odd scrape of the trailer’s carbon fibre tray against the bank which was no problem. The steps were a bit nerve wracking at the top but the trailer bounced down behind the bike with both brakes on, albeit with a bit of wrestling at the corners, but no miss-haps.
Emily Lane and Chris North did an even more impressive first crossing of the route on unicycles in January 2016. The track is challenging enough for two wheels but they managed to unicycle most of it over 4 days, travelling light and walking the very lumpy sections with large drop-offs.
