No this post is not about Weapons of Mass Destruction Returning, its about the Worlds Most Dangerous Road (sorry lame joke I know) and how we road down it on a mountain bike...
Still in action, but rarely used as a major throughfare, the road between La Cumbre and Coroico is a 64km, graveled track carved into the side of a mountain range. With periling cliff faces, boasting up to 600m drops, and no barricading to poke a stick at, this 3.5m wide road is an adventure seekers dream.
The road was originally constructed in the 1930's by Paraguayan POW's after the particularly brutal Chaco war. Since then it has been estimated that an average of 26 vehicles a year went over the cliffs, the worst occurring on 24th July 1983 killing more than 100 passengers. With no other viable way of getting to the north the government tried numerous safety tactics to help bring the death toll down, including changing the direction of traffic so drivers could see their wheels better when reversing up the cliff. However with the accidents still occurring it was decided that a new paved road was to be build in March 2007. Nowadays the road is primarily used by adventure seeking mountain bikers who hurtle themselves down the 3600m decent. And whilst there is slightly more room going down the narrow road on a bike, the road still claims its fair share of sacrifices. Since its opening into the tourism market in the 1990's there have been a total of 19 deaths along the road and countless amounts of accidents, one of which occurred 2 weeks prior to our ride but thankfully they survived the 200m fall with just a few broken ribs.
So after donning on our safety gear, giving another 96% proof sacrifice to the Pachamama and ourselves, we tested out our bikes and began the ride. The ride started at around 4700m above sea level, with a fairly steady down hill gradient bitumen road. This was a good chance to get use to the bikes, check out the scenery and become friends with the brakes. The scenery at the top was amazing, snow capped mountain ranges towering on one side with lush green valleys on the other. However this was only to be short lived as it wasn't long before we were feeling the bumps and skids of the gravel and staring face first down the 200m plus drop offs, with little to no pit stops.
Along the way down we stopped numerous times to take in the scenery, learn a little history about the road and check to make sure our underpants weren't soiled. Each section of the ride contained something a little different from the last, whether it was sweeping hair pin turns, cascading waterfalls to ride through, recently cleaned up landslides or memorial crosses that gave you the haunting reminder that this in fact was a deadly road. As we continued to drop in altitude the temperature rose quite rapidly, which was both a nice change and hindrance, particularly on the small uphill sections. Tired from the heat, but pleased for the increase in oxygen we reached the end of the road in one piece and still alive. With beer in hand we sat around a table, each regaling our tales of near misses and close calls before we were presented with our congratulatory "I survived the Death Road" t-shirts.
For any of you adventure seeking types out there who are thinking of giving the Death Road a try, Gravity Assist were the first company hurtle tourists down the road 20 years ago and are still doing a top notch job today. Their safety standards are well above par and all guides are native English speaking. Also did I mention you get a free t-shirt and bandana at the end...
Now if the pictures didn't scare you too much here is a video of our ride, enjoy...
Death Road from
Ryan messer on
Vimeo.
- Ryan -
