· Jonathan Cutrer · Cycling · 2 min read
How I Plan a Multi-Day Texas Gravel Route
The actual process — maps, water, bail points, and the things that go wrong on paper before they can go wrong in the field.
Multi-day gravel riding in Texas is logistically different from most other places. Water sources are far apart, cell coverage disappears, and the roads that look passable on a satellite map sometimes aren’t. I’ve learned most of this the hard way.
Here’s the actual planning process I use now, after several iterations.
Route Planning
From Idea to Rideable Route
Pick the corridor, not the roads
Start with a point-to-point corridor on a state map — two towns 150–300 miles apart connected by some interesting geography. The specific roads come later. This prevents getting attached to a particular road before you know whether it has water.
Layer in water sources
Open the USGS National Map and overlay water features. In West Texas this is the most important step — cross-reference with county road maps to find which public roads actually pass near the creeks and stock tanks you can see on the topo. Mark everything within a reasonable detour distance.
Check road surface with satellite
Google Maps satellite view at max zoom tells you whether a road is caliche, chip seal, dirt, or "optimistic green line." Caliche is rideable when dry, impassable when wet. Pure dirt in West Texas after rain is not a road anymore. Build surface assumptions into your wet-weather bail plan.
Mark bail points and resupply
Every 40–60 miles, identify a town, highway crossing, or ranch road that connects to pavement. These are your bail points — places where you can abort to a highway and call for pickup. Also mark any store, gas station, or HEB within a reasonable detour. Small-town gas stations in Texas often carry more calories than you expect.
Calculate realistic daily mileage
Take your normal daily gravel mileage and subtract 20%. Texas heat, headwind from the south, and rough caliche all slow you down more than they look like they will on a map. A 90-mile day in the Hill Country in September is harder than a 90-mile day in Colorado in June.
Load into the GPS, then check it on foot
Export the route as a GPX file, load it to the Wahoo, and then zoom into every junction and critical turn in the GPS interface before you leave. Junctions that look obvious on a computer screen sometimes disappear on a 2.7-inch screen at mile 80 in failing light.
Plan for one day longer than you think
Build a buffer day into the schedule. Not for a rest day — for when day two turns into a 60-mile day because you hit a headwind from 9am to 6pm, or because the road that was "probably rideable" after recent rain was not rideable. The buffer is what lets you finish the route instead of bailing to the highway.
The Software Stack
I do the initial planning in Komoot because the surface type routing is actually good for Texas roads — it knows which roads are gravel and which are paved, which saves a lot of cross-referencing. For final route editing and waypoint placement I switch to RideWithGPS because the elevation profile is better and the cue sheet export format works directly with my GPS.
CalTopo for topo maps and water source layers. Windy for wind forecasting — Texas wind is not optional planning data. A 20 mph headwind from the south adds 30–40 minutes to every 20-mile segment.
The Things That Don’t Make It Into the Plan
The stuff that goes wrong isn’t usually the big things — it’s small compounding factors. One hinge point that took longer than expected. A detour around a closed ranch gate. A flat that cost 30 minutes in 102°F heat. None of these individually derail a route; three of them in the same afternoon do.
The buffer day absorbs these. The bail points handle the ones that don’t absorb. Plan for both and the route usually works.
What I’d Tell Myself Before the First Multi-Day
Carry more water than the map says. The stock tanks dry up. The windmill that shows on a topo from 2008 might not be pumping. Plan for a 30-mile water gap minimum; assume 40 until you’ve ridden the specific corridor before.
The ride is better than the planning. The planning is what makes the ride possible.
