Ride The Divide tells the story of the Great Divide Mountain Bike race, which is a 2,700 mile bike race from Banff, Alberta down the length of the Continental Divide to Mexico. The route crosses the Continental Divide thirty times and stays as close to it as is practically possibly and features main dirt roads with gravel stretches and a few short completely unmaintained stretches. The documentary follows a group of riders attempting to take on the challenge, some of them for the first time.
Mike is a 40 something Dad, looking for a big challenge to tackle. Mary is attempting to be the first woman to complete the route and Matthew Lee, who has completed the route before and is about to become a father for the first time. The camera crew, lead by Hunter Weeks follows this main trio down the longest mountain bike trail in the world, watching as the miles roll by and the difficulties of the route take their toll on all the riders.
Mike breaks down and quits. The racing pace is too much for him and he wants to complete it later at a touring pace. Mary runs into severe problems with her legs that almost knock her out of the race but she perseveres well into Colorado before she too breaks down and quits the race- but she's coaxed back into and finishes the route. Matthew Lee, having done it before races ahead to finish first.
This movie was interesting but it was also kind of a letdown at the same time. For some reason, I was expecting more. While the scenery was beautiful, it's essentially nothing more than a super-RAGBRAI running down the Continental Divide. Where Ride The Divide almost takes flight is in the stories of the riders themselves... what about Mike? Why suddenly decide to ride the divide? And Mary? Is there more to her story? And what about Reuben or the random English dude? The dividing line between good and great is a tricky one to walk and if the filmmakers would have brought more than just some of the stories of the riders to life, they'd have made a great documentary.
180 Degrees South is a distant cousin of Ride The Divide but about something totally different. Back in the late 60s, Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins who went on to found Patagonia loaded a bunch of friends into the back of a van and drove the Pan-American highway down to Patagonia- when Jeff Johnson found some of the footage of that trip, he decided to take a trip of his own- only not by land but by sea. Spending months at sea and delayed for a month at Easter Island where he meets a travel partner, Mahoke, he eventually reached Patagonia (in Chile, not Argentina) with a shot at achieving his goal of getting to the top of the volcano Corcovado.
This movie is far, far more seductive that it's distant cousin, Ride the Divide. Ride The Divide is just a bike race- a bad ass, super long bike race over humongous mountains, to be sure, but a bike race nonetheless. 180 Degrees South is a fantasy that I think everybody has at some point in their lives: just throwing a bunch of shit in a bag and going somewhere for the sake of going somewhere. Losing yourself in a country or vanishing into a landscape and the unspoiled wilderness of Patagonia (that Tompkins and Chouinard have worked to protect) is perfectly suited to that. I thought Ride the Divide had gorgeous cinematography. This thing has it beat hands down. The land is so big, so wild and so empty and the views and the shots the filmmakers pull off literally take your breath away and they managed to bring the message of the importance of conservation to the audience without devolving into preachiness or scare tactics which is utterly refreshing.
At the end of the day, this movie made me want to live in the mountains. Recent political developments aside, I thank my lucky stars my mother tasted the East Coast once, shook the dust of it off her feet and kept us going west on family vacations after that. The higher elevations always seemed to make my allergies better and one of my lasting regrets is that I never beat myself into good enough shape to climb a mountain. I'd like to do that before I die. The mountains were beautiful and so peaceful when I was a kid- and looking at the wild, empty land in Patagonia, you can understand why the Gauchos down there are fighting against the dams they're planning on the rivers down there and you can understand why Chouinard and Tompkins have dedicated a large portion of their lives to preserving it. How could you possibly want to let humanity touch land as beautiful as that any more than is absolutely necessary?
OVERALL: As advertised, both fascinating documentaries lurking on Netflix for those that are bored or find themselves with the time on their hands. Both are worth watching but it's 180 Degrees South that will suck you in and make you itch for the freedom of the open road or just an adventure, however big or small- and deserves praise for bringing the cause of land conservation life in such a vivid, beautiful and subtle way.
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