24 Heures du GoldRiver, Friday 4th to Labour Day Monday 7th September 2026- progress report.

Detail planning work for a 24 Heures du GoldRiver continues.

To back up a little if you haven’t been following this particularly closely, I became aware that a motorcycle rally company were staging and advertising a 24 hour event in Greece this September and I wondered if there would be any call for such a marathon here on Vancouver Island….?

Initial social media publication demonstrated that there are indeed people in the Pacific Northwest who might want to try their hand at such an epic.

Event weekend schedule.

• Event bivouac opens Thursday afternoon 3rd September 2026 for arrivals through the night and Friday morning 4th September.

• Friday 4th September. Morning, sign-on, tech inspection + scrutineering, route PDFs published and equipment setup. Afternoon, Prologue (about 80km). Shakedown and verification. Winner of the Prologue gets to choose their start position, everyone else starts in reverse Prologue result order (slowest goes first). Off to bed early!

• Saturday 5th September. First start 1000hrs outside Uptown Cappuccino cafe (plenty of time for a cooked breakfast). Starts at 2 minute intervals. Solos and Pairs in-the-mix.

• See the spreadsheet below for timings, distances and jeopardies.

• Sunday 6th September, finishers from 1000hrs. Afternoon, results and awards. Event close. Overnight sleep in or begin the journey home

• Labour Day Monday 7th September. Bivouac closes.

Route description

• Eight stages. Passage Controls at Gold River, Sayward Junction, Campbell River, Sayward Junction, Port McNeill, Port Hardy, Port McNeill, Woss and Gold River.

• Total distance will be in excess of 800km. Currently it is 810km on the first draft of the route. Some boring bits may get swapped out for some more interesting routes.

• Jeopardies: hard cutoff at the second Sayward Junction Passage Control (arrive late and the course will have closed ahead of you!) and at the first Port McNeill Passage Control (the petrol station closes at 2200hrs and doesn’t reopen until 0500.

• Daylight set average speed 55kph, nighttime average speed 45kph. You will need auxiliary lighting.

• The degree of difficulty will not be great. For the first edition of this event I want to maximise the probability of everyone getting round. There are plenty of other, trickier sections that can be included in future editions if there is a call for. Meanwhile, five hundred miles in twenty four hours will be a stern enough test and a notable achievement for all completer-finishers…

• Contingency overnight halt at Port McNeill should the weather be foul…. Close attention will be paid to the weather forecast!

Event logistics

• The event is open to licenced and insured riders of registered dualsports and adventure bikes

• Riding in pairs or solo, so there will be two classes of participation.

• The entry fee is per person.

• Camping/accommodation/food/fuel/ferry costs ARE NOT included in the entry fee.

• Timing and tracking will be by Richta GPS rally timing, the roadbook will be written in Rally Navigator and distributed by email as a PDF.

• The Prologue will also be run as a PDF route with Richta timing.

• You will need two smartphones, one with cell connection for Richta (for position tracking) and the other for displaying the roadbook PDF (Rally Roadbook Reader app) does not need cell connection. You can also use a tablet of your choice provided it has GPS functionality. Note: you will probably find you cannot run Richta and Rally Roadbook Reader on a tablet simultaneously - but you will have your phone with you, right?!?

• The roadbook is a sequential series of junction-direction instructions. It is NOT pace notes! I can’t write pace notes, I know you won’t be able to read pacenotes while riding. RIDE THE ROAD YOU CAN SEE, NOT WHAT YOU HOPE THE ROADBOOK MEANS…

• Every participant will be expected to have a fully functional Gaia, BRMB or similar on their phone for location purposes should they get lost. Also, every participant will be expected/required to have a satellite sos calling device (InReach, Zoleo or satellite-capable smartphone).

• This event is not suitable for novices! The route will only be distributed by email as a PDF. No paper scrolls (they would be very long!).

• In addition to the two jeopardy “bottlenecks”, the Richta GPS timing gates will have open and closing times designed to keep the field reasonably close. The Richta gate closing times will be written into the roadbook waypoint information.

Event scoring will be as per the GoldRiver Rules for 2026.

I have prepared the following spreadsheet to demonstrate the running of the event and the progress that will need to be maintained in order to achieve a successful finish. On a phone the writing is very small so read it on a tablet.

Any questions?

JDB 28/09/25