La Cumbre to Corioco – The Worlds Most Dangerous Road

4th June 2008

There are literally tens of companies now touting the experience of cycling down the Worlds Most Dangerous Road, so we chose carefully before putting our lives in their hands. We chose a small company, called B-Side (http://www.bside-adventures.com/) who offered good full suspension mountain bikes, a very low guide to rider ratio, and had excellent reviews.

We met the rest of our group at 7.30 and were taken in a van to La Cumbre, the highest point of the road at 4,660m. At the top, we put on our thermals, and tried out our bikes in the relative safety of the car park! At this point, some other group members showed their lack of bicycle riding skills – this was going to be interesting.

The statistics for the ride for those of you who are interested, are as follows:
Start Altitude – 4660m
Finish Altitude – 1110m
Total Descent – 3550m
Total Distance - 63km (39 miles)

The first section of the ride is a fast descent on the new asphalt road. There is very little traffic, and we took up our positions behind the lead guide, tucked low down and went as fast as the bikes would let us go! Sam commented at the first stop that she couldn’t be in top gear as she couldn’t pedal any faster - she was though!

At the end of the asphalt section, we regrouped and were briefed on the next stage of the ride – the dirt road. The pictures tell the story better, but at this point it is worth noting that we were still above the clouds! 2 minutes (for us!) down the dirt road our group had divided into two, and Sam and I waited for the others to catch up. After a frustrating 15 minutes waiting, the rest of the group arrived.
Luckily for us, the guides decided to split the group into two and we ended up with our own private guide. This was a far cry from the other huge groups that we would have had to endure had we gone with one of the larger companies – what a result we thought…! It seemed too good to be true as we set off down the road in our convoy of three!


The dirt part of the decent usually takes 2 and a half hours, but as we were in a small group and as we are both (relatively) good riders, the guide wasn’t wasting his time and we hurtled down the road! We were able to take our own version of the most popular photo spot with only us on the picture!

There are also some videos which we will post on You Tube when we get the laptop back up and running.
After only 1 and a half hours, we had reached the end of the ride, and took a well earned breather! Oh, the private guide did come at a price… the health of our legs! Little did we know that our prize for finishing early would be a large number of fruit fly bites, from sitting around waiting for the other group members!

On reflection, the dirt part of the ride did have some steep drops but the surface was good and we didn’t think it was that dangerous. Experienced mountain bikers would be able to do the ride on a hard tail mountain bike with no real problems. There are more challenging rides around the La Paz area, and it has certainly whetted Ady`s appetite for some more challenging rides! Overall, we would highly recommend B-Side to anyone wanting to do the ride!

The day was rounded off by lunch at a hotel in Corioco, which was also our next destination.