Biking Tibet in the days of "Red China"

For our April program, Tim Goering and Dave Colbert will give a slide show about a mountain biking trip they took to China and Tibet back in 1986, while they were students at the University of Arizona.  They decided to take a semester off from school to bike across China and Tibet to Nepal, riding across Inner Mongolia, northern and central China, and from Lanzhou across Qinghai province and Tibet.  Tim and Dave spent some time in Lhasa, stocking supplies and recovering from a nasty bout of giardia picked up earlier on the trip, and finished their trip riding from Shigatze over a 19,000 ft pass across the Himalayas down to Kathmandu.  

They rode about 3000 kilometers in all, crossing China at a time when it was just starting to open up to foreigners.  The trip was not approved or sanctioned by the Chinese government (although they tried honestly to get official permission), and the US Embassy strongly discouraged the trip, once they got word of our plans.  But regardless, being young and foolish, they were determined, and early one morning they disappeared on a train headed north for (Inner) Mongolia to start the trip.  Most of the places they rode in China, and all of Tibet except Lhasa and Shigatze, were completely closed off to foreigners, which made the trip even more interesting.  It was an amazing time to visit both China and Tibet.   A brief 1987 article from their college paper, the Arizona Wildcat, is pasted below.

Time and Dave will present using 35-mm slides.  The photos of Qomolanga (Everest) was taken on a return trip to Tibet in 2006, twenty years after our first expedition. Tim writes:  “much has changed in China and Tibet since our first visit back in 1986, and we were fortunate to have visited so many years ago, when it was just beginning to open up to the rest of the world.”

Dave is currently self-employed as a landlord and handyman in Albuquerque, and Tim works at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a hydrologist.  They both love the outdoors, and still get out for water rafting and canoe trips, cross-country skiing,  and occasional mountain bike adventures together.   

Please join the Los Alamos Mountaineers on April 17th to hear their story!

Qomolanga (the original Tibetan name for Mount Everest) from Tibet on a 2006 return trip.