A collection of free, cyclist-submitted routes built for shorter trips. Each route is designed for a trip of one to five nights, ranging from a quick overnight ride to a longer multi-day adventure. It’s the most accessible of our three route networks: no purchase required, no advanced experience assumed, just a well-vetted route you can ride over a weekend or a week off.

We launched Short Routes in August 2022 with an initial set of 12 routes, created specifically because our epic, long-distance routes don’t work for everyone. Someone with a week of vacation, or someone new to bike touring, needs a different starting point. We developed that first collection in partnership with BIPOC, LGBTQ+, women, and intersex cyclists, with routes centered near major cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, Minneapolis, Austin, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Boston, so people could find a route close to home rather than needing to travel somewhere remote first. Since then, the collection has grown through rider submissions and partnerships with other organizations like East Coast Greenway Alliance.

It’s the only one of our three networks built primarily by the community, for the community. Typically, the route builder is local to the area, providing special knowledge about transportation logistics, services, points of interest, and more. Anyone can submit a route, but every submission goes through a staff review: checked for traffic speeds, shoulder width, surface conditions, and whether services like food, water, and camping are realistically spaced for a loaded touring bike.

Riders who don’t have weeks to spend in the saddle, and riders who’ve never done a multi-day bike trip before. The collection was built with input from locals and includes routes near major cities, so that cyclists who live far from the endless miles of gravel roads or remote bikepacking routes have great routes mapped near them.

No. Many of our Short Routes are built to be beginner-friendly, though all are worth riding no matter your experience level. Because each one runs just one to five nights, it’s a much lower commitment than a cross-country tour, which makes it a good place to start if you’ve never done a multi-day ride.

Anyone can submit. You don’t need any official affiliation with Adventure Cycling. Head to our route submission form, and come prepared with three things: at least 10 photos from the route, a written description covering the highlights, navigation notes, services along the way, seasonal considerations, and a short bio about you as the route’s creator, and a Ride with GPS route that includes automatic cuesheets and custom points of interest for things like lodging, food, bike shops, and any hazards.

It needs to take a beginner one to five nights, cover 50 to 200 total miles, and be located anywhere in the U.S. or Canada. Beyond that, we’re mainly checking for safety. A route can’t put a fully loaded touring cyclist through excessive hazards, so we look at things like traffic speed, shoulder width, road surface, and whether food, water, and camping are realistically spaced along the way.

It helps if you rode it within the past year or so. Those submissions move through review faster, since conditions on the ground are more likely to still match what you’re describing. Older routes can still be submitted, but they may take longer to review since we may need to double-check that services and conditions haven’t changed.

Review typically takes several weeks. We check every submission for safety and accuracy and reserve the right to edit before publishing. If your route is approved, we’ll follow up with you by email.