During the trip Kate will average 75 miles a day carrying everything she needs. The ride will pass through deserts, mountains and forests climbing over 300,000 feet, more than ten times the height of Everest! The route passes through Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon and Alaska. Kate is setting out in mid June 2006.

Her partner, Chris Loynes, will join her half-way through the trip at Banff, Canada, and they both aim to arrive in Anchorage mid September three months later, just before the snows arrive.

Along the way Kate will talk with the people she encounters at truck stops, cafes and campsites - as well as meeting with local cyclists, environmentalists and politicians and visiting projects involved in climate change issues. She believes that a continent that has such an extreme carbon intensive culture will also be developing some of the most radical responses to it.

She will record many of these conversations and encounters. The story will be told on the Carbon Cycle web site once the journey is under way. On return Kate will use the insights she gains from the trip to inform the UK climate change debate and bring the issue to a wider audience.

She believes passionately that everyone has a role to play in tackling climate change but that the issue needs to be made real and practical action recommended if people are to become more engaged. Kate will publicise the trip through articles, lectures and radio presentations. As a lecturer in Outdoor Studies at St Martin's College, Ambleside, the trip will also inform her teaching and her freelance Outdoor Philosophy courses.

Details of the Bike Kate is riding

See a map of the route