![]() ![]() In his 20s he studied engineering for about two years at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He moved to Canada when he was 15, he said on his website. ![]() But during the pandemic he ceased making many new friends and biked in the cold without finding people to host Matt Bardeen “The biggest realization so far is how many people are out here and having the time of their lives,” Mr. Another wrote, “My first bicycle trip changed me and my life forever and you were an integral part of that.” Logan Watts, the website’s founder, said it received record traffic the day the article was posted. “I’ve lived vicariously through Iohan for years,” one reader commented below an article about Mr. “His curiosity just carried him over and over the next mountain,” said Joe Stiller, whose biking gear company, BarYak, sponsored Mr. He called the remote Dempster Highway in Canada’s far northwest “a world of blue ice and white sky.” “There is snow here nine months of the year, and I wanted to see the North as it truly was,” he said of his winter journey through the Arctic. Gueorguiev found wonder in the harshness of the wilderness. When he was running out of food on a particularly arduous journey, he nevertheless fed tortilla-and-peanut-butter sandwiches to stray dogs. When a tanker truck passing him on the road kicked up a storm of dust, he waved cheerfully in response. “Hey, beautiful!” he called out to a large bear staring at him. He would go as long as 30 days without seeing a fellow cyclist and, when biking was not feasible, could wait two days on the road to get picked up as a hitchhiker.Ī spirit of generosity helped him get by. Headwinds on desert plains required him to take long breaks sheltered behind rocks and make a campsite in a stray shipping container, which itself shook from powerful gusts. Gueorguiev tried to cast the obstacles he encountered as part of a grand adventure, his videos showed genuine hardships. He earned about $3,000 a month through the funding website Patreon and received bikepacking sponsorships, enabling him to exchange the basic touring bike he started with for one with fat tires designed for riding off-road. He would sometimes position the camera at a distance, making it appear as if he traveled with a cinematographer. He shot his videos with a simple GoPro camera charged by a portable solar panel. “His curiosity just carried him over and over the next mountain,” one friend said of Mr. “The biggest realization so far is how many people are out here and having the time of their lives,” he said in a video compiling highlights of his second year of travel. While biking, he would get sidetracked by serendipitous encounters and eccentric trails. Gueorguiev occasionally flew back to Canada to earn money planting trees, he said. Gueorguiev’s exact movements could be hard to pin down, it seems clear he spent from April 2014 to March 2020 biking from the Canadian Arctic Circle to its South American antipode, the icy mountains and valleys of Patagonia. Calling himself the Bike Wanderer, he stood out for his Beatnik-like romanticism about the open road, in contrast to the competitiveness of many bike jocks and gear heads. He was a star in the world of “bikepacking,” long-distance bike travel conducted off main roads. ![]() Gueorguiev made his name overcoming challenges hurled at his body and spirit. His death was announced on biking websites late last month. The cause was suicide, said Matthew Bardeen, a friend who was helping to oversee Mr. 19 in Cranbrook, British Columbia, where he had been using the home of friends as a base for travel during the pandemic. Gueorguiev (generally pronounced gyor-ghee-ev) died on Aug. He discovered the grace of strangers and the companionship of wild animals, the glory of remote, untamed landscapes and an audience of nearly 100,000 subscribers on The scene began the first of 72 videos released by that biker, Iohan Gueorguiev, chronicling his six-year trek to Argentina through a frozen-over ocean, deserts, canyons and forests. “Ontario, but I’m going to Argentina,” the biker says. “Where’d you come from?” the trucker yells out the window. It's a young man in a puffy coat and goggles. The trucker catches up to a figure riding a bicycle. the sun still illuminates the landscape, which is empty except for a few trees clinging to snow-covered hills. The road is so far north in Canada that at 10 p.m. He gained a following online for his lyrical appreciation of the open road while biking through remote landscapes and braving extreme conditions.Ī truck barrels through a blizzard down a road made of ice. ![]() Iohan Gueorguiev, ‘Bike Wanderer’ of the Wilderness, Dies at 33 ![]()
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