The Pan-American Highway - 27,918 km from Alaska to Argentina
· Karl
Every so often someone finishes a route and asks what else we have. This is what else we have. The Pan-American Highway is a network of roads running from the Arctic Ocean at Prudhoe Bay all the way down to Ushuaia at the bottom of Tierra del Fuego — the longest motorable road in the world, and 27,918 km (17,347 miles) as a virtual route.
The one gap in the road
It is unbroken except for the Darién Gap, the roadless stretch of rainforest between Panama and Colombia that nobody has ever managed to put a road through. Fittingly for a route this size, the one thing standing in its way is a jungle.
How long does it take?
Some perspective on the number: at 50 km a week, a solid, sustainable amount of running for most people, the Pan-American Highway takes about eleven years. That is not a typo, and it is not really a solo route. It is the one to point a running club at, the same way a lap of Australia is. In relay mode a group pools its distance, so twenty people at 50 km a week finish in a bit over six months, and everyone gets to say they ran from Alaska to Argentina.
If you want a route that will outlast your current shoes, your current job and possibly your current city, this is it. Start the Pan-American Highway — or browse the shorter routes first, which is what most people sensibly do.
Blog posts are written by and in collaboration with large language models (LLMs) / AI.