Hotter'N Hell Hundred weekend: riding, staying and eating in Wichita Falls

Once a year, in late August, Wichita Falls fills up with bicycles. The Hotter'N Hell Hundred began in 1982, when the Wichita Falls Bicycle Club proposed a way to mark the city's centennial: 100 miles, in 100-degree heat, for 100 years. The name stuck and so did the ride. In 2015 more than 13,000 people registered for the weekend's events, and the organizers describe a start line of 10,000-plus riders.

This guide covers the practical side for a visitor: how the weekend runs, how to handle the heat, and where rooms and food are in relation to the start. Dates, rules and schedules change from year to year, so confirm every one of them on the ride's own website before you book.

When it is

The ride is held on a Saturday late in August. In 2026 the weekend ran from Thursday, August 27, to Sunday, August 30, with the endurance ride on Saturday, August 29. For 2026, registration opened on January 1.

How ride morning works

Riders start gathering on Scott Avenue by the river as early as 4 a.m. The start comes at about 7:05, after the national anthem, an Air Force flyover and a cannon. There is no early start for the 100-mile group: the organizers ended it after riders on shorter routes went out ahead of the support crews.

The endurance ride has several distances, from the full 100 miles down through 100 kilometers, 50 miles and 25 miles to a short route. If you are riding the century, the checkpoint that matters is Hell's Gate at mile 60. Reach it by 12:30 p.m. or you are turned onto a shorter route. The finish is downtown near Lamar and Third Streets, and the course closes at 5:30 p.m.

Rest stops come about every 10 miles on every route, a little closer together near the end of the century. They stock water, electrolyte drink, bananas, oranges and pickle juice. More than 700 medical volunteers staff tents at the 19 rest stops and the finish, and the organizers say no rider is ever more than five miles from medical help. Between 3 and 5 percent of riders visit a medical tent in a given year, and about half of them for heat, mostly cramps.

Helmets are required. The ride made that rule in 1988 and was the first major national ride to do so.

The heat is the point

Wichita Falls averages about 28 days a year at 100 degrees or more, and August highs at the airport average 96.6. In 2011 the city became the first in Texas to log 100 days at 100 degrees in one year.

The organizers' own advice for riders is plain. Ride the pace you trained for, not the pace your fresh legs want at the cannon. Eat and drink a little at a time from the first hour instead of loading up at the rest stops. Save something for the end: the hard stretches are the hills between miles 10 and 25, the hills after Hell's Gate, and the last 22 miles, into the wind most years. If you are wrung out and still counting miles to the next stop, get in a support vehicle. Their doctors recommend drinking to thirst.

For an emergency, dial 911.

The rest of the weekend

The ride is the center of a four-day event, most of it at the Multi-Purpose Events Center, the MPEC, on Fifth Street downtown. Packet pickup is in the MPEC Exhibit Hall on Thursday evening, Friday afternoon and evening, and early Saturday before the start. Friday brings a consumer show, an off-road mountain bike race, a Rug Rats mountain bike race in the evening and criterium races by the coliseum. A spaghetti dinner the night before the ride and a breakfast buffet early on ride morning are both served at the MPEC.

On Saturday the finish line village at the MPEC runs food and entertainment through the afternoon, and in the evening a gravel ride starts downtown on Ohio Avenue. On Sunday morning an off-road ride of about 12 miles and a 10K trail run start from the MPEC Ag Center.

If you are driving in, the ride publishes a downtown road closure schedule and a map of start-line access from the north-side hotels. Read both before Saturday.

Where to stay

The ride's lodging page is blunt about it: hotels in the area are usually booked by the end of March for ride weekend. It asks riders to call hotels on their local numbers, because national booking lines and websites are blocked for the weekend so that each hotel can manage its own rooms.

In our Hotels listings, 49 places are published, and they fall into a few clusters:

• North side, near I-44 (ZIP 76306): 21 of the 49, more than half of them on the Central Freeway and Maurine Street. The ride's start-line access map is for these hotels.
• Downtown (ZIP 76301): 11, three of them on Fifth Street, the same street as the MPEC.
• South side (ZIP 76308): 11, three of them on Plaza Parkway and the rest spread out.

When the hotels are full, the ride keeps a list of other options within about an hour's drive: indoor camping at downtown churches and the YMCA, a few blocks from the start; host homes, where local families take in riders, matched by the ride's coordinators starting August 1; and RV spaces at the MPEC, booked from January 1 with a two-night minimum. For 2026 the ride said the Midwestern State University dorms would not be available.

Under the city's year-round water rules, every hotel room has to offer a linen reuse option, so the card on the bed is not the hotel being thrifty. It is a city rule.

Where to eat

The event feeds riders at the MPEC on Friday night and Saturday morning. Beyond that, the biggest restaurant clusters in our listings are on the south side, along Kemp Boulevard and Southwest Parkway. Sheppard Access Road and the Central Freeway are closest to the north-side hotels, and downtown has a smaller spread a few blocks from the MPEC. Our guide to eating and drinking in Wichita Falls breaks those areas down.

One local rule to know on a hot weekend: restaurants here serve water only when you ask for it. Ask.

Using our listings

Our Hotels, Restaurants, Breakfast and Brunch, and Coffee Shops pages list what we hold by address, so you can see what is near your room. We carry no rates, availability or hours. Call the property.