Originally Posted by
Amt0571
I've been riding for a year with a 1x system and my opinion has not changed so far.
It works well for singletrack. That's it.
As soon as you ride the bike out of singletrack, it has lots of weakneses.
And I'm not sure if you have ever ridden a mountain bike in Europe, but here not everything are singletracks and purpose-built trails unless you go to a bike park (which most mountain bikers don't anyway). Most of us don't bring the bike to the trailhead with our car. We just ride out of our front door.
You have to ride lots of dirt roads whenever you want it or not, and in some of them you can easily reach 50km/h + if you dare and are willing to pedal. There are also some really steep dirt roads (some simply unclimbable unless you know bike trial and don't run out of breath), which means losing my 30T is not an option.
Ummmm...yeah. It's a mountain bike. Different tools for different jobs. They don't build mountain bikes for the purpose of riding gravel roads and they don't build gravel bikes for the purpose of riding single track trails. That's like me taking a road bike to the single track mountain bike trail and complaining about how it handles.
What you describe I've done numerous times. A few times a year a few of us get together and ride gravel roads to a single track trail, then we hop on some more gravel roads and head over to another single track trail and then return back to where we started. About a 50 mile ride when done. It's not a big deal and I'm not expecting my 1x bike (32t Chainring/11-46 cassette) to maintain road bike speeds.
And why don't you bring your bike to the trailhead with a car?
I guess if it bugs you enough you can just get a cheap mountain bike where 2x/3x is offered.
https://www.giant-bicycles.com/us/bikes-talon-29
https://www.giant-bicycles.com/us/atx-2021