RockiesDad

I've been practicing some of these skills on easy single track trails. Fun as heck...

https://gravelcyclist.com/videos/hin...andre-perrett/

chas58

I love doing that, especially with a fat front tire. Flow trails are incredibly fast and the bike climbs like a mountain goat. There's no comparison between climbing on a slack 30 lb mountain bike and a 16-pound gravel bike. If the trail doesn't require suspension I'm all over it with my gravel bike.

caloso

I recently did some single track in Tahoe with my son. I had to take the downs easier, but I was flying past him on the climbs!

trainsktg

This is a timely post. I’m going to put some of this into practice tomorrow.

Keith

mstateglfr 

I use my gravel bike when I ride the river bottom single track with my kids. It's relatively smooth and very twisty. The geometry works great for that style of riding and speed. Because of how twisty and tight between trees the routes are, I'm pretty sure I ride it faster on my gravel bike.

I have taken it on hilly and rocky singletrack, and while it gets me to the end, it isn't nearly as fun as my mtb. Each time, I really felt it the next day too.

Good thread timing- I am taking it tomorrow morning to ride some river bottom single track with my oldest.

gorillimo

Just ride and have fun! It's only a bicycle. ride it!!!......

dsaul

I come from a mountain biking background, so all of those skills are second nature to me. Most of the organized events in my area include some singletrack trails and some of it can be quite technical to ride on a drop bar bike. I'm always surprised and how unprepared some people are to ride that type of terrain, when the event description clearly described the course.

I think most people make the mistake of setting up their gravel bike to match their road bike. That setup works fine if you only ride smooth gravel roads, but it doesn't work well for riding singletrack trails where you need to be in the drops most of the time.

As a mountain biker, who already has the skills, I still found that I had to set up my bike a bit differently from my road bike, in order to feel comfortable riding technical singletrack trails. I started out by matching my road bike reach and saddle to bar drop and quickly found that it left me in the uncomfortable (and somewhat scary) position of being too low and forward in the drops. This made it very difficult to lift the front wheel and move my weight rearward for obstacles or descending.

After a bit of experimenting, I settled on raising the bars by around 20mm and shortening the stem by the same amount. It felt a little strange at first, but the difference in riding technical singletrack was huge. I was able to easily get my weight back and lift the front end for log overs and no longer felt like I was going to go over the bars on descents.