Originally Posted by
GlennR
Agreed... a compact with a 11-32 or even an 11-34 should get you up 99% of the climbs.
Yep, but I wouldn’t be afraid to go even lower too if I was spending all day on Alpine climbs. Cadence can soon get dragged down uncomfortably low on steep pitches even with a compact road setup. Gravel gearing is the next step down and quite sensible for a lot of road riders to keep their cadence up around 80 rpm on those big climbs. I did a big climbing event a couple of weeks ago (4000 m gain in 100 miles) with a compact 11-34. It was okay, but some of the pitches were up at 25% and I was struggling to turn the cranks over. Strong guys on higher gearing were forced to walk. But that’s fairly extreme. 11-34 on a 10% slope is just fine and I rarely use it on my local hills.