Originally Posted by
pdlamb
What's the roughest road you'd consider riding on a gravel bike before you go to a mountain bike or fat bike? Bushwhacking, single track, double track, old road that's not maintained, gravel road that sees a road grader every election year, rail-trail, or something else?
The best(worst?) part about this whole gravel bike phenomenon is that you'll find bikes designed for every one of those situations. It's more nuanced and open-ended than even the whole mountain bike xc, trail, enduro, downhill, dj, etc variants. And don't get us started on comparing geometries.
Some gravel bikes are speckled with mounts so you can load up with bags and disappear up the Colorado Trail for a month (i.e. the Canyon Grizl). Some gravel bikes are essentially a pro-level road racer with big tires (Aspero, I'm looking at you). Some bikes try to do it all (Specialized Diverge maybe?).
One way to get a feel for what a particular bike's intentions are is to look at its marketing materials. Picking on Canyon for a sec, the
Grail video shows a man reaching the end of pavement, shrugs and lets some air out of his tires and happily forges ahead on the dirt road in front of him. The
Grizl video has bags, single-track, hike-a-bike, and camping. Could you go bikepacking through the woods on a Grail?
Of course. Is it
meant to? Eh, probably better suited for the roadier side of the spectrum. But nobody's gonna stop you, either. You can also get a notion of its intended purpose by the tires specc'd. The Grizl comes with
45mm Ramblers --dern near a full on mtb tire. The Grail has the
Schwalbe G-One R in 40mm --a gravel race tire. For what it's worth, I have plenty of pavement between me and dirt roads/trails, so I chose something roadier with
38mm GravelKing SS tires (it does fit 50mm rubber if I wanna push its limits on rockier, more mtb-ier terrain). --And I have a "proper" mountain bike for the occasions I purposely head for technical single track. That's what works for
me. May not be what you're looking for.
You have to do some soul-searching to know what kind of riding
you prefer: where and how you'll want to ride it, how the new bike fits in your current lineup, and try to narrow it down from there. One way to think about it is a 'gravel' bike is kinda a modern 'anywhere' bike. --But you have to define your own 'anywhere.'