chas58

As it should be!

gorillimo

Yes, it makes me ride to what it suits it. I’m OK with that. The trail in the pic is my favorite ride. It does well on it. Can’t keep up with the local club racing pack on the road either!

walnutz

Will continue the pile-on here. Sold my full squish MTB and haven’t looked back. Was recently riding with a friend who marveled as I sped through a tight, tree-lined area with my narrow bars.
there’s probably some extreme mtb riding I’m missing out on, but I was never doing that in the first place.

unterhausen

Lots of current gravel bikes are what used to be called drop bar mountain bikes. If you had shown me your bike 5 years ago, that's what I would have called it. If you are riding rock gardens like the one in your picture, I would keep an eye on the fork and head tube welds.

walnutz

True, and thanks. Not sure if you can tell in the photo, but there the downtube-headtube connection is fortified with extra metal (pardon my lack of technical vocabulary!). Also I run super low pressure, so i think that helps with impact absorption. Noted nonetheless.

pbass

I ride my steel gravel bikes through rock gardens like that almost every ride. But I'm really carefully picking my way through (I rode nothing but rigid MTB for a number of years and it really taught me how to pick a line). I'd be more concerned with a carbon frame but I suppose a steel frame could get compromised as he describes.

unterhausen

I'm only worried about fatigue. I think carbon would have very different problems with rock gardens.

walnutz

Cool, thanks.

pbechard

Do it all the time. It's not as forgiving as the MTB in the more technical sections, but still works.

CargoDane

I ride my omnium (cargo bike) on single track once in a while. Not fast at all, and some switchbacks are impossible without getting off the bike and liftint it to turn it aroun. The same is true of goig over rocks or "humps": the longer length of the bike can get you "hung up". In other words: It's not elegant at all, not fast at all, but so much fun. I wouldn't hesitate doing it on a gravel bike even if it's not as objectively fast as a MTB or whatever.

gus6464

Sure. Not much fun though.

CargoDane

It is fun. Doing something on or in an a completely inappropriate vehicle is always fun - if for nothing else than the sheer ridiculousness of it.
Going fast on a lawn mover would also be fun, even if it is not an appropriate vehicle to go fast. It is fun because it is ridiculous.

chas58

Exactly. I had a friend with a spec Miata - after race season we would crank up the coil overs to max height and go run the "double track" through the woods on a fully prepped race car. It was ridiculous fun! Same with the gravel bike. If you can do it without crashing or braking something - its all good.

CargoDane

To be fair to him, I am pretty sure he meant taking my bike (an omnium cargo bike) on single-track was "not much fun". It is, though, despite the hardships. It's like claiming that cyclecross is no fun because a fat bike would be better in the mud, or just a wide-tyred normal MTB.

That said, I think that if I did get another bike in the coming five years or so, it would most definitely be a gravel bike and not an MTB. It is simply a better and more rounded compromise to me = a much more useable bike than either a road bike or a mountain bike.

Edit: Someone has a signature that says something like "A gravel bike is a road bike that doesn't suck". I think that sums it up very nicely.

gus6464

I have done endurance cross country races on a gravel bike because why not I guess and while the experiment was intriguing it beats you to all hell afterwards. Having to be insanely careful with line choice gets old after 10 mins. Also done XC circuit races as well and those are definitely fun on the gravel bike as circuit races are nothing more than "off-road" gravel races. Will I get rid of my XC bike for a gravel bike? No way in hell. Underbiking can be fun but it's not a long term thing. I will say though that gravel bike is probably the most versatile of the bunch because at least where I live I can race 3 displines with it.

road
gravel
cross country circuit

Although I will say cutting out road riding out of my life has been for the better. No longer have to worry about being run over by a dumbass on the side of the road. My N+1 has just become versatile because of it too.
Gravel bike
120/120 MTB
160/160 MTB

pbass

I turned 60 this year and gave up suspension years ago. And, more and more, I gravitate towards my singlespeed gravel rig on whatever terrain I hit--rocky singletrack, you-name-it. Am I fast? Hell no! But I'm having tons of fun, and I like to think it's keeping me strong and tough in my later years

pbass

I did? I said underbiking was still fun for me many years in, and getting more fun (as I lean towards underbiking even more with the ss). When will it be no longer fun? In my case, I predict never.

walnutz

An apology in the internet! What’s the world coming to?

Moisture

Whats this? Your unique unique method of sharing your discontent and disagreement with my posts without referring to me directly?

I bet you're the sort of dude that comes here to passively rant about the state of your personal relationship with your wife when things go wrong on that end.

Koyote

Cpn_Dunsel

Have done it far too much and have never found it to be fun and am instead a fan of dedicated tools for specific tasks.

My bikes have not liked it either.

Moisture

I think Youre a little bit confused with regards to your own terminology here.
typically, when I pity someone due to their views or opinions, I'll either try to tell them why I think they are wrong or simply ignore their ideas all together. I am not the one to judge and neither should you.

Comparing me to some object you might find in the sock aisle really says quite a lot about your maturity and this bull**** "pity" which you are supposedly feeling.

Don't worry, we get through this together, even if you are a fully grown man still acting like a foolish child from elementary school.

I do pray that the behavior you're exhibiting on here does not reflect on who you actually are as a human being. One can only pray. (And pity.)

Kapusta

Wow. You quoted a post from a closed thread just to drag it over to a new thread to continue the nonsense that got the first thread closed.

This current thread should answer the question you started your (now closed) thread for.

Just a suggestion: Next time try searching to see if there is not already a thread asking the exact same question you are in the past couple weeks. It does little good to have an identical ans specific topic being discussed in multiple threads.

woodcraft

I take the cx bike almost exclusively on dirt, & the mtn bike gathers cobwebs.
The main limitation is downhill traction, so can't bomb the descents and end up riding the brakes, tiring the hands. Some technical descents get walked.
Local conditions are quite steep and rocky & nice CX tubular race tires are a bit vulnerable in the sidewalls but Tufo ones do pretty well.
I like keeping the same riding position as on the road & have never cared for flat bars much.

walnutz

Fellas, drop it. Geez.