Wildwood 

A gravel bike is a compromise of what? Something between a track and downhill bike.



Not a knock on @Eric F intended at all, but too many generalities make many observations vague.

Wildwood 

Answer is just above your question = the hard trails I was riding at the time. I also had the pavement from home to offroad. Totally agree with you in soft conditions or muddy or irregular or off-camber stuff, or deeper gravel.

Maelochs

Okay ... mountain bikes with suspension are too heavy for most dirt roads .... the suspension isn't needed so it is just dead weight and it absorbs some pedaling effort ... unless you have full dual lock-out but then it is still dead weight.

Most gravel bikes come with drop bars because a lot of gravel riders like to do long rides on fairly smooth dirt roads, where multiple hand positions, including getting down and aero sometimes, are welcome.

Gravel bikes are NOT "All-Terrain" bikes ... serious long-travel MTBs would be more of that. Gravel bikes are really best for fairly smooth packed-earth roads like jeep tracks or access roads or rural roads ... they can be ridden on some mild single-track but because they lack suspension (most of them) they are a lot of work and a lot of hurt over really rough stuff.

Most gravel bikes tend to be lighter yet sturdy. Most gravel riders seem to prefer riding with a little pace, and don't want 35-pound pigs to haul around, yet need bikes which can stand the extra vibration. The wider wheels and tires help mute the vibration and also add to the weight, but a heavy frame on top of that would be a handicap.

As mentioned, most have rear rack mounts because gravel roads tend not to be dotted with convenience stores and calling for an Uber is not usually an option, so riders need to bring food, drink, maybe weather gear, and enough tubes or plugs, and spares, to get back to civilization.

There are gravel bikes with front shocks, usually low-travel, to suck up ruts and stuff but usually not a lot of travel because low weight is a virtue, and the bikes aren't meant for serious single-track.

"Gravel bike" is not a bad marketing term ... and the idea that bike manufacturers chose it because of some innate attractiveness of the term "gravel" seems a bit off---I cannot recall ads for gravel cars, gravel clothes, gravel hair care or gravel household cleaning products. I think the term "dirt bike" was already taken by the moto brigade, as was "trail bike," and "jeep-track/fire-road bike" is cumbersome, partially copyrighted, and some folks might not know what a "fire road" is.

Humorously, a recumbent or a trike would do fine on gravel, unless the route featured a lot of hills. I have seen off-road trikes (even posted a picture here once) so our resident recumbent expert could avail himself of one and test it out.

retswerb

And if they had been called all terrain bikes or multi sport bikes you would be calling those terms marketing gimmicks instead. Plus, as Maelochs points out, it's not as though "gravel" is a magical term that had marketing cachet before being applied to bikes in this way.

Trakhak

Interesting topic, how new bike types/categories acquire their names. In this case, the phrase "all-terrain bikes" is three syllables, "multi-sport bikes" four syllables, and "gravel bikes" two syllables. For phrases that are used frequently, shorter ones tend to squeeze out longer ones.

Also, "gravel" is a more evocative descriptor than the weakly abstract phrases "all terrain" and "multi sport."

My guess is that when the first examples of this class of bikes were being designed and so were being discussed daily in design departments, people just found themselves defaulting to "gravel," simply because the alternatives were more cumbersome.

dsaul

Haven't we done this thread enough times?

Maelochs

I say we all need to contribute because .... It is a query Rydabent has never posted before. We need to support his explorative foray into new topics and ideas.

big john

It's weird to get hung up on the name or say a category should be called something else. Or say a category doesn't really exist. Or say some bike from decades ago is better than what is currently offered. Or blame the industry for trying to sell their products.

I don't know who coined the term "gravel bike" but what it means to me is a bike that is capable of riding reasonably well on pavement and reasonably well on dirt roads.
Can you ride a vintage road bike this way? Of course. You can also ride any mtb this way. In my opinion, however, flat bars suck on the road and a mountain bike like the one I have gives up a lot to a light gravel bike on smooth climbs.

I know a group of friends who have modern gravel bikes, as well as road bikes, etc. I have gone with them on my mtb and had a blast but they have an advantage on climbs and especially on the road.

My friend has a Rocky with 650x45 tires.

Another has a Franco. Lightweight, with 700x38 tires. A lot of people run 38s.

An easy road.

ofajen

The “gravel” type bike is very popular in our town. It’s a cycling town with plenty of infrastructure for cycling on roads and an increasingly connected and extensive system of paved and mostly unpaved trails.

An old MTB or hybrid works well for more casual cyclists. For more athletic cyclists, the “gravel” type of bike is well suited to take them all over, whether commuting or having fun and exercise. It’s the kind of bike I wish had been available thirty years ago when our trail system was just really getting under way.

It’s also a bit of a misnomer in many cases. Gravel comes from streams. Around here, what everyone calls “gravel” roads are actually unpaved roads covered with crushed stone. This is typically limestone that was quarried locally and crushed to size. But no one calls them crushed stone roads. All our unpaved trails are also covered with crushed stone.

Otto

Jeff Neese

I tend to agree that gravel is just marketing, although I wouldn't call it a gimmick as much as it is a "fad". It's selling an image that people think "Boy, I could go just about anywhere on that bike! Think of all the adventures I'll have." And then many of them end up riding mostly on pavement anyway. But they could if they wanted to, dammit!

Most of the riding that my wife and I do are on hardpack dirt roads with a fair amount of loose gravel in spots - the exact type of riding that "gravel bikes" are supposed to be good at it. I sometimes ride my Trek 750 (hybrid) with drop bars and fat tires, and other times I'll use the Trek 930 full-rigid mountain bike with flat bars, and I have a couple different wheelsets that work just fine on that bike. The bike and the tires I choose is usually depending on the last time the road was graded. If it's been a while but hasn't rained, those roads can become pretty packed down and smooth. Other times, not so much. When it's freshly graded the limestone gravel gets stirred up and loose and it's just not fun no matter what bike you ride.

I've always felt that it was mostly about the tires, whether you prefer drops or flat bars or any other differences.

wolfchild

And yet plenty of people go bikepacking and gravel riding on hardtails. A suspension fork weighs less than all the bags, racks and all the other equipment... My rigid steel fork with a front rack and a full fender which I have on my MTBs weighs more than a suspension fork.

tomato coupe

I think we can all agree that everyone would be happier if we quit using the term “gravel”, and adopted “rutabaga” instead.

drlogik 

Rydabent,

You raise a good question. I'm 64 and I've seen the bike industry go through many ups and downs, and not always matching the economy. The fly fishing industry has done the same and I'm an avid fly fisherman also.

My only answer is these industries need to pump more new blood into the industry to keep it vibrant and profitable. That's not just new products, but "different" products also. Some of them are innovative, some aren't. The industry also needs new blood in the form of new customers. Sometimes they repackage an old product or an old concept and give it a new name to generate sales.

I think "Gravel Bikes" fall into that last category, although I would not try to defend that they are strictly a re-incarnation of the Cyclocross bike. They clearly aren't. They are more of a cross between a mountain bike and a cyclocross bike in my opinion. Quite frankly I think they were a brilliant piece of marketing.

Something that is equally brilliant in its marketing are "Air Fryers". By any other name they are a convection oven.

In fly fishing, fiberglass rods have made a big comeback. They had all but gone the way of the Dodo Bird 40 years ago, yet, now they are the new trendy and fashionable rod to carry to the stream. They and any other rod that can claim it's the lightest, or the strongest, have the best "feel", or the best for "X" type of fly fishing, that you just gotta have or you'll feel that you are at a disadvantage. Fiberglass fall into that last category in my opinion. Fly rods, at least the boron models don't have the same feel as an old fiberglass rod, so to cover their bases I think a few companies re-introduced fiberglass rods to fill that void.

jackb

I have a 2018 Trek Domane and a 2022 Trek Checkpoint. The former is an endurance bike with 30mm tires, the latter a gravel bike with 40mm tires. The ride is a bit softer on the Checkpoint with the wider tires run at lower pressure. Aside from that difference, I cannot tel the difference between the two bikes in my overall riding, which is mixed street and gravel road riding, but mainly road. They have different frame but geometries but I can feel no difference. Both bikes are comfortable. At least for me, the difference is in the tires.

cyccommute 

While a mountain bike might give up something on smooth climbs, they give up a lot less when the climbs get rough. Even more importantly, they give up nothing when going the other way…smooth or not. Gravel bikes really suffer in rock gardens and on washboards. I’ve watch people on their gravel bikes gingerly pick their way through rough rock patches that my mountain bike blew through. I’ve also caught gravel bikes in less than 4 miles that have a 20 minute head start on me on a fast but very washboarded road.

Climbing is a chore but downhills are a joy. I’d rather carry the weight of suspension to the top of a hill than endure a brake dragging downhill.

burnthesheep

As others point out it depends on the road or trail. Lots of east coast gravel you can do on an endurance road frame with 30mm tires or a cyclocross bike. Lots of western gravel needs a lot more tire and slacker geometry.

The reason a mtb isn’t great for lots of gravel is the weight and really upright posture of your gravel route has lots of higher speed non technical terrain.

A guy I ride a group gravel ride with on “easy” gravel regrets he bought a mtb for the task. It works fine, but is way too much bike for the terrain. In other words, slower.

If you don’t mind that, fine. Also mtb gearing might be a bit awkward for faster gravel riding.

big john

terrymorse 

In my experience, a mountain bike doesn't give up much at all on long paved climbs. A little extra weight, a little more rolling resistance.

I did the White Mountain paved road climb on a road bike, then on a mountain bike (cheap hardtail with tires pumped hard). The mountain bike climb took 10 extra minutes.

big john

Yes, obviously the terrain is a big factor. One ride I did with that group starts on pavement with some climbing and then does a lot of dirt road climbing. Not a lot of technical riding but some loose stuff. I think it was 45ish miles with over 6K feet of climbing. Perfect for a lightweight bike.

Riding in the hills near home I was passed by a young guy on a gravel bike. When the 2 mile descent with rocks, ruts, and sand came I caught and passed him back easily on my enduro type bike.

LarrySellerz

Youre not wrong rydabent, gravel bikes are just road bikes with wide knobby tires, or fancy mountain bikes with drop bars and skinnier tires. They exist so road bikers can go fast on dirt roads and to n+1 mountain bikers who dislike road bikes

just look at most gravel races, they draft and ride in a pack like roadies lmao

cyccommute 

I don’t disagree. I’ve done a lot of bikepacking in Colorado’s mountains that include a fair amount of pavement. Even with knobby tires, I can move along at a good enough clip. I wouldn’t want to try some of the off-road stuff on a gravel bike, however.

tomato coupe

What makes that funny?

big john

Unbound Gravel, the 200 mile, mostly dirt race, has been won on bikes sold as road bikes but the last 2 were won on "gravel" bikes. These are top pros and they finish the 200 miles in 10-12 hours, depending on how much mud, etc.

It can turn into a TT so many riders were using clip-on aero bars but this year those bars have been banned from major events.

Of course this has little to do with a fat old man like me or probably most of the readers of this thread.

Eric F 

For me, a gravel bike going slower than a MTB on challenging terrain is fun because it’s still demanding of good skills. A MTB going slower on pavement because it doesn’t roll efficiently isn’t much fun at all.

tcs

Back in the 27" and 26x1 3/8" days, your road bike was your gravel bike was your touring bike. Rough Stuff Fellowship rider on the way to Everest base camp, 1979:



It was your mountain bike and adventure bike and bikepacking bike, too. Ian Hibell on the way to Machu Picchu:



I kinda sat out bike buying during the decades when road bikes barely had clearance under the fork and chainstays for 23mm tires. Others thought that was the ultimate expression of cycles, and that's cool, too.



Here's my imponderable: why are my riding buddies, who have spent decades carping about chip seal, now gravel aficionados?