Monthly Archives: August 2011

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Trying out a 29er

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29ers have been around for a while now, but until this week I’ve never ridden one on a trail before. If you don’t know, a 29er has 29 inch wheels as opposed to a normal mountain-bike which has 26 inch wheels; also, that maybe a sign that this post will be of little interest to you. With larger wheels, they are supposed to be easier to roll over bumps &, once you get those big wheels rolling, easier to keep moving with the extra rotational inertia. With my bike still waiting for a part to turn up to get it back to a rideable state, Megan has generously let me use her bike a bit to enable a little riding during the start of my final three weeks in Canmore. She & Alex have both now got shiny new 29ers recently – I have in fact ridden Megan’s a couple of times, but as there was this much snow in the Canmore Winter Meltdown Triathlon it hardly counts as trail-riding.

The first thing I noticed riding through town to the G8 was that the tires were hard & fast – pumped up for the recent 24 Hours of Adrenalin event in town. Tire choice & pressure make a big difference to a ride & while I love the Crossmark on the rear, it never gives me much confidence on the front. I prefer something a bit chunkier with enough tread on the side to save me from washing the front wheel out too often. Near the start of the G8 is a decent climb that I only conquered a few times last year on my bike – it’s steep enough that the biggest flaw in my bike’s geometry tends to show itself & the front wheel becomes very difficult to keep on the ground. The 29er got up this easily, although with the bigger wheels I was spinning the granny-ring a bit earlier than normal to keep them turning at slow speed. This was a pleasing climb, but pretty much what I expected. With the big wheels requiring an easier gear, it was nice to make my way up the rest of the climb feeling that I wasn’t spinning excessively (the reason I prefer the middle-ring on 26″).

So having shown that the larger wheels made the more difficult climbs easier, it was time to see how they would go on faster undulating & then downhill terrain. Generally, the roots & rocks were absorbed better – but perhaps due to the setup, not markedly so. I did also notice that I would repeatedly have the rear tire skidding a little in the strangest places – perhaps better brakes & the hard tire a bit, but not completely. It was hard to keep the control I wanted with that wheel not gripping. Also, through the twisty parts of the trail the large wheel is not nearly as nimble & agile – but when you can just hit things & roll over them, it doesn’t matter so much. As suspected, I didn’t have much confidence in the grip of the tires to rail the corners as I normally would.

On the downhill, there was a strange disconnect from the trail – a little hard to describe, but I just didn’t feel the trail as much. It’s noticeably less work, less rewarding & less fun. The bike would also pretty much stay planted on the trail – which can be good & bad, but in this instance I was really missing not popping off the odd root or rock. So after that first ride, the least enjoyable part (uphill) was easier – but the most enjoyable part of the ride was less fun. Not completely sold yet, but it sure was nice having a shiny new bike to ride.

I let a bit of air out of the tires yesterday for a little spin around the Nordic Center. This improved things a bit, but I still had that same problem of the rear wheel not gripping the surface properly. Consequently, on a couple of chutes that I usually ride at speed & with ease I was just past the edge of control & mildly alarmed. Good to be out on the bike on another glorious Canmore day, so I can’t be too picky – especially as I won’t be buying another bike for a while yet.

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Back to Canmore – Roadtrip Complete

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To finish off the three months of driving I decided to drive all the way back from Vancouver to Canmore in the middle of the long weekend. The logic there being that Jasper would be a zoo on a sunny holiday weekend & I’d be better off checking it out a little later when there were less people around.

So Saturday morning I set off on a wonderfully sunny drive east across BC. The traffic was pretty good & BC was beautifully forested – it really is a large province when you drive across the bottom in one day. After Kamloops I was back on roads I’d driven before & there was a half-hour wait near Shuswap – but I had the Kindle out so I wasn’t too fussed. Over Rogers Pass & coming into Golden there was an ominous big cloud of black smoke billowing into the sky. I was near the front of a queue for almost an hour as some poor family watched their RV incinerate. The rest of the drive was uneventful & I was soon driving below familiar peaks – just they had a lot less snow (almost none) on them than I remember. It was a little odd getting closer to Canmore – being away for three months & doing so many other things must have lessened the blow of leaving such a great place as I wasn’t too concerned that I’ll be gone in three weeks.

So that was it really, just under 22000 km, 87 days, 13 states, two provinces, 45 MTB rides totalling a thousand kilometres, at least 15 National Parks & 5 National Monuments, only 2600 photos & 435 gallons of gas. What a great trip! We were blessed by the weather – notably it never got really hot, as it did the last time I visited Utah, Nevada, Arizona & California in 2009.  Highlights are hard to list as there were so many. But I’ll try anyway:

A separate list for the riding highlights, which is even harder as I rode so much quality singletrack.

That’s that – thanks again Valerie for coming along for the ride & sharing the experience (& financing a lot of it too!).  I’m in Canmore until mid-August before flying back to London to catch the last of the English summer.  Mum’s coming across to England for the last few months of the year, so it’ll be great to see her & plenty of other friends & family in the UK.  From then on, I only have vague ideas as to what I’m going to do with myself… But riding better figure in there somehow.