Years ago Sky King had a Zimbale Front Rack Top Bag. (Some may recall we were the North American Distributor for Zimbale – a company in So. Korea.) This small canvas bag was an excellent size for carrying small items on day trips or for running errands round town. The bag was just starting to get traction when Zimbale ceased production. Fast forward a few years and after a great conversation with Gary Hubbert, owner of Lone Peak Packs and Bags, he came up with this one. We have been really pleased. With our suggestions, this bag’s velcro attachments are plenty long and keep the bag securely attached to the front rack. In addition the slip over the back rail sleeve is nice and snug, plus the perfect size for using as a handle when off the bike.
Attaches Securely to the rack
Finally the depth and solid padding allow plenty of room to carry the rain jacket, phone, wallet and other small items.
Carry the small stuff
Water proof zipper and high quality fabric and finish couldn’t be better. 8″(20cm) long; 4 3/4″(12cm) wide; 6″(15cm) tall, the bags works well on any style of small front rack – Nitto, Velo Orange, Soma and others (see more info on the store website)
On a map the roads show as thin red lines forming a network resembling blood vessels and capillaries. Or the tributaries to a river. Between Swan Falls Dam and Celebration Park on the south side of the river there is a gap with no red lines. Since a few of the dozen or so other riders here have ridden this route before we know there is a way through.
Crossing over Swan Falls Dam we head upriver a few hundred yards before taking a sharp right hand turn to reverse direction and begin climbing. The surface is generally gravel and/or sand but on a few of the steeper sections larger boulders are exposed and overlain with other, melon sized boulders. These sections most of us walk while pushing the bikes. Then the road smooths out and descends again toward the river. It is nice, fast double track here.
The road-less gap on the map is an area where the canyon walls slope rapidly down to the river. The trail winds up and down and through vehicle sized boulders and the trees and brush that grow along the river. Here everyone pushes and carries their bikes. Then the trail drops steeply back down to the river and ties back into a gravel road which we follow all the way to Guffey Bridge which crosses the river to Celebration State Park. We have ridden about 12 miles at this point. The trail on the north side of the river from Celebration Park back to the dam is mostly level with some sections of deep, loose sand and some rocky sections. Riders with 3″ wide or wider tires should be able to ride everything without much trouble.
29+ = 3″ tires….31’r!26+ Surly Troll with Rabbit Hole rims and 3″ tires.The blood. Sky King came into this rock hard with the left tip of her bars and went over the slope by her left foot. She was holding onto a piece of sagebrush to keep from falling into the river, like a cartoon character.
This loop is just about 25 miles and it is less than an hour’s drive from Boise so it makes an easy day trip. We stopped often to tour through the old stone buildings and to look at petroglyphs. The visitor center at Celebration Park is a resource to learn about the geology and history of this country and is worth a stop.
Almost everybody- or more precisely; everybody- I have spoken to about it thinks the Busch+Müller Luxos U head light is klunky and ugly. I’m not the one to give an opinion on headlight aesthetics though since I still use the Schmidt E6 light on my commuter bike. But I can say that the Luxos U is heavy, and mounting it anyplace but on the fork crown using the provided fork crown mounting bracket is a bit of a challenge. If it’s not tightened securely it has a tendency to slowly droop so that the lighted patch on the road ahead becomes shorter and shorter. I recently upgraded to this light on my touring machine and went through a couple of iterations before I came up with what I think will be a permanent mounting solution.
I have caliper side pull brakes on my bike and I also use a front bag mounted on top of a Nitto M-18 rack, and either one of those conditions, by itself, would preclude mounting the light on the fork crown. (Note: we do have mounts that will attach behind a caliper brake, but they are not recommended for this light) What to do? Nitto makes a light mount which consists of an eyebolt which slips over the end of one of the M-18 rack stays and a clever little scalloped washer which clamps down on the stay for a really solid attachment. There were two problems with using the actual light mounting bracket that the Nitto lamp holder uses though: 1) The Luxos U is too big to be mounted on the bracket without either being too far outboard or being pushed out of whack by the rack stay. 2) Where the light is meant to mount, the bracket is a single thickness of metal, rather that a U or a fork shape. Simply bolting the light to a flat peice of metal doesn’t seem to be a strong enough connection to keep the light from slipping.
The Nitto Lamp Holder for Nitto M-18
I had the idea to thread the 6mm end of a Sheldon Fender Nut onto the bolt of the Nitto Lamp Mount in place of the stock bracket and then bolt the light onto the 5mm end of the nut. While this was a clean and sort of elegant solution, I couldn’t clamp the bolt tight enough to keep the light from drooping, and when the light rotated down it also tended to loosen the clamping bolt, so eventually the whole thing was just sort of dangling there, with the light pointing straight down at the ground.
This is actually the Gilles Berthoud version of the Sheldon Fender Nut screwed onto the base of the Nitto Lamp Holder.Mounted on the Fender Nut.
I wish I could take credit for the next idea, but it actually was presented by a friend of mine. The Gino Light Mount is designed to be bolted onto a threaded hole somewhere on the bike’s fork or onto a threaded mount brazed onto a rack. It is a short (22mm) cylinder with a diameter of 26mm, which is the diameter of a standard road handlebar. Any light with a handlebar mount can then be mounted on the Gino mount. Drilling the mounting hole of the Gino Light Mount out a little bit and then using a tap to create some threads, I was able to screw it onto the bolt of the Nitto Lamp Holder in place of the stock bracket. Now I had a place to mount the light which I could position anywhere along the length of the rack stay. I just needed a mount designed for a handlebar which would work with the Luxos U. As it turns out, the German company Schmidt makes just the thing. The way the metal band of the Schmidt mount is cinched onto the handlebar, or Gino Light Mount in this case, makes it virtually impossible for it to slip. And the fork in the bracket sandwiches the mounting tab on the light and a through bolt clamps the whole thing together.
Threaded Gino Light MountThe Schmidt handlebar light mount.The Gino Light Mount threaded onto the base of the Nitto Lamp Holder.This shows the metal band clamp used by the Schmidt light mount.For this application, putting the Schmidt light mount on the bottom of the Gino mount places the light where I want it.
So far this has been a rock solid mounting solution and the light is in a good position to light the road with only minimal shadow from the front tire. The downside is that it took parts of three different mounts to cobble it together. Getting the light in the right position and aligned the way I wanted it was pretty fiddly too. You might be wondering if it all was worth the effort. The Luxos U light basically incorporates every technology known to one of the best dynamo light manufacturers in the world. It is not simple and it is not inexpensive. Another post could and should be devoted to the features, advantages and benefits of this light. I just haven’t spent enough time with this light to even do it justice in a review. Giving it a thorough testing, which will require planning some more rides in darkness, is something I look forward to.
Wednesday is Surly Bikes’ latest iteration of the fatbike. Starting with the Pugsley and the Moonlander bikes, then bringing out the Ice Cream Truck a few years later- in the meantime inventing the 29+ standard with the Krampus and ECR bikes- Surly appears to be looking for the sweet spot in the crowded fatbike market. The fact that every bike maker now has a fatbike in the line means that there are new standards for components such as hubs and bottom brackets that are specific to the unique requirements of fatbikes, and the Wednesday takes advantage of the resultant economies of scale. There’s Fat and There’s Fat
The Wednesday comes stock with Surly’s 80mm wide My Other Brother Darryl rims which will fit either the stock 3.8″ tires or up to 4.6″ tires. If swapping to the bigger tires all that needs to be done is to slide the rear wheel back in the horizontal dropout for clearance; the fork is wide enough for the fatter tires. Rather than offsetting the rear triangle and wheel in order to use a traditional 135mm rear hub, à la the Pugsley, the Wednesday uses a 170-177 rear spacing, depending on what type of axle is being used; 10mm or 12mm. The front fork uses a 150 x 15mm thru axle. The bike will work well with a 100mm suspension for as well.
80mm rims for 3.8-4.8 tires.
Frame Considerations
The head tube on this bike is over-sized at 44mm. I guess this is from the mountain bike industry because many suspension forks now come with tapered steer tubes and in order to retrofit a fatbike with a suspension fork, a bigger head tube is needed. Still, suspension on a bike with 4 to 5″ wide tires? Seems redundant and unnecessary. Using a Truvativ (SRAM) double chain ring lets Surly use a “standard” 100mm bottom bracket shell which still allows moving the chain out far enough to clear the big fat tires.
The Wednesday uses a 44mm head tube.100mm bottom bracket shell.The Wednesday and the Ice Cream Truck both get a 30.9mm seat post.Sram X5 rear mech.Sram X5 shifter podsHayes MX Comp brakes front and rear with 160mm rotors.This is the port for an internally routed dropper seat post.Plenty of mounts for bottles, racks, Salsa Anything Cages, etc.
The Surly catalog says the “Wednesday sits in the middle of our ride-anywhere Pugsley and the modern trail geometry of the Ice Cream Truck”. I’m not sure what that means relative to ride characteristics, but the Wednesday and the Ice Cream Truck both have shorter seat tubes and longer effective top tubes as well as longer overall wheelbase for a given size than either the Pugsley or the Moonlander bikes. Apparently, also according to the Surly catalog, the ride of the Wednesday is similar to that of the Krampus, their 29+ bike.
A customer needed a new front wheel for the new Straggler fork on his Cross Check. He wanted a disc brake on front for single track riding and the Straggler fork is very close to the Cross Check fork geometry-wise. I built up the wheel using a Surly Ultra New hub and the DT Swiss E512 rim which at 30mm wide is a full 11mm wider than the DT Swiss R450 rim on the wheel he was replacing. A significant width difference!
Why did I use such a wide rim? For a couple of reasons. The same tire, in this case a 700 x 35 Continental Cyclocross Speed, on a wider rim will have a wider contact patch than when mounted on a narrower rim and this means more traction. The tire will also have a cross section which will be a little more “square” and less balloon like. What this means, in theory, is that the tire will have less tendency to roll sideways when the wheel is angled into a turn and the handling should be more firm and confidence inspiring with no squirming. This idea is visually represented in the following two pictures:
Wide rims provide optimal grip and allow a thinner carcass combined with increased traction and tracking ability. Photo: syntaceusa.comNarrow rims provide little guidance for the tyre. The tyre “folds” and can even jump out of the rim. Photo: syntaceusa.com
When it was done, we gained about 4mm in width to the inflated tire, a little over 1%. While that doesn’t sound like a significant increase it should stiffen up the sidewalls of this tire and contribute to better handling and cornering. The combination of a little bit of extra width in the tire and a deeper rim profile make the wheel and tire look quite a bit bigger then the original setup on this bike. Neither a Cross Check nor a Straggler now. Monster Crossler?
The tire on the top is on the 19mm rim and the one on the bottom is on a 30mm wide rim.
B. suggested a mid-week overnight trip on the Bikes to Atlanta, ID. I was keen to go and was delighted when my secretary reported I had no pressing obligations on the proposed days.
We drove the 20 mikes to Mack’s Creek Campground on the shores of Lucky Peak Reservoir (now so low it is basically the Boise River and the boat ramps are far from the water) The next day we left the truck and rode to Atlanta.An early-ish start. We have 65 miles to go today but it is “flat as a pancake” says B….”I put my map on the table and it was flat!?” The trees are Mack’s Creek.Twin Springs is the first stop. There is a bar and a store with a few supplies but no restaurant.photo courtesy Bryan WilkinsThe road to Atlanta follows the North Fork and then the Middle Fork of the Boise River so there is plenty of water along the way.The Beaver Lodge is open after having been leased to a mining company for several years. They were closed for the evening when we got there and we were standing in the gathering gloom and light rain (B. also insisted it was not going to rain on this ride) when the owner opened the door and asked us if we needed anything! He turned on the lights and the jukebox, fired up the grill and produced Stone Arrogant Bastard ale, one of my favorites. This trip just got a whole lot better.Russ also told us where to camp. There are hot pools in the river and there is an actual developed hot springs about a quarter of a mile from here. We poked around in the dark and finally found it. This trip just got even better!I took this picture as we were breaking camp. B. has been ready to go for at least a half hour and my stuff is still strewn about. I am consistently the slowest person ever to get ready in the morning.
The next few photos are of some of the hunting camps that are set up along side the road. Hunting season opened on Monday of this week and it looks as though these camps were set up several days or weeks before. We shared our spot in Atlanta with a party of 35 people who were there for the next two weeks. I’m sure they had as much difficulty understanding our enjoyment of our past time as I did of theirs.
Between Twin Springs and Atlanta the gravel road is graded almost to the consistency of blacktop. B. felt the need to flag down the grader operator and congratulate him.
Indeed, Sky King has a new love. I happen to be quite spoiled and spend many happy hours on my ” Excellent Creative Riding” machine also known as the “Extremely Cool Ride” and for those of you who don’t know me, just call it my Surly ECR.
Surly ECR “Extremely Cool Ride” now with Maxxis 29+
We ventured out in August for a S24O to Crutcher Crossing. The road/trail/path is two track, dirt and rock. The first 7 miles pass through a Juniper forest. Juniper’s are invasive species in the Owyhee Mountains and this section is currently being logged. Given that, the road had impressive ruts, especially on hilly corners. We hadn’t traveled far and as I negotiated a rutted corner my tires slipped out and boom, on the ground I go. While I don’t consider myself the most technical descender – especially on a loaded bike – I should have negotiated the corner just fine. Back on the bike, half mile down the road and boom, slipped out again. After a few choice words I take a serious look at my tires – the original Surly Knard 29+3 27tpi. Yep, the side edge tread is pretty much worn to zilch – oops.
I’ve never had a big complaint with the Surly Knard tires. Some of my riding buddies have commented on the lack of a grippy edge but I never mind hopping off and walking some of the steep. The rest of the trip I certainly paid attention and took a less aggressive approach to the rest of the rutted corners.
Did I mention I was spoiled, oh yeah, I did. A few days after the trip the Bike Hermit surprised me with a set of Maxxis Chronicles. This is a relatively new 29+3 so I had some trepidation. Ha, silly girl. The tread is perfect for a wide variety of terrain. I have the 120 TPI casing and the tire is lighter than my Surly Knards. The roll on pavement is excellent. On our very technical ride to Pipeline crossing, in the Owyhee desert the tires, hands down, out performed the Knards. The side grip is great. I didn’t have any slips, any spin outs or questionable traction issues. The Excellent Cool Ride bounced and jostled along happily – almost as if the person riding had advance to “pro” status. Look out Bike Hermit!
Technically a road…
(Logan, over at bikepacking.com has a detailed review of the Maxxis Chronicle)
Not to be confused with The Stars and The Watercarriers.
One particular overnight desert bikepacking trip in the desert of southern Idaho had the potential for a little extra discomfort. We had planned on being able to get water out of the river at the end of the ride, but the river gurgled along several hundred feet below us at the bottom of the vertical gap it is cutting through this volcanic plateau.
That’s an 18″ gas pipeline crossing the ditch down there and the river is maybe 450′ below the line.
We took a quick inventory of water we had on board and decided we wouldn’t die but that we would need to be careful. Ultimately we found a way down to the water by hiking a couple miles downstream. I was prompted to write this post about some ways to carry water on the bike.
-First is the good old hydration pack- 70 or 100 ounces (2 or 3 liters) carried on the rider’s back. Some people complain about the discomfort of carrying a back pack in hot weather, but to me it is worth it. Especially since you can stuff other things into the pack besides the water bladder.
-Standard water bottles fit in standard bottle cages which bolt to the bike carry 22 or 24 ounces (around .7 liter each) If the forks on the bike have bottle bosses you can carry one or two more bottles there. You can add additional mounts for standard cages, either on the fork or one of the bicycle main tubes, by using the Elite VIP Bottlecage Clips.
-The Revelate Designs Mountain Feedbag works well for carrying too and the new designs holds a 32 ounce nalgene.
Wendell shows off his crossing skills and a great shot of his Revelate Mt. Feedbags
-Topeak make the Modula bottle cage which mounts to the two standard bolt holes and is designed to carry the large plastic 1 to 1.5 liter bottles sold at most convenience stores.
–Velo Orange Mojave bottle cage with 32 ounce (.95 liter) Nalgene bottle or 40 ounce (1.2 liter) Klean Kanteen. These bolt onto the standard two bolt mounts on most bikes or, even better, with three bolts using the mounts now found on some bikepacking bike forks and frames. Combine one of the VIP Bottlecage Clips with the two bosses on the bike for extra security.
Sky King rolls with the VO Mojave cage and 32oz. Nalgene on the down tube.
-In locales without services but with access to surface water you will need a water filter or purifier. We use the Camelbak All Clear water bottle which incorporates an ultraviolet light in the cap which and will kill all the bugs in .75 liters of water (25 ounces) in 60 seconds. A mechanical filter like the Platypus GravityWorks is potentially a little bit faster.
-If there will be no access to surface water and no services then carry an additional 4 or 6 liters (135 or 203 ounces) in the MSR Dromedary bladder.
Every trip and every day will have different requirements for how much water needs to be carried. These are just a few ideas to think about. Let me know what I missed in the comments.
The Surly Junk Strap is essentially a super long (48″) nylon toe clip strap. Toe clip straps are those straps which wrap around the rear edge of a pedal, through the eye of the toe clip and are cinched down to hold the rider’s foot in place. Not too many people use this type of pedal system anymore but the design made it easy to adjust the straps while riding and it was very secure. The same simplicity and strength makes these almost indispensable for bike touring and bikepacking.
