Blurred Lines

The Nordest Super Albarda. (Image courtesy of Nordest)

Big tires, slacker head tube angles, longer top tubes, shorter stems. This seems to be a trend in certain circles of the "gravel" cycling design world. 

Today I wanted to explore where I think this idea is coming from and why I think it is a design idea that is trying to fill a niche that is not being served by many brands currently. 

First of all, the "all-roads" part of "gravel bikes" is not going away, but there is an element of the gravel cycling movement that isn't about roads, necessarily, and has its roots going way back into the earlier years of mountain biking. 

Some of this has cross-over to bikepacking/adventure bikes, but I feel like what we are seeing with some of these more "mountain-bikish" drop bar rigs is not tied to touring/bike packing, but to what the style of riding was back in the late 1980's and early 1990's. A time when riding off-road was done on fully-rigid, and yes, sometimes drop bar equipped bicycles. 

Bikes like the featured Nordest Super Albarda, shown above, have a lot more in common with the late 1980's than most mountain bikes from the 2020's do. Although many elements of current design thought are integrated into these new bikes, like the longer top tube/short stem, lower bottom bracket, and steeper seat tube angles. Of course, the wheel size is completely different, being based upon 700c instead of balloon-tired Schwinn cruiser wheels, and having nearly 29"er wheel diameters.

Image courtesy of Salty & Stupid Cycling

So why would anyone want to mix a style of riding from the last century with modern hard tail design cues and use drop bars? That may be too difficult a question to answer here, but I would say it has a lot to do with the lack of gravel roads in most places. 

Most areas of the world do not have gravel roads like Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. Roads that are predominantly crushed rock, usually limestone, and criss-cross the prairies and rolling hills in a network of confusing patterns for thousands of miles.

But many parts of the world do have dirt roads. Some have rocky dirt, some smoother, but most places have unpaved byways, and many have paths and "singletrack" to ride off of those roads. Places like the mountain West of the USA, or the Appalachians, or even in Europe and elsewhere where crushed rock is rare and rougher tracks exist that don't necessarily require a full-suspension "enduro" bike to ride across. 

These "in between" areas are perfect places for fully rigid bicycles and lend themselves to drop bars due to some connecting roads and more open, wind-prone areas. Gravel bikes, in the traditional sense, are perhaps a bit too disadvantaged in some of these areas, but given a bike with the capabilities of some of these MTB/gravel hybrids, with bigger tires, 700c diameter, and modern geometry for MTB hard tails, and that sort of "under-bike" is maybe appealing in a way that a more traditional, suspended hardtail is not. They would definitely be more agile and lighter than a fully suspended MTB. 

Some of these drop-bar "underbike" design cues can be traced back to early 29"ers, like this Fisher prototype. (Image courtesy of Gary Fisher)

This type of riding was once served by the average MTB from the 1990's, but when things morphed to "long-travel" and then "enduro", the type of simple bike that was once the meat of off-road riding was no longer available. Big, long travel suspension forks also were a reason why hard tail bikes went a certain direction, forcing geometry choices that were not conducive to drop bar use, and made hard tail MTB bikes into more downhill oriented machines rather than the all-around off-roader. 

Pushing gravel bikes into this category of more off-road capable geometry and tire size was then seen as an appealing thing for many cyclists that wanted the light weight, snappier feel of gravel bikes and drop bars as well. Not necessarily a bike festooned with accessory mounts either, but a good, all-around bike that was simple, lower maintenance, and forced a bit of skill and challenge to the forefront of riding. 

All this has served to blur the lines between "gravel" and "off-road" cycling to the point that perhaps someday most drop bar bikes with larger than 45mm tires will be more like the Nordest bike than not. We will see, but it is an interesting development in "gravel" cycling.