Originally Posted by
gracehowler
If you pulled a 19% on a 24 tooth, you sure don't a lower gear, congrats from us. We do keep miles closer to 50 as we just tire out, too many years as they say. Keep on havin fun
R&J
Our lowest gear is 26X34. If we'd had more than about 100 yds of 19%, we might have been walking. 3 mph as it was. We tried standing, but it didn't really work in such a low gear. The bike would squirt forward and then stop with each downstroke. We treated this as a training ride. I was really curious to see how we'd do on day 2 if we went hard on the hills on day 1 and only one way to find out, so . . .
We plan on repeating this trip with the same couple next year, but next time do 40 mile days, stay at more lonesome campgrounds, and do more of our own cooking. We like our own cooking and just self-published a 2 oz. ultra-light camping cookbook. When we backpack, we say it takes 3 days to get "there." We're looking forward to arriving, on a longer tour.
Later . . . I did a little calculation and figure that at 3 mph and 19% we were climbing at 3000'/hr. Since our hour steady state has been 1500'/hr, pretty easy to see we can't keep that up!