I have a 46/22 on my touring bike, and it does a surprisingly good job. It gives me about 11 effective gears (with a 7 speed cassette) , which isn't great, but I've never been to picky about cadence. The low end is low enough to get me up anything, but it is to low for me to do it at a reasonable pace. Touring with a group would be somewhat awkward, as even at a high cadence, it's hard to get the bike going faster than 5 miles an hour in the low gears.