Originally Posted by
KBentley57
+1, it's not the gearing holding you back. the 34/34 combo will let you climb up the side of a barn when you have the legs. Spinning that out @ 80 rpm would put you down in the 4's of miles per hour. Unless 190+ really means 350+, then it's a different story.
Not necessarily. You know nothing about the OP aside from what he posted. I see you are presently a graduate student - which would put you likely in your mid-late twenties. But apparently you are not so well educated that you don't have any qualms about casting aspersions about posters whom you are ignorant about. This forum has a diverse audience. How do you know the OP is not in his 50s or 60s, with bad knees? I find it pretty distasteful when people who are too young to have much life experience make ignorant judgements about the fitness of other riders whom they know nothing about. In fact, the Santa Cruz mountains around Silicon Valley are loaded with several mile long 10-12% grades, where LOTS of people who climb them average 3-4 MPH. The Hicks climb that the OP cited, the last mile is a 14% grade on average, with some spots hitting 20%. Not everyone who cycles for recreational purposes is in their peak years of athletic prowess - and the climb that the OP is talking about is challenging even to young, athletic riders who have typical road-bike gearing.
If the OP actually weighed 350, he probably couldn't get up the Hicks climb in an automobile, and he'd sure as heck not be trying it on a bike. And BTW, pro cyclists don't just SPIN the Hicks climb. The fact that the OP can do it at all puts him in probably the top 5% of all recreational cyclists.
BTW, to the OP, you absolutely CAN build a road bike with the same sort of granny gears that a mountain bike has. But there will be a compromise in the performance on less massive climbs. I have a road bike that I used to ride cross country over the Continental Divide with 35-40 pounds of camping gear, where I use a compact triple that goes down to a 28 chainring, and a biggest cog of 32 in the back. But this is really a special purpose climbing bike, which I call my mountain goat, and I can get up anything that's rideable with it. But this bike is nowhere near as fast on flats and nearly flats and downhills as my two main rides. So you really need to decide what's the most important mission for a particular bike. Tour de France riders don't use the same bike for the Alpe d'Huez climb that they do for time trials.