Originally Posted by
dabac
IMO, it's down to the character of the trails you're riding.
Where I'm at, and the riding that I do, it's very common with short, sharp "humps" along the track.
Too small to be called climbs, too big to be jumps. Longer cranks makes it easier to simply muscle past these instead of downshifting.
It's not ride-stoppingly important, but there is a difference.
I too have gone to shorter cranks for a more knee-friendly pedalling style, and I manage.
There are other ways around. If you're familiar with the track, you can either accept to shift a little more frequently or try to carry a little more momentum into the hump to get over.
This is my dilemma and why I asked. Thanks for the experience. Long stetches of uneventful trail between singletracks. I have Deore XT 8000 2x and I see bare arm 8000-1 realtively cheap and I can transfer over my rings.
When I went from 170 to 165 on my gravel/road bike I was surprised how different it was at first. Now that I got the short crank pedalling concept down, this should go well too. I've ridden my gravel bike on some of the same routes as my XC when it's dry with some go arounds.