Originally Posted by
Trakhak
You were probably more of an outlier than you think. I doubt that "that sort of riding was going on all over the US on 10-speed bikes" in the early to mid-'70's.
The guys in California were just starting to race their old coaster brake Schwinn klunkers down Mt. Tamilpais then. And Tom Ritchey routinely rode his tubular-tire-equipped road bike on fire trails, but the fact we know that about him suggests that he was probably the only one doing it regularly.
Some friends of mine and I did some riding on the trails through water company property on our road bikes (with tubulars) in 1974 or so (I was on my white first-year Raleigh Professional, and the other guys had a Bottechia, a blue Raleigh Pro, and a PX-10, I think), but we were all scared that we'd break our rims, so we only did it a couple of times.
That said, I believe that a modern road bike would hold up just fine: especially one with 28-mm-wide or wider tires. Why would it not?
I ran into people over the years that claimed they were doing the same stuff myself and others were doing in California, Moab in Utah, the Denver area, state of NY, and from the Appalachian mountain areas. I think it was more widespread than people realized, it just wasn't talked about. The only reason we even have a hint about it is because there were several riders in N California that later became famous for frame building, if it wasn't for them no one would believe people did that stuff back then on road bikes, it's difficult enough for me when I tell people we did that and find them believing me, they just can't conceive the thought of such a thing being done on road bikes, but yet that's all we had. I mentioned Moab because I just ran into a guy about 3 months ago while I was in Moab, we got to talking and he told me him and his pals were doing that all over Moab on road bikes, and he's the one that knew guys in the state of NY that was doing that sort of stuff up in the Adirondack mountains.
All the time I was doing that in S Calif, I never heard of the famous guys in N California, till some years later. While most of the USA is flattish land, I do believe that those that lived in mountainous areas found themselves doing that sort of thing. Sure, not crowds of people were doing it, my group was only about a half a dozen at any one time, but people kept rotating in and out of the group so really there were more than 6 people, but enough people did do that sort of thing to where it was not a rare occurrence.