Originally Posted by grolby
Disc advocates almost always make it sound, to me, that disc brakes are so much better that to use anything else is courting with certain death. This doesn't really line up with my experience. $15/brake cantilevers were perfectly adequate for slowing my 40+ mph touring bike on the steep hills of northwestern Massachusetts and southern Vermont, New Hampshire and some big hills in Maine. It's true that braking degrades in the wet, but it's a huge exaggeration to say that rim brakes have NO braking power in the rain. Rim brakes on steel rims gets you no braking power. On alloy rims with Kool Stop pads, braking is, again, sufficient, especially since applying the brakes long enough to scrub some serious speed will dry the rims off. It is necessary to go slower and use more caution, but this is also true with discs.
I have to agree. I've been riding mountain bikes, loaded touring bike, unloaded touring bikes, road bikes and tandems in the mountains of Colorado for 3 decades in all kinds of weather and conditions. What do they think I've been using to stop all these years? Trees? I have only had one time where my brakes didn't work as well as I like but that was a driving thunderstorm that I shouldn't have been out in anyway. We just went through one of the worst winters I've ever experienced in Denver and I rode in wet, sloppy, icy, snowy conditions for the entire winter on a bike that had either cantilevers or v's and never once gave it a second thought. I even had a bonehead pull out in front of me during a rainstorm (a rarity here) and still managed to stop a cantilever equiped bike from 15 mph to 0 in plenty of time to keep from denting his hood.
Heck, I even took the drum brake off of my tandem and have ridden it many, many mountainous miles and still managed not to run off any cliffs.
Discs might have their place...like on dual suspension bikes where the cable runs would be funky...but they just aren't that necessary in my opinion.