njkayaker

You might be overthinking this.

All of the bikes you listed are fine (which is the "better bike" doesn't really matter).

The BMC bike is convenient to rent, not expensive (don't worry about the extra $40), has lower gearing (which reduces the "risk" of doing the ride), has "higher" gearing, and is a nice bike. Your alternative is to spend $150 for less lower gearing and (maybe) not a quite as nice a bike.

You could compare the geometry of whatever you are riding (which no one knows anything about anyway) with this particular BMC. If you think it wouldn't be a good/reasonable fit, it really shouldn't be listed as an option.

It's a weird ride. So, who knows how small differences in geometry would matter.

The geo of the 2021 bike for rent and the 2022 01 is (very likely) the same. Electronic shifting doesn't add much benefit for this ride (IMO) but the extra weight is a nonissue.

===================

The 2022 bikes are irrelevant.

Anyway...

Roadmachine 01 => ICS (integrated cockpit stuff).

Roadmachine => standard cockpit stuff.

(The rental 2021 BMC bike has ICS.)

Iride01

I think I agree with njkayaker . The only things that really matter if you haven't climbed a lot of steady long climbs is having plenty of low gear ratios to choose from. Having too many is better than too few. I would have never thought that I'd be climbing so long at less than 7 mph sometimes. So a low gear to keep me up in the 80 to 90 rpm range was helpful for me.

Next on the list will be the position the bikes will give you. If you have a real preference one way or the other for upright or aero, then some of those bike choices might not be able to give you that... But I haven't paid attention to their specific stack height differences.

As for weight, on those bikes it won't be enough to matter. Besides, within the same week I made my climb another old fart did the same climb on a beater with what sounds like twenty pounds of extra stuff they took with them. The only difference being they took most of the day to get to the top and took breaks often.

As for any bike being geared too low overall and not having a high ratio. You will appreciate having the choice of low gears since you'll be pedaling in low gears for most of your ride. You likely won't miss being able to pedal on the very short time it takes to go down.

Sy Reene

This is about the speed obtained coasting down a 6.5% grade

njkayaker

Yeah, not really a concern.

One ride profile I found had a maximum speed of 56+ MPH.

​​​​​​I'm guessing the average downhill speed isn't as high as 36 MPH for most people.

One search result I found said 1.5h for 27 miles downhill.

Going a bit slower downhill doesn't seem like a big problem to me.

caloso

I hit 48 mph going down when I did it. It was on the lower part of the mountain on the Kula Highway with a big smooth shoulder. Looking at Strava, I was just coasting. That was on my own bike with a standard 53x12 big gear. Main thing was to keep my feet moving just to keep from tightening up too much.

mschwett 

ahhhh haleakala. my father lived on maui for many years after retirement, we must have gone up there to do photography at the crack of dawn (arriving pre-sunrise) a couple dozen times. strangely, i never saw any bikes.

enjoy the ride!

feb 5, 2005:

Leinster

My wife brought me to Maui for my 40th birthday. I rented a Roubaix from West Maui Cycles* which had 34x32 low gear. I brought my own pedals, saddle and iirc 2 stems (a 100 and a 120, just in case I had to adjust the reach; I ended up just flipping the one on there). I only used the 32 for 2 sections, and I coulda done them in the 28 if I had to. We were able to get the bike back to the store the day of the climb.

Pick a gear you think you’ll be comfortable with, then add a lower one. It’s a looooooong climb.

Plan your stops and water refills. Bring more food than you think you’ll need.

*I kinda wished I’d brought my bike in the end; not because the Roubaix wasn’t fantastic, but because it sorta felt a bit like cheating on my bike… and because at the end I realized that my CAAD10 would have been completely good enough to get to the top.

joesch

ebike for gf

caloso

I'm not surprised you didn't see any riders at dawn. I certainly wouldn't want to ride up that road in the dark. (Gorgeous photo, by the way!)

mschwett 

true, that would explain not seeing anyone on the way up. maybe i slept the whole way down

blacknbluebikes 

If it's at all possible, pack your own saddle and seatpost in your bag. Your sit-bones will thank you. I rented a great bike in California last spring, fit pretty well. But something kept saying, "hey, this is not one our our saddles."

drewguy

When we went to the summit on our honeymoon to catch sunrise, my recollection is the bike riders started coming in on vans an hour or two after sunrise - we had already hiked into the crater and out and were getting ready to go and they started staging in the parking lot. At least at the time they had rules about how many riders could go down at once, and they had to space out the groups. We hustled to get out of the parking lot before they started heading down.

(A friend told me the downhill ride was kind of miserable because the bikes handled like @$$ and you had to stay in a pack with your group.)

caloso

That must have been a while ago. Last time I was on Maui, the vans weren't allowed in to the NP itself, so they would would coast down from just below the NP entrance to Kula.