I ask because I plan on doing some light-medium touring on my 'cross bike. I currently commute with a 1x9 setup. A 36T up front and a 12/26T in rear. I'm aware of different setups like single speed, fixed gear, 1x8/9/10. What I want to know is your setup, where you tour and how much weight you haul. Do you find yourself walking up a lot of hills?

Yes, when living in England, fixed, 42-17/19 flipflop wheel, 2 panniers up front+saddlebag.

Not here in Appalachia... No way.

I have a couple of singlespeeds - one I use for commuting, and the other is a cyclo-cross bike which I thought would be great for blasting about on some of the rougher tracks outside of town. In practice even the slightest whisper of a headwind just makes me wish I had another gear or two. I'd never try touring on a singlespeed. No way.

I carried about 40 lbs in rear panniers from Philadelphia to DC with a single 36T chainring and something like a 12-28 in back. I did need to walk up a lot of hills. I think that if I had carried half the weight (20lbs) it would have been fine. Do you have an idea about how much weight you'll carry and where?

I already have a Jandd Expedition rear rack. I was gonna buy some small Jandd panniers. I'm thinking maybe 15-20 lbs. on back. As far as location, I want to start doing some weekend tours in So Cal. Not quite sure where yet. I reside in between the beach[s] and the desert. I will be with my cousin and/or my friend, so we can share the weight of the equipment.

Have traveled quite a lot with a 1x9 set up- 34 t chainring and 11-34 cassette.
That gives me more range than a 70s touring/road bike did.
In this time of 20+ "speed" drivetrains- it is amazing how effective a more simple &
pragmatic set up can be.

I haven't and wouldn't want to in the places that I have toured and with the load I carried, since I used the highest and lowest gears a lot. That said It depends on what you are carrying and where you plan to ride which you don't mention.

If you aren't going to be doing mountains and don't mind not having a high gear then it might work for you. Be careful though I know of one young rider who thought he didn't need low gearing. He kicked everyone's butts on the climbs, but... He only made it 1000 miles into a 4200 mile tour before taking the bus home due to a knee problem. A year later and a surgery and lots of therapy later he is finally hoping his knee is sorted out.

I've done several tours on a folding bike with a 1x7 and 1x8 setup (11-34 cassette), ~30lbs of gear.

Long story short: fine for flat tours, not enough of a range for hilly tours.

Sure I've done credit card touring on a bike with a single 40t ring ands a 16/18 double freewheel. It was NOT in the mountains though and I was carrying about 20lbs of gear. Depending on your fitness level your set up sounds fine.

A triple chainring -- or even a double -- is proven technology for touring. It's reliable, durable, and effective. I am not sure why anyone would NOT want a wide range of gears. Unless one is touring in Holland, Saskatchewan, or Cape Cod, hills and headwinds are inevitable! In fact, when I toured in Holland, I needed very low gears due to the extreme headwinds blowing off the sea.

+1, A triple is standard stuff, anything less for touring is self-abuse. Even for flat terrain you just don't use the lower ring. What is the down side of having the right equipment? It's doubtful that you will NEVER try an area with hills.

With the right gears, you may find that you rarely, or never, need to push your bike up a hill. There are "monster" hills that very few people can get up without walking; I have encountered a few of these in my time! But with my current setup, I have little trouble climbing 99% of the hills that I encounter while touring.

Thank you everyone for the information and/or advice. Touring can be done with any bike. I bought my 'cross bike brand new in May 2008. It's the only bike I have, so it'll have to do. I'll just make sure I don't tackle any hills. Next year I'll buy a "real" touring bike. Until then, I'll use the 'cross bike for some short tours hauling light-medium loads. I may just buy a front rack with panniers to balance the weight.

If you are looking for a bike more suited for touring, I would not give up yet. I picked up a nice Novara Randonee on C/L for my wife for $200 a couple of weeks back. If that is outside your budget, I picked up my Trek 950 off of C/L for $75. If that is outside your budget, I picked up a nice Schwinn Criss Cross at a garage sale two months ago for $10. All have triples and are geared well for touring. The Schwinn really rides nice, but is on the heavy side, and heavier than the Randonee or the Trek. I am not sure I would notice the five pound difference on a tour if I packed efficiently.

If you are willing to buy used and look for a while, you can find decent to good bikes for not much money.


Around here, any direction I go will put me into hills. There really are no flat rides.

It is a tough call. I would tend to agree with martianone on this.

With a 9-speed cassette you certainly might get away with a single chainring - even in very hilly or mountainous areas... that is, IF the bike were set up just right.

MTB (and touring) triple crank sets were initially set up for 5 or 6 speed freewheels. With fewer cogs, you actually might use a higher percentage of the cogs available to you within that range. With wider freewheels and later cassettes, there was just more and more unused overlap with each chainring effectively still really using only 3-4 distinctly different gears even though more incremental cogs were added. This means you could indeed really get away with the same number of different gears with perhaps a single or certainly a double crankset as you might with the traditional triple crankset.

The main difference (and problem) for more "modern" bikes when using double chainrings with a very wide range between chainrings would be that at some point you would be confronted with the necessity to shift down (or up) past several cogs to reach the desired gear change when you eventually change chainrings. This means with STI index shifting this is more difficult than when using friction-only shifting (basically you'll do a lot of repeated click-click-click-click-click before you achieve the intended gear when you shift between chainrings).

In my fairly hilly region I like using drastically different chainrings (something like 28-50) and 9-speed "road" cassettes of 12-27. However, using my friction shifters I can just slam-down or yank-up the rear shifter and run past all the intermediate cogs. So for me this is no problem.

As for touring range necessities, here is an actual example - from my recently purchased mid-1980s touring bike.

The original crankset on the bike was a triple with 28-44-50 chainrings and 14 17 20 24 26 for the 5-speed freewheel cogs.

With this gear selection, from small to large chainrings, you would use only:
28t = bottom 3 cogs
44t = bottom 3 cogs
50t = top 3 cogs

All the other combinations would be near identical and just repetitive overlap. Gears with this set up would range from a low of 29 to a high of 96 gear inches. You would NOT have the "nominal" 15 gears implied by the 5 cogs + 3 rings ... only 9 truly different gears.

With a 11-34 tooth 9-speed cassette and a single 38t chainring you would have a gear range of 30 to 93 gear inches... which is pretty darned close... and with no excess gear overlap. Yes, the chainline would be stretched to the maximum across the cogs at the extreme high and low gears. But, modern chains really are designed for a lot of lateral bending... and, depending on your terrain, you might spend most of your riding in the middle cog range anyway.

Remember, even with a single chainring, you might still need a long cage (MTB) triple derailleur to accommodate the broad range of cogs -since derailleurs actually do have a vague maximum cog size regardless of their total chainwrap capacity.

This could be an interesting decision for you to make. Personally, I tend to forget to shift when I should and wind up using far fewer gears than I have available. But for loaded touring this would be a pretty serious commitment.