Okay, question for all you hill climbers. I have a Trek 520 that has the stock 30 tooth chain ring up front and a 32 tooth in the back. From what I can tell from reading here, not the most exciting set up for climbing a hill. Forgot to mention, running Continental Touring Plus 700 x 32c tires. So about 25 gear inches.

As I look at the stock Surly LHT and REI Novara Touring bike, I see much lower gearing inches in the 18 to 19 range. My question is, can you really spin your crank that fast and stay upright on a prolonged climb? I only have short climbs here in eastern VA, and found I can get out of the saddle to make it up the hill. So before I spend money and time on a new set of gears, what should I really be looking for on the front and rear set up. How low should a normal touring bike go for the dollar spent?

Please give particulars on what I would need (cables, shifters, derailuers, etc...) and where is the best place to go for the gearing.

You don't need a complete gear change.

Change your 30T Chain Ring to a 24T and ride.

I did a little camping this week, carrying maybe 50 pounds of gear:



My lowest gear is about 17 inches. I can ride at about 2.5 mph before getting very unstable. That kind of low speed happens often enough! I was happy to have the low gear on this hill:

I have the 520, and I wish I had lower gearing just on my commute. Couldn't imagine carrying a full load. Will be getting 24 tooth soon as well

Okay, that gives me about 20 gear inches. I am a novice at determining compatibility with different set ups. Is this a Shimano chainring? Model? I currently have a 27 speed set up.

Yes. My gearing goes lower than any combo mentioned so far (22/36). I have zero problem staying upright or moving forward on big hills. Remember, you are fighting gravity while climbing a hill, so one's cadence slows. On a 15% grade carrying 20 kg, you won't be spinning too fast!

I find the challenge is getting started again after stopping. But once I am moving, no problems.

Do you mean to high too much, or, too low, too much?

The situation you see is the supplier of the crank set makes them as you see ..

the bike assembly companies buy pallets of cases of that combination for best price ..

once the bike is at the dealer .. you change parts to suit your needs.

Yeah, when I stop in my lowest gear, I shift up before I start, turn the cranks a few times to get a little momentum, then shift back down to continue the long climb. This is one advantage of the Rohloff hub: it makes it easy to do this.

what it comes down to here is how much weight you put on the bike, combined with how steep hills you will hit. As for your concern about falling over, unloaded its one thing, but throw on 40lbs of stuff (a very easy amount to have with camping gear, cooking stuff etc) and you will be working really hard with a lot of power going into your pedalling, even at 6kph. I could take up hills right here in Montreal that you might find pretty darn hard with 25 gear inches and a full load. I've toured with my mtn bike, with about 25-30lbs on the bike, and in very steep hills Ive found myself looking for a lower gear than its lowest 19.5, but it was ok (again, put another 15 or 20lbs on a bike in the steep situations Ive been in and you would want lower).

all this blah blah will mean nothing until you load your bike up and hit some really steep hills so you can see what works and what doesnt. One thing to think about, people often poo-poo really low tourer gearing, but when you have a bunch of stuff on a bike, you aint going fast the vast majority of the time, and going up hills you'll be going pretty slow.

the change to a smaller granny is the easiest, cheapest change. Ive changed the 30 granny to a 26 without any need to do anything to the front derailleur-this will give you about a 21.5 g.i. which is a pretty good low that Ive used a lot (but Ive kept my load to about 40lbs, and Im a light guy.....more weight will be harder)

The lowest gear I've ridden is a 16/34 with a 26" mountain bike wheel. To save you the math, that's a 13" gear or 2.3mph at 60 rpm. And that was off-road on steeper terrain than you'll find most roads. You can't get that low with your Trek...you can go down to a 24 tooth inner. If you changed to a mountain bike crank, you could easily drop it to a 20 tooth. There are no real equipment changes that you would need to make other than the ring. Your chain might need a little shortening.

Riding in a low gear at slow speed just takes practice.

One really is going slow, so while it may be annoying to feel as though one is loosing balance, there is little physical risk to it. Wobbling is a problem. Many inexperienced cyclists are very poor in reducing their wobbling. You see the true magnitude of it when you see their tracks by wet tire onto dry pavement. Cycling on rollers is supposed to help, but what i do is ride the yellow line on the side of the road. It is smoother and it runs faster around here, and it is good practice running along it.

Many things can affect the loaded cyclist on the edge. Buffeting from trucks; rough surfaces; head winds; running into soft asphalt; or running off an edge; etc... So reading the conditions is part of the fun.

I do try to ride seated in the lowest gear, when necessary/possible. Correctly reading the whole ascent, where possible is useful. But I also find that simply dropping into lower and lower gears, eventually losses out when one hits the lowest gear, and one has nowhere else to go. At some point one needs to dig in and fight. Or get off the bike. Riding the bike is expected, and I do not like to get off. But there are times when the effort expended walking is more favourable. Doesn't work for me though, due to an injury I have, riding is always better.

https://sheldonbrown.com/gears/

try this link to get a handle on the different ratios and inches so you can figure out where you currently are and where you think you want to go

I know this much...

A middleweight is not enough for a Clyde on a hill (me) and a lot of people about here have multi-geared bikes that seem to be in perpetual third gear or are riding ridiulously small BMX bikes with their knees nearly rising up to their chest (and I always shout, "Get a 29er")!

Your stock gearing is the same as I have on my older Novarra Randonee, essentially 1:1. I cycled the Northern Tier route last summer, across some steep terrain in the North Cascades, Rockies, Mississippi bluffs, Adirondacks and Appalachians and coastal Maine, and used the granny gear a grand total of one time while on pavement, about 100' up a steep ravine in Maine. And a few short dirt drives at campsites. I could easily have done without the granny altogether and walked those few feet, mainly because of a light load and being a decent climber. My point is you may not need to change a thing and the bike might be just fine for you and your riding style.

I wore out the middle ring and had to change it after the ride. I shopped around and found one for $25 and it was a snap, so if you want to play around with a different small ring, it's not very expensive (assuming you have the tools to pull the crank).

I just crossed PA with full camping and cooking gear. My stock Surly LHT has a 26x34 low gear. 32c Conti Contacts. I used my granny plenty of times on very steep hills. Got down to between 3.5 and 4 mph without stability problems. There were times I wished I had a 24t chain ring. Something I have been meaning to switch to but keep putting it off.

Crossing the country many years ago I had MTB gearing. Lowest gear inch was somewhere aroud 17.5. I never regretted it as I was carrying a lot of heavy camera equipment.

come on, you are as bad as the boastful roadies who poo-poo touring bike gearing. You used the small chain ring "once"?

OP, please take this fellows statement with a huge grain of salt, as in many boxcars full of it.

Andrew, what you are saying about travelling on a bike that is fully loaded in the Adirondacks or Appalachians and only using your middle chainring is just folly.

Fullcount, Climbing with a load is a bit different from climbing without a load for me. With no load I tend to be out of the saddle with the bike swaying underneath me. With a load the bike doesn't move, or sway, so easily and I then tend to sit more and ramp up the cadence.

I tend to treat my triples as doubles with a bailout gear, excluding the mountain bike, which makes me think a 24T replacement of the 30T chainring a perfectly good idea. You might also want to add a chain catcher to protect the BB shell.

Brad

to add to bradtx's comment about climbing standing, one of the things with touring with a full load is to "manage" your output throughout the day, and that includes keep a cadence while climbing that is easier on the knees. On an unloaded bike its easy to stand and to push up a steep section, or alternate with standing and sitting--throw on 30 or 40lbs on a bike and you just cant efficiently stand and crank full bore up a hill. Letting your cadence get too low is never good, and going at hills with full output because your gears arent low enough is just going to take it out of you a lot, thats what I meant by "efficient". Anyone who has travelled in very hilly terrain on a 60-70lb bike knows what I mean, you have to keep your output to what you can keep up for a long time (some climbs can be for hours in some places) and to do that, you have to have sufficient low gearing.

good call on adding a chain catcher if there isn't one, they cost $5-$10 tops and work great without you even knowing it.

I run 24-42-45 in the front with a chain catcher and 12,14,16,18,21,24,28,32,36 in back. I agree with thinking of the gearing as a double with a totally separate bailout granny gear. Around 17 gear inches for me is my low limit. I have tried lower but staying upright was as much work as pushing.

The above post is correct about spinning vs standing and climbing for me also and after setting this bike up this way I would just as soon do all my climbing loaded or not, seated.

this is my touring bike but I much prefer it when commuting or just pleasure riding because of the gearing.

This. I run a 48/38/22 and 50/39/24. When shifting into the granny gear, I have to shift the rear derailleur up a couple gears as to not spin out, but it's a very small price to pay and I very much enjoy having the lower range. (Note that for touring, a 48/38/22 isn't a silly choice.)

Although you do need to make sure your rear derailleur is large enough to handle the extra chain - if it isn't you may not be able to go into your granny gear and the smaller gears on the cassette (i.e., not the gears you'd be likely to use anyway).

As far as how low is too low? I think it would be hard to find. I go down to just under 17" inches and I'd go lower if I could easily.

Thats what I use.

But, I have a 52/42/24 front setup. The jump in the upshift from 24 to 42 takes up to about 30 feet of distance to accomplish, I need a friction shifter for the front to make that shift well.

Rear is 11/32 eight speed. Two gears can't be used because the cage will not take up all slack, the 24/11 and 24/12, but they are so cross chained I would never use those anyway.



Regarding your question how low can you go, I have one bike with a low gear of 16.3 gear inches, I calculated that this would give me the lowest possible speed I could stay upright with a cadence of 72.

I assume you have a 5 arm triple with a 74mm bolt circle diameter granny gear.
https://sheldonbrown.com/harris/chainrings.html

There are lots of manufacturers that make a 74mm, 5 hole, 24t chainring. Any bike shop should be able to order one. I did not pay a lot for mine.

when is it too low or too high?
I got tons of use, dozen countries , thousands of miles. out of my 50-40-24 triple 13-34 rear cluster .

if not low enough I use the Two Foot gear.

rather than pedaling down hill, I coast, and occasionally brake.

I agree. I'm not a particularly strong cyclist, I'm 52, 5"10" and 190lbs with a bit of a gut. I pack lightly (around 20lbs) and had no trouble riding across Western MA and the Taconic Mountains in NY during my last tour with 46/34 x 12/25 gearing. That's a lowest gear of 37". Patience and technique are as important as gearing IMHO and climbing at a reasonable tempo rather than thrashing away in a really small gear inch ratio seems to be more efficient. On really steep sections it's quite easy to get out of the saddle with only 20lbs on the bike. Having said all that I might try a rear cassette of 12/36.

So currently I have

Front Derailleur: SRAM Rival
Rear Derailleur: SRAM Rival
Cassette: SRAM PG 1070 12-25
Chain: SRAM PC 1071
Crankset: FSA Gossamer 46-34 (it came with a 50 ring, but I replace it with a Sugino 46 ring)

This give a gear range of 104" to 37"

I might try

Front Derailleur: SRAM Rival
Rear Derailleur: SRAM X9 medium cage
Cassette: SRAM PG 1070 12-36
Chain: SRAM PC 1071
Crankset: FSA Gossamer 46-34

which give 104" to 26"

Of course we could get ridiculous and try the a 10/42 11 speed cassette https://www.sram.com/sram/mountain/pr...-1195-cassette
with my 34 small ring that gives 22" and with a common touring small ring of 22 it would give 14".....I think that's too low!!!!

Ha! I don't think anyone watching me climb a hill would use "thrashing" to describe it! "Plodding" might fit rather nicely! My 17 inch gear is about 4.1 mph at a cadence of 80. Well... 170 me and 90 pounds of bike & gear... I can't keep up 4.1 mph up a 9% grade! I can do a steady 120 watts maybe.

yeah, working from one calculator, 120 watts should have me climbing at 2.3 mph or a cadence of about 45. Plodding!