Fixed Gear Mountain Biking

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by RL Policar

At the 2006 Interbike, I sat down with Andy Corson of Surly Bikes and we talked about fixed gear bikes. I mentioned to him that I have a Redline 925 that I use for my daily errands. Then he mentions to me that he’s got a FIXED GEAR MOUNTAIN BIKE. I repeated what he said and he basically said…”yah, a fixed gear mountain bike.” After I made a few more comments that sounded like, “You’re friggin crazy!” I then started to ask him more about it. Intrigued by his idea, I decided to find out more on this suicidal way of riding dirt.

So I turned to Sheldon Brown’s site and sure enough there was something about fixed gear mountain bikes.

Here’s a Surly Fixed Gear.

Having been a fixed gear rider for quite some time, I don’t think I’m ready to jump on the trails with a fixed mountain bike.

Just in case you didn’t know what fixed gear bikes are…

The oldest and simplest type of bicycle is the “fixed-gear” bicycle. This is a single-speed bike without a freewheel; that is, whenever the bike is in motion, the pedals will go around. You cannot coast on a fixed-gear machine.

What about you, would you do it?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 28th, 2007 at 6:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Fixed Gear Mountain Biking”

Sven on April 5th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

Can you provide any more information for what he said about riding fixed in the dirt? Like crank length, rim size, tire, gear ratio?
dan on July 4th, 2008 at 6:20 pm

I ride exclusively fix gear Mountain bike on a Salsa Juan Solo 26 inches wheel set. My gear ratio is a 34-20 and I use ENO crank set with 175 mm crank. I never had a problem to do any trail that my freewheel friends rider rides on. In fact I can keep up with the most advance rider on technical downhill. My biggest desadvantage is on none technical downhill. When that happen I have a custom fork that was build in which I have a set of clip on that are located on the crown of my fork that I can clip on and let the bike take the speed that it wants.

No riding Fix in the woods is not for everyone, but I think that everyone should try it at least once.

The best way to describe fast technnical MTB on a fix is like playing chess on a bike. if you are not focus and your head is not screwed on properly you will kill yourself

If you want to know more about it or want to try it drop me a line and we will try to make it happen

Dan Des Rosiers
http://www.ultimatexc.com