MTB Life has mostly been about getting out on the local goods as of late. Recently I back out in the Laguna Mountains. We spent sometime playing on a few few rocks around the meadow. Later in the ride, while trying a tight little squeeze I managed to crunch up my derailleur a bit. I was able to get the thing aligned back enough to get the shifting back in order. Later on on the same trail, I have a rock kick up in a pretty freakish manner and get caught between my spokes, frame, cassette and derailleur. While I was able to get the bike back rolling again, I was pretty much stuck with a few gears in the middle of the cassettes range. Basically it was really easy to spin out on the flats and painful work on the climbs. The climb up Wooded Hills was brutal.
After that ride it was shopping time. I was running a one by 11 speed setup with a 11-46 tooth cassette in the rear and a 32 tooth cog in the front. With that setup there were two compromises I dealt with. The first was that the easiest gear was not as easy as the 2×10 setup I have on another bike. The other was the jump between the two largest cogs in the rear. The old cassette went from 46 to 37 and I often found myself in the one is to easy and the other is too hard situation.
The new setup is still an 11 speed setup with an 11-50 cassette and a 30 tooth chain ring in the front. It was a bit finicky to get setup on the bench but things came together.
To flesh things out on the trail, I decided Daley Ranch would be the proving grounds. There is plenty of varying degrees of climbing to see how the new gearing feels. I had to do some very slight tweaking on the trail to get things fully dialed when under load. I certainly enjoy the easier gearing and the better stepping of the gears through the larger cogs.
Surprised to see so much water in the ponds out at Daley.