I’d ridden there before. I knew, more or less, what was coming, and prepared appropriately. I have two single speed bikes - one a rigid steel hardtail that is great in Santa Cruz. The other is an old Sugar that I’d raced in the TransAlp many years ago and had put out to pasture. I brought the Sugar because it has a little suspension travel in front and back, and that would be a good thing in the rocks.

The bike had vertical dropouts and I used a very old Sachs Aris rear derailleur with the strongest return spring I could find. I pulled the chain as tight as I could so the derailleur cage was pointing almost directly at the chain ring to keep the chain on.

The other key component I added to the mix were some tubeless wheels and the biggest tubeless tires (Jones XR) I had around, along with a pint (not exactly, but you get the idea)of sealant in each. I knew that I would not be graceful enough to ride the line through all of the rock gardens, so this was a set up I could ride straight through a lot of those sections with decent control and no pinch flats.

32×18 gears were fine for me on that course. I walked part of the wall, but gave up easily because I’d decided I could use the stretch. I was bonking and cramping a little by then too, and had no idea how far it was going to go up, so that might have been part of the motivation.

The bike worked pretty well, especially given that it took about an hour to throw it all together. I dropped the chain twice bouncing along in the rocks. Both times I felt it come off the front ring, which was just a regular 32 out of a triple set up. I will swap that for a plain ring and maybe put a chain guide on it too.

2 of the chainring bolts blew out at some point in the event too, so that might have been the source of the chain problem. The ring was one of T’vativs heat treated steel units and the ring didn’t fold. That was cool.

KB