The Radavist

Wide bars are becoming more and more prolific in the drop-bar MTB, touring bike, and even gravel bike subgenres. A craze that began with the Crust and Ron’s Bikes Towel Rack bars has now become widespread in the industry, with multiple brands putting their spin on an ultra-wide offering. Among these is Tumbleweed, who have worked to design a model suited for the Stargazer touring bike (one of my favorites in that subcategory of drop-bar bikes). Fittingly dubbed the Big Dipper Bars ($115), I’ve been stealthily test-riding them on two recent review bikes. I have some thoughts on the Big Dippers and the appropriate application for wide drop handlebars in general. Let’s check it out below!

Fresh off racing the North-South Colorado Bikepacking Race, where she finished 1st women’s and 7th overall, Hailey Moore is here to share her first-ride impressions of Germany-based Beast Components’ Carbon Hybrid Bar. The mtb-shift-and-lever compatible design allowed her to run her Bearclaw Ti Hardtail as a monster-tourer, drop bar 29er, but how did the modified design manifest in ride quality as she pedaled 600 miles down Colorado’s Front Range? Read on for her thoughts…

For this week’s Readers’ Rides, Gideon Tsang documents his buddy John Truillo’s gorgeous custom Tomii Cycles. Let’s check it out below!

With so many brands tossin’ their crusty, salty caps into the drop bar touring bike ring, Surly decided to do the Surly thing and offer something a little different with the Ghost Grappler, a 27.5×2.5″ wheeled, steel chassis, horizontal track ends, multi-surface tourer with a lot of stack for a comfortable riding position. Looking at this bike, you might be compelled to compare it to the Salsa Fargo, the Otso Fenrir, the Moots ESC, AWOL, and Kona’s Sutra ULTD. The Retail is set at $1899, pending availability with supply chain shortages. Check out more at Surly.

Crust Bikes gives the people what they want and that ranges from frames, to complete bikes, accessories, parts, and yeah, handlebars. Their small-time operation allows them to pivot easily to follow trends and in a lot of ways, set the trends themselves. With road bikes permuting into even more capable off-road machines, a lot of the ideologies of mountain bike design and technology have found its way onto drop-bar bicycles. Sure, the obvious moves are those shorter-travel suspension forks but something that not many people have touched on is bar width.

That’s where Crust Bikes and Ultra Romance have really influenced and inspired the question: what is the appropriate width for a drop-bar bicycle? We already looked at my Sklar with the Towel Rack Bars but after much demand – and my own curiosity – I decided to try out the Made in Japan by Nitto Shaka Bar.

I’ve been waiting to post this graphic, designed by Poler’s CX team, who races on flat bar ‘cross bikes each season. It’s an obvious troll, but damn, that’s a great graphic but with all the flat bar ‘cross and all-road bikes, decked out with Eagle, it does make you wonder.