Important gear selection tips for climbing in the mountains.
The most important thing to remember if you haven’t ever cycled in mountainous terrain is APPROPRIATE GEARING. I can’t stress that enough. The best gearing for climbing are the following options:
1) 53/39/30 chainring with 12-25 cassette
2) 50/34 chainring with 12-28 cassette
3) 53/39 with 12-32 cassette
All of these choices provide what I call «the magic 1.2 low gear ratio» which will be perfect for climbs ranging from 5 – 10 or even up to 15% gradient. You really don’t want to go above ~1.5 or your cadence will drop on steeper climbs, you will go ‘anaerobic’ & you will struggle with endurance. Probably the best choice is the first one, because it provides an adequate high gear ratio and the gears are closely spaced. A compact crankset will provide the same low gear ratio at the expense of the higher gears. The third option is not available with 10 speed drivetrains & really messes with the gear spacing (large jumps between gears) but is probably also the cheapest solution.
I’ll give you a simple example- with any of the gearing options above, I could easily ride anywhere in Tenerife on a 500‚¬ bike, but some 10-15% climbs would be almost impossible on a 5000‚¬ bike equipped with 53/39 + 11-21 cassette. I’d also really struggle on extrended 5% climbs. Keep in mind that I am the same rider! Don’t even think about the effect of the «additional weight» of the larger cassette and chainring + extra few links of chain – these are practically negligable when you encounter steep climbs!
Hello! Thanks for stopping by! I’ve never been to the Canary Islands.
Very helpful advice, as I was searching for info on gearing for a charity run (81 mile with a 6000ft of climb) and is probably similar to cycling in the Canaries!