Drop Bars For Off Road: Why?

With 29 inch bicycles on the market from Salsa Cycles and Singular Cycles that have been designed specifically for use with drop bars for off roading, there have been a lot of questions flying about the internet. With all of the questions I see, I thought it might be a good thing to cover the subject here on Twenty Nine Inches.

This is in no way an unabridged version of drop bar knowledge for off road bikes, but hopefully these posts will clear up a few things in regards to this odd set up that seems to be gaining more fans these days. With that let’s take a look at the “why” of drop bars for off road use.

The Beginnings: The drop bar can be traced backwards all the way through the 20th century to its roots in the late 19th century. Practically since the advent of the “safety” bicycle, some sort of curved, down turned, swept back bar has been employed by cyclists. Of course, two things were going on the accelerated the evolution of handle bar design: Rough roads and competition. Pavement was scarce in the early days and the competitive cyclist often found themselves traversing rough dirt and stone roads for hours at a time. This necessitated the use of a bar that would allow a rider to have a secure grip for the rougher hits and a bar that would allow some changes in grip positions without loss of control. The drop bar evolved to accommodate these needs. As roads became smoother, and courses not so long, the drop bar has further evolved to become something that fills other needs for the professional racers and drop bar design has morphed in response. The main feature of today’s drop bar is the accommodation to riders for a primary position on the hoods. The drop section being relegated to being used mostly to gain maximum aerodynamic advantages in sprints and windy stages of road events. This is a result of smooth roads and component “advancements” and is a far cry from what drop bars were originally intended for.

Where The Pavement Ends: Road racing has taken drop bar design in a radical direction from where it had been for many years. However; there still are many riders that don’t race on smooth pavement, but are traversing pot holed back roads and tracks with more “traditional” drop bars. These riders are still using drop bars for their original intentions, to secure a better grip in rougher conditions, to better use their upper body and arms as “shock absorbers”, and for multiple hand positions with a bit of an aero advantage thrown in for good measure. Early off road adventurers often used road bikes with drop bars before the advent of the modern mountain bike in the late 70′s. These off road drop bar “mountain bikers’ included folks like Tom Ritchey, and most notably for our discussion, Charlie Cunningham.

Charlie Cunningham took a very different path towards the mountain bike than most of the Marin group that had such a huge influence on later mountain biking. Charlie realized that drop bars were beneficial for several ergonomic and performance reasons, but ever the tinkerer, he saw a better way to design a bar for single track pursuits. This led him to modify old Cinelli road bars by giving them “flare” and “sweep” to allow for wrist and fore arm clearance while in the drops and to give better leverage in technical terrain. This ultimately led to full production bars by WTB, a company that Charlie helped found.

Other mountain bikers took notice and soon a drop bar craze hit mountain biking by the late 80′s. You can read an excellent article penned by Mike Varley from that time period here. In the article, Mike explains many of the benefits of using a drop bar off road which were derived from the early road racers through to the early pioneering mountain bikers who were adapting all sorts of technologies to this “new” sport of mountain biking. Set up tips are also laid out, many of the basics of which still apply to today’s drop bar set ups.

With the focus on weight and professional XC type racing in the early 90′s, drop bar mountain biking faded, and by the turn of the century had all but faded into obscurity. WTB had stopped making the off road “dirt drop”, and more extreme types of cycling off road such as “Free” riding and “all mountain biking” had captured the imagination of mountain bikers. However; something else was bubbling to the surface, that in my opinion, helped bring off road drop bars back in front of the eyes of many mountain bikers today. That was the rise of the 29″er.

Modern Off Road Drop Bars And 29″ers: I won’t try to explain “why” 29″er freaks have been so attracted to “alt” bars, but I do know that they have been and still are. In fact, there was a time when deriders of the big wheels would accuse fans of 29″ers of also being in with the “weird handle bar” group. At any rate, examples of WTB’s old off road drop bar design were fetching exorbitant prices in on-line auctions and several riders were scrambling after the beat up old examples of these whenever they turned up. This got the attention of Brant Richards, then of On One. He collaborated with well known off road drop bar user, Don Person, aka Shiggy, and developed the Midge Bar. This more than anything re-invigorated off road drop bar use and spawned the “copy-cat” bar, the Origin 8 “Gary Bar”. Off road drop bar experimentation was on!

When the Midge Bar came out, another student of off road drop bar use, Matt Chester, penned this review of the Midge Bar. If you read this review carefully, you will glean out several reasons why off road drop bar use is attractive to some riders, and you will see some set up cues as well. Matt also penned an article for the web-zine 63XC on the Midge, but in this piece Matt details out the historical use of drop bars and the “why” in more detail than I have here. (Recommended reading!) You’ll find much the same reasoning, only in a somewhat humorous web-exchange between a doubter and a fan of off road drops, on Shiggy’s drop bar page. There is also a great animated gif showing the multiple hand positions on tap for the off road drop bar user.

Re-cap: So we have seen a bit of the historical and modern influences on drop bar designs for off roading. We have some references for the physical and performance benefits. We also see where a connection to the modern 29″er came in and helped push off road drop bars back into the light of modern day mountain biking’s spotlight. While it remains a tiny corner of the mountain bike world as a whole, bicycles like the Salsa Cycles Fargo and the Singular Cycles Gryphon will no doubt push the popularity of off road drops even further along. I’ll keep on saying it: Off road drop bars are not for every one, but if you take the time to consider the claims, you just might find it may make sense for you.

Next: A closer look at set up and some drawbacks to using drops off road.