Gunnar's Off Road Tourer

WHAT: Gunnar Rock Tour

WHERE: www.gunnarbikes.com/262-534-4190

HOW MUCH: $800 (frame only)

I wrote an article for Bicycle Retailer and Industry News this past summer about the state of the mountain bike market. In that article, I noted that sales of high-end, cross-country hardtails continued to plummet in 2004 and that most bike suppliers are expecting more of the same in 2005.

A noteworthy example: a couple of years ago, Litespeed Bicycles offered consumers a small armada of hardtails (something like seven or eight distinct models) and just one full-suspension model. In 2005, their hardtail line amounts to just two models.

Pat Hus, vice president of sales and marketing at American Bicycle Group, noted that one of the reasons that Litespeed did as well as they did in 2004, is that they pared down their hardtail offerings and boosted their full suspension offerings. “The heritage of Litespeed is still cross-country racing,” noted Hus, “but full-suspension is where high-end sales are these days. We’ve seen a definite increase in our mountain bike business because we’ve recently emphasized full suspension—which was a category that we just weren’t a player in a few years ago.”

So, the high-end hardtail market is not what it used to be… Point taken. It doesn’t mean, however, that the hardtail is dead. What it means, is that smaller manufacturers like Seven, Independent Fabrications, Vicious Cycles and Moots are becoming the dominant players in this genre. Smaller companies, aiming at smaller markets are now the name of the game, and that’s probably the best way to introduce the Gunnar Rock Tour.

The Rock Tour may look like your average hardtail, but it’s actually designed for long-distance touring (on or off-road). Sort of a niche within a niche within a niche, if you will.

For starters, the Rock Tour features a slightly short top tube (22.75 inches on my 19-inch test bike) for a more upright and comfortable cockpit. The shorter top tube also allows you to install drop bars (if that’s your gig) and still maintain a fairly normal cockpit (drop bars add a couple of inches to your cockpit length).

Long chainstays equal plenty of tire clearance.

Finally, the Rock Tour features, longish 17.15-inch chainstays that allow for plenty of tire clearance and ample heel clearance (see the picture at left) when pedaling with loaded panniers. The long chainstays also provide a hint of flex, which boosts the comfort level a bit.

I mentioned loaded panniers, right? That’s because the Rock Tour is designed to be compatible with the Old Man Mountain series of racks (which, in turn, mount via the bike’s cantilever studs).

The bike is just a’brimming with braze-ons: two sets of water bottle bosses, triple stops on the top tube for brake and derailleur routing, removable cantilever stud mounts, rear eyelets and seatstay and chainstay fender mounts. The Rock Tour also comes with a set of Salsa's elegant, forged vertical dropouts. Sexy.

Clean cable routing on the gunnar. Que nifty!

The Rock Tour frame is constructed from a Waterford exclusive butted tubeset (essentially a mix of custom-drawn True Temper OX Platinum and Reynolds 853 steel tubing). The toptube and downtubes are also flared at the headtube juncture—this allows for a greater welding surface area and improved rigidity. The folks at Gunnar also vary the tubeset specs vary from frame size to frame size, in order to maintain a consistent, desired ride quality across frame sizes (Gunnar offers the frame in sizes ranging from a pixie-small 13.5 to a mutant-big 23-inch model). Weight is about 4.25 pounds for a 17.5-inch frame.

I’ve ridden the RockTour for a year now. Call me boring, but I built it up as a conventional XC bike: 80-millimeter Magura Ronin fork, Magura Marta SL discs, old-school SRAM drivetrain, Mavic tubeless wheels (shod with 2.1 Pythons) and a mix of whatever else I could scratch up. I rode the Rock Tour on and off road (though mostly, on the dirt). No races. Just long rides in the woods.

I appreciated the shorter top tube for a couple of reasons: less lower-back pain and more confidence on steep downhills. The shorter top tube did mean, however, that I had to be more vigilant about the way I weighted the bike on steep climbs (otherwise the front end wanted to wander excessively). No real rocket science there, though. The Rock Tour may not be the racing thoroughbred that its sibling (Gunnar’s Rock Hound) is, but for a touring bike, it’s still plenty agile and sporty.

While, I never did mount panniers on the bike, I like having the option of taking the bike on extended trips into the outback (that’s something I’m leery of doing with dualies that rely upon on lots of seals and pivots). I was particularly fond of the extra tire and mud clearance provided by the long chainstays. You can see in the picture here, that these 2.1 tires look downright puny with all that air around them. 2.3 tires? Gunnar doesn’t recommend it, but I think some models would fit just swell.

Is the Rock Tour worth $800? It’s a worthwhile question. I honestly don’t ride hardtails much anymore. I appreciate the simplicity and the way they keep me honest out on the trail, but I generally have a lot more fun on a dual suspension bike. The one exception, however, would be on long, multi-day rides. On trips like that, a bike like the Rock Tour would be invaluable: durable steel (which can be repaired in the rare event that it fails…you can’t do that with an aluminum frame), convenient cargo loading, no fancy suspension components to leak, break down and fail.

If you dream of long trips—days and days of solitude, miles and miles away from the nearest gas station or microwave oven, $800 for a handbuilt, purpose-designed frame is a pretty good deal. The Rock Tour is also an ideal bike for any hardtial purist out there who wants a comfortable, versatile and durable steel frame. You don’t have to tour with this bike to get your dollar’s worth.

On the other hand, if you’re more of a weekend warrior and are looking for an affordable, do-it-all mountain bike, I think there are better choices out there. You’d probably be better off buying one of the many light and efficient dual suspension trail bikes available today.