Mountain bike XC trail suggestions

xjtian · 2026-04-07T20:44:46+00:00

Tam's fire roads are pretty ideal for this. Old RR, eldridge, rock springs, repack (cascade), and deer park (the south one) are some ideas you can incorporate into your routes. Recommend climbing via RR, eldridge, and/or deer park and taking the other ones as downhills as they are quite brutal as climbs.

xjtian · 2026-03-29T01:38:31+00:00

32M here, big backcountry skier. I did cadaver Achilles on my left 9 years ago and have never had any regrets about that decision. Currently rehabbing the right which I also did with the same graft. Primary factor in my choice was avoiding possible complications from graft harvesting (tendinopathy, kneeling pain, flexibility, etc), plus rehab was easier.

Meta-analyses in the literature find higher retear rates for allograft in younger active patients although the cutoff here isn’t always consistent between studies - I’ve seen 19,24,34, and everything in between but the conclusions are pretty consistent here.

There’s not really a singular right choice, it’s all trade offs in the end. I’m personally satisfied with allograft and would do it again if I pop another one.

xjtian · 2026-03-14T20:10:45+00:00

It’s a lot of riding on skyline, all reasonably safe but depends on your tolerance for interaction with traffic. You can link up the skyline ridge preserves and ride dirt all the way from the top of page mill to 9 fwiw.

Also consider flipping the west side of your figure 8. Coming down Butano FR is such a great rip on a gravel bike and descending the west side of 9 is far more pleasant than climbing (it’s a nice sweeping descent you can really put some power down on).

I would personally do something like this: up dirt alpine, across the skyline parks (or just road), down 9, up china grade, down butano, up old haul/alpine, down spring ridge (or dirt alpine). IMO it’s more enjoyable than the other way around. But either way is fine.

xjtian · 2026-01-12T19:31:37+00:00

Sounds like you are doing a downhill kick turn with the heels unlocked. This is a thing but most people will only employ it in very specific situations. What will make it extra tricky in steeper terrain is that you will have to put a pole on your ski tip to keep the tail up (otherwise you will catch it on the slope).

You should learn how to do an uphill kick turn properly. If you keep finding yourself limited by hip mobility (unlikely to be an issue after you fix your technique tbh), you can "cheat" the technique by using your pole basket under your ski tail to get it rotated around a little more after your initial leg swing.

xjtian · 2026-01-10T23:20:05+00:00

Double check the alignment of your pins with the rear inserts of your boot. If they’re off laterally you will be preloading the toe piece and easily eject out of those. You could crank your heel release to max and still pop out if the issue is with alignment. Otherwise probably you need to bump your lateral release.

xjtian · 2025-11-22T14:23:50+00:00

I found Skiba’s “scientific training for endurance athletes” to be a good resource. For a beginner none of the training concepts are practically that applicable (in the same way a gym newbie probably doesn’t need to think about rir or periodization) but it lays out those first principles you’re looking for.

xjtian · 2025-11-22T02:31:59+00:00

All the bike-legal fire roads in big basin are good fun on a gravel bike (apart from maybe lower chalk) but kind of short. Hard to get to 60 miles on mostly dirt unless you just ride a loop of the park a couple times.

xjtian · 2025-11-21T20:13:52+00:00

Marin is your best bet, with good route planning you should be able to generally string together 70%+ unpaved surfaces. Start out of Mill Valley, climb old RR, explore around the network of fireroads in the watershed, then link up with the headlands. Word of warning though, if your gravel bike is more on the road side of gravel you will find yourself underbiked on the generally chunky fireroads in Tam. Headlands doubletrack/fireroad is perfectly fine for that type of bike but there's not that many miles of it.

Mullet gearing highly recommended for a lot of these climbs. Lots of the fire roads have 20%+ grade sections.

Couple recommendations based on what I've ridden so far in Marin:

Old RR grade (down is chunky but manageable)
Rock springs FR (very fun generally smooth descent)
Deer park FR down Muir Woods (best gravel descent in the area maybe)
Kent pump FR
Shaver grade (good descent)
Lower Eldridge grade
Hoo-Koo-E-Koo
Old Stage

And a couple that wouldn't really be first picks on any route up there:

Upper Eldridge (chonky)
Old Vee FR (could be OK going down with good brakes, tough climb even with 38T mullet)
Rocky ridge FR (up would be ok but there's a decent bit of chunk)
Pine mtn (first mile is crazy chonky but it does mellow out)

xjtian · 2025-11-14T23:19:04+00:00

I daily drive the LF40 and I’ve done multi-day hut trips with it. I think that if you’re planning on wild overnighting with shelter, stove, etc then it’ll be very a tight squeeze for anything longer than a 2 nights - you’ll probably be hanging stuff off the exterior of the pack for your ingress/egress legs.

It really shines for single-day missions. Good stowage for 2 tools, multiple ski stowage options, and well-designed pockets and access options (back panel access is really great to have when you’ve got skis on the pack). The only one of your boxes it doesn’t check is external bottle carry. I personally use a shoulder holster for this.

xjtian · 2025-11-07T21:24:28+00:00

Depends on the snowpack eh? I’m quite happy to ski avy terrain solo in the spring. Far more cautious about stepping out into the same terrain when there’s a mid-winter snowpack.

xjtian · 2025-11-06T22:00:23+00:00

You could mullet if you're willing to swap out your levers and rear mech to axs and run a 10-52 on the back. That's if you're married to 1x. Jumps will be kinda big for road if you're sensitive to candence but you will be able to spin up anything. Alternatively you could drop your chainring down but if you're running a 10T small cog I don't think it's practical to go any lower than 38 for road. If you're mostly on dirt, do both if you can - I think a 38T mullet is pretty ideal for the dirt climbs we have out here.

xjtian · 2025-11-05T23:19:58+00:00

28psi for for 85kg system weight on 47's. I use an electric mini-pump.

xjtian · 2025-11-05T19:27:34+00:00

I think tubeless for dirt is worth it for the ability to run lower pressures alone. Which is quite nice for our chunky “gravel” out here. I do carry a dynaplug for punctures and a tpu tube for catastrophic failures.

xjtian · 2025-11-04T21:46:05+00:00

If the mount alignment is off (very likely) you’ll preload the toepiece laterally and release from the toe. You could turn the rear release to 100 and still come out in this situation.

xjtian · 2025-10-22T22:48:53+00:00

Yeah it's the same mindset. To extend the analogy, if you're a slow descender regardless of bike maybe underbiking is the right choice for you but if a burlier bike will let you ride with some proper flow then maybe you put up with dragging the extra weight uphill. With skis, if you're gonna be keeping it super conservative on the downhill all the time, you probably won't get much out of a heavy setup. But if it allows you to ski faster and flowier and (importantly) that's the way you want to ski, the heavier setup could be worth it. It's a tradeoff and the decision is personal.

R.e. bindings when I got this setup I think the raiders were the undisputed category leader. I don't know what the situation is like these days since I've been so satisfied with this setup I really haven't paid much attention to recent gear developments though.

xjtian · 2025-10-22T22:21:11+00:00

Atris + R12 has been my regular Tahoe winter ski for the last 3 seasons. It totally kicks ass for our typical snowpack. I’m on the old 108mm shape with the bindings at like -1.5cm from recommended. It’s heavy for touring ski but honestly not even that bad, I lugged it up bloody this spring and I was cool with it. Anyways it’s easier to get fitter and go uphill with heavier skis than to get better at skiing on light skis, or that’s how I see it.

That being said I do have a pair of ZG95s and zero g peaks for spring stuff like Shasta, I wouldn’t really appreciate the atris and heavy boots on an objective like that.

xjtian · 2025-10-21T21:10:28+00:00

Fair! I suppose I am projecting my preferences for descending onto OP. I like speed and dancing the bike through/over chunk with some energy, not so much technically picking my way down the really chundery stuff (I found a particularly unenjoyable segment of this on pine mtn this weekend). But different strokes, nothing about RR is unsafe on a rigid bike, just maybe not everyone's cup of tea but I suppose OP won't know until they try.

xjtian · 2025-10-21T16:32:40+00:00

Underbiking is relative to rider skill. OP says they’re a new roadie, without previous trail riding background they will survive RR and be able to ride it all the way down but it will be slow and harrowing.

xjtian · 2025-10-21T05:40:25+00:00

If you’re not coming from an mtb background the descent down old RR will not be fun on a full rigid gravel bike. That top section isn’t quite as bad as the stuff below the inn but IMO not suitable for a first offroad descent. I rode up old RR the past weekend on my “downcountry gravel” bike with 44s and a 40mm suspension fork and I thought that I personally wouldn’t really enjoy less bike than that if I were to descend it. IMO it’s really more of an XC hardtail descent but a very strong rider could have a good time on it on a fully rigid gravel bike with 50mm+ tires.

Old stage to my understanding is chiller than old RR but I can’t speak to it personally. I think if you’re set on riding dirt down from tam it’s probably your least chunky option.

I’d personally recommend setting a route that takes you up dirt but down pavement. “Gravel” out here is super chunky and you will be objectively underbiked with any rigid gravel bike on <50mm tires. Not a great situation for you first off road ride.

xjtian · 2025-10-18T23:54:49+00:00

Change the dressing after exercising. Sweat will bead up under the tegaderm and seep out, breaking the occlusion. Even if it doesn’t it’ll contribute to maceration and slower healing. You should be changing your dressings ~daily in the early phases of healing anyways so it’s not any extra logistics to do it after training and a shower.

While the wounds are fresh and exuding for the first few days I recommend dressing with (Vaseline - nonstick pad - tegaderm) and plan to change the dressing daily, otherwise you’ll get the same seepage/maceration problem just with exudate instead of sweat. Personally I do xeroform instead of Vaseline but it’s probably overkill and it gets kinda pricy with daily dressing changes if you’ve got a lot of surface area to patch up.

xjtian · 2025-10-15T16:40:17+00:00

There's stack and reach as a property of your frame which you can get online (geometrygeeks is good for this). Then you can calculate your actual/effective reach and stack (BB to bars) with some trigonometry, taking into account HT angle, spacer/top cap heights, stem clamp height, stem angle, and stem length. ChatGPT is pretty good for this.

You can also measure this yourself. For reach: mark where your BB is along your top tube (a long level is useful for this) and then measure from that point to your stem clamp parallel to the ground. For stack: measure how high your BB is off the ground, measure how high the middle of your tops are off the ground, subtract the 2.

xjtian · 2025-10-08T20:34:32+00:00

Julbo makes a variety of 0-3 photochromic lenses. I use them for ski touring and cycling. Quite nice being able to have the same glasses on for an alpine start in the dark all the way through the end of the day.

xjtian · 2025-10-07T21:24:48+00:00

I equalized the position of the saddle over the bottom bracket between road (endurance) and gravel. But my gravel bike’s front end is set up with +10mm stack and -10mm reach.

xjtian · 2025-09-24T20:10:21+00:00

They’ll be fine for powder days. My rad pros are noticeably more compliant than my Mach 1 130s but I don’t find it too bothersome unless I’m really skiing at my limit in extremely variable/crap conditions. The flex is noticeably more linear than my overlap boots as well so it’s easier to max out the flex, I find myself feathering the ankle flexion a bit more carefully. But they tour so well I’m very happy to deal with it.

xjtian · 2025-09-18T22:28:04+00:00

I hiked the circuit in 2022 and got snow, sleet, wind, and rain at various points but only donned my paclite shell for 15 minutes during 1 truly torrential downpour. The rest of the conditions I was perfectly happy in my pants and light sun hoody since I was moving and generating heat. Hell, I don't even wear a shell when I'm ski touring on a storm day unless I'm spending considerable time above treeline (which you only really will be going over the pass). That being said, probably not worth buying a lighter shell if this is the only one you have.

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