[leadin]Overbuilt, grit-hungry road bikes capable of steamrolling tarmac and conquering trails are flooding the marketplace. Our test drive of Open Cycles’ Unbeaten Path proves it to be near the top of the pack.[/leadin]
Seems most everyone with a bike brand is pitching some variety of the gravel bike these days. Just as you thought the ‘cross games have reached critical mass, the industry has oozed into new off-road territory with a breed of plus-size, adventure ready mountain-“ish” gravel bikes.
This fall, we got our hands on a deliciously plump, orange-cream bike by Open Cycles. Never heard of them? Well, you’ve likely heard of the founders’ other projects: Gerard Vroomen cofounded Cervélo Cycles and Andy Kessler was the CEO of Swiss juggernaut BMC bikes.
Review: Open Cycles’ Unbeaten Path Bike
Fastidious perfectionists, the pair’s Unbeaten Path (U.P.) bike is the second steed in Open Cycles’ stable in four years. (Open’s first bike was a lithe hardtail frame that barely tipped the scales at 900 grams; that’s lighter than most road frames, people! It earned a title of the lightest 29er on the market.)
The new U.P. is a transformer of adventure bikes. Clever engineering has managed to preserve its racy road geometry while affording plush mountain bike tire clearance.
The company calls the U.P. a performance-oriented “gravel-plus” cross/road bike with clearance for mountain bike tires “so you can ride anywhere, and ride fast.”
We put the U.P. frame paired with 650b (27.5″) mountain bike tires to the test on Boise, Idaho, area roads and foothill trails, where we tackled both gravel and the beyond. Unbeaten Path or boulevard of broken dreams… read on to hear our take.
The Space Race
The priciest real estate on a bike crowds around the bottom bracket, where the chainring, crank, chainstay, and tire all fight for precious space.
Mountain bikes buy extra room for the knobbies by pushing the chainstay (and hence the chainring and cranks) out laterally, yielding more clearance. But this wider space doesn’t accommodate the narrower cranks and gearing found on cyclocross and road bikes.
By dropping the drive-side chainstay, Open picked the space gridlock, clearing nearly twice the space of the typical road bike while keeping the wheelbase short and sprightly.
And because the radius of a 700c road slick, 40mm cyclocross tires, and 650b mountain bike tires are nearly identical, the U.P. pulls a true hat trick, capable of running all three wheelsets on one frame without compromising the bike’s handling.