Hi Tom,

A slight variation on the valuable detail above.  I hope this is useful:

In my tour North-to-South through the Rockies & to the Washington coast in 2016, I used a 17 x 36 combination on my Raven, with 26" wheels and 1.6" Marathon Supremes.  That gave me a gear-inch ration of 15.6 in my lowest gear.

There were a lot of hills on that tour, but they tended to be long (say, 25 kms) with a moderate grade (4-6%). If memory serves, I used my 1st gear only 4 times in about 2200 kms -- twice on the Icefields Parkway, once south of Canmore in Alberta, and once in the States, west of Montana (would have to check the detail.)

Each time I used low gear, it was for about a kilometre to reach to summit of a particular pass, and the climb was no problem.

As a comparison:  On a 5-day ride in the hill country NW of Ottawa in 2021, I used my low gear about 15 times in 175 kms -- the hills were steeper (usually around 8-10%) and shorter, and on the whole, more demanding than what I encountered in the West.

Good luck to you & Kathy, and enjoy!

John

 

I use 150 or 155 mm cranks, with these I pedal faster than I did with standard 170 mm cranks. So I set my gearing lower than most people.

On my Raven Tour touring bike, used mainly for loaded touring, I currently have 38x21.

This gives me a range of 13 to 67 gear inches. The input ratio of 1.81 is slightly lower than the minimum of 1.9 recommended by Rohloff, but as I put less torque on the hub with the short cranks I reckon I am unlikely to break it.

The lowest gear of 13 inches equates to 5.5 kmh at 90 rpm. With this gear the limiting factor on steep hills is keeping balance (front panniers help to keep the front wheel on the road) and tyre adhesion. A gear this low is only useful on a steep hill when I am really tired at the end of a long day.

The top gear of 67 inches seems low, but equates to 29 kmh at 90 rpm, a speed that I can only rarely maintain with a loaded bike on the level. If necessary, I can up my pedalling cadence to about 120 rpm for very short periods to get the top speed up to about 40 kmh, for example when negotiating roundabouts, where I reckon it is best to match the speed of other vehicles as far as possible.

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On my Raven Sport Tour, used for lightly-loaded day rides, the gearing is higher. 42x19 with a range of 15 to 80 gear inches.

At 90 rpm, this gives 6.6 kmh in lowest gear and 35 kmh in highest gear.

Max speed is about 46 kmh at 120 rpm.

PH, now that's an idea!

A bigger sprocket should be cheaper than a smaller chainring and a pair of bigger gears is marginally more efficient than a pair of smaller gears with the same ratio. Changing the sprocket from 16T to 18T is approximately the same as one gear step on the Rohloff hub (as is changing the chainring to 32T). However, if thinking of changing the chainring you also need to check the size of the spider. If it's 130mm BCD then 38T is the minimum chainring size.

Not for me, though I lusted after one 20+ years ago.
Who might it be for?  An idea of the size might narrow it down