Gravel used to be easy, right?

Take a slacker road bike, mount bigger tires, and hit the backroads.

But the category split into niches faster than anything before it. Where mountain biking took decades to have XC, downcountry, trail, all-mountain, enduro, and DH, gravel branched out in just a few short years.

Now we have all-purpose gravel, gravel race bikes, adventure bikes, bikepacking bikes, and even a couple of full suspension models floating around.

And now, thanks to Keegan Swenson and Dylan Johnson’s latest stab at Leadville, we have Monster Gravel.

What is a Monster Gravel Bike?

When gravel courses were smooth dirt roads with the occasional veer onto buff singletrack, a standard gravel bike could do just fine.

But when the pros started breaking records on “tame” mountain bike courses like Leadville, their mountain bikes got more and more aero and purpose built. Until finally, they put drop bars on them and “Monster Gravel” was born.

So, yeah, a Monster Gravel Bike started life as a hardtail XC race mountain bike with a gravel handlebar and 29×2.2” tires.

Whoa, how did we get here?

Quick history lesson. Modern gravel riding started with the Salsa Warbird, but it picked up as more riders started using their cyclocross bikes year ‘round to get off the pavement.

The idea caught a tailwind and, as happens, the industry jumped on the trend to deliver bikes purpose built for it.

Where a road bike’s BB is low and angles are sharp, a traditional cyclocross bike raised the BB for better pedal-to-ground clearance and made room for slightly larger tires, generally maxing out around 700×35. But the angles stayed sharp, because ‘cross racers want snappy handling.

Gravel bikes put the BB height somewhere between the two. More importantly, they gave them a slacker head angle for better stability while cruising loose grit and washboard roads, and room for even bigger tires.

Fast forward a few years, and we have all of the above mentioned permutations to accommodate a wider variety of off-tarmac adventures. And races.

And then came the components

Just like mountain bike gearing has gotten wider with 1x chainrings, most gravel bikes followed suit. You can still run a front derailleur if you want, but out back, the large cog is typically 44 to 52 teeth, which is basically MTB territory.

Rims and tires have gotten wider, handlebars have flared, and stems shrunk. All in, it’s a great time to grab a gravel bike and go fast.

Unless you want to go really fast on really tough terrain…

This is where Monster Gravel comes in

There are a few gravel bikes that can fit a 29×2.2” XC mountain bike tire, and more are coming, but the frame isn’t usually the limiting factor, it’s the forks. And therein lies the rub, sometimes literally: Gravel suspension forks aren’t designed to fit tires that big.

Not only would a semi-knobby 2.2” MTB tire sit dangerously close to the arch and lowers on a gravel fork (if it fit at all), it would very likely rub the bottom of the fork crown under full compression.

So, racers put 100mm travel XC forks on hardtails just so they could run the bigger tires without any clearance issues.

They’re also running XC mountain bike tires because, at present, there’s a very limited selection of gravel tires offered in 700×56 (aka 29×2.2”) or larger sizes. Schwalbe and Rene Herse have a few, but their tread patterns are nowhere near as aggressive as XC mountain bike tires.

What’s the future? Will true Monster Gravel bikes be a thing?

Earlier this year, I rode the Oregon Trail race aboard a Storm King GP with a 40mm suspension fork, 75mm dropper post, 700x48mm tires, and a 46/33 chainring with a 10-36 cassette on the back.

At the time, that seemed like an aggressive build. Now, just a few months later, it seems normal, almost quaint.

Johnson and Swenson have us all thinking, what if…? What if we had a 50-60mm travel gravel fork with 2.2” tire clearance?

Technically, our Storm King already fits a 29×2.2 tire, but what if we made a gravel bike with geometry built specifically around that tire size and travel?

Hmmm…I wonder what that might look like in titanium?

Stay tuned, lemme hit the CAD program…

***P.S.- While the black drop bar bike in the pictures above does not actually exist, if this is something you are interested in, definitely reach out to us as we see this as the future and have plans in place for it already and would be happy to build you something to meet those demands.