Scouting the Maneha in Two Feet of Snow

We've been spoiled in Massachusetts this winter; from November through the end of January there was barely a snowflake so we could ride every trail.  Then, just Tuesday, we met Juno:  the blizzard of the year for our area.  It's making trail riding impossible.  But the road riding is a blast!

We'll return to the regularly scheduled trail designing as soon as we're back to only a few inches of snow.  Until then we're working on our handling and balance in the slippery snow.

Garmin Settings for Mixed-Terrain Riding

Used in creative ways, your Garmin can really set you free and fundamentally change the way you ride.

People very often ask us how we find all these fantastic trails; the Garmin is one of the best tools for the job.

Here are some of our recommendations for optimal Garmin GPS settings for mixed terrain riding – rides where there are turns every 50 feet.

Every Garmin model is different so some of this information will require modification for your specific model.  These details are for the Garmin 810 but the guidelines hold true for nearly every Garmin model.

Most Important

Before heading out to the trails check these on your Garmin:

  • Is the battery fully charged?  If not, get it going; it charges very fast so even ten minutes of charging will go a long way on the road and trail.
  • Is the route really loaded?  Don’t trust the desktop computer; check the Garmin unit directly.
  • Are Open Street Maps loaded?  These are really valuable for mixed terrain riding.  Don’t use Garmin maps for trail riding.

Maximizing Battery Life

If you’re not paying attention your Garmin unit could only last 4-hours or even less.  Check these setting to help maximize the battery.  You can easily get 8+ hours of battery life by doing these simple modifications:

  • Have the back-light as low as you can stand.  This is by far the number one function to extend battery life.  I always have mine set to the lowest possible setting and it's plenty visible.  Modify this setting during the ride – based on the amount of sunlight – in order to extend the battery life even farther.  Some Garmin units have an auto-adjust that works well.
  • Turn off the heart rate monitor.
  • Turn off everything you're not using:  ANT, Bluetooth, etc.
  • For rides of 8 hours or more, carry a backup battery and the correct USB cable.  I also carry reusable zip ties so I can connect the battery to the handlebar securely.  I usually have some kind of feedbag that the battery can fit in, too, but not always.
  • Cold weather kills the battery.  Not much you can do about this other than carry a backup battery in your pocket - to keep it warm - and use it when you have to.  Keeping the battery in a bar bag help extend its life, too.

Optimizing Your Garmin For Mixed-Terrain Riding

We create a profile called "Mixed-Terrain" or "Overland" that has most of this ready to go.  We also have a "Road" profile that's quite different than what we do for mixed-terrain riding.

Fundamentally, we use our Garmin as a map rather than a cue sheet.  Therefore, the following works best:

  • Set the map view to 200 feet or 120 feet.  This provides a good balance of seeing the turn that’s about to happen and seeing ahead on the route.
    • 200 feet is great for true mixed-terrain.  It's close enough 'in' that you can see tight turns on the trails, and it's far enough 'out' that you can see turns ahead on the road at 20 mph.
    • 120 feet is great for heavy-duty trail riding.  If you're mostly on trails you won't miss any turns when your Garmin is set to 120 feet.  Road turns come up awfully fast, though.
    • Sometimes we'll switch back and forth but this is surprisingly disorienting for us.  When you've settled in on 200 feet you get used to when the turn is coming up; switching to 120 make the next turn a bit more confusing.
  • Set the map screen as your ‘home’ screen while riding, not on the cue sheet screen.  The map is really all you want to be looking at throughout the ride.  Cue sheets don’t work for trail riding.  The map screen allows for two data fields so if you really want to track any data 100% of the time, you can set two fields up on this screen – speed and distance to completion are popular data fields.
  • Check these settings:
    • Recalculation: Off
    • Lock on Road: No
    • Turn of the "turn by turn" setting.  This can get in the way of watching the trail.  The white arrow stays on the screen after the turn; sometimes in mixed-terrain you'll have turns on turns on turns, so this function, while helpful on the road, becomes a liability on the trail.
    • Turn off cues.  Again, these get in the way on the trail.  Cues can be helpful on road rides but they are not accurate enough for trail riding.
    • While in the Navigation screen:  Click Orientation: Track Up
  • Set the backlight 'on' because you’ll be turning every 50 feet, you don’t want the backlight to shutoff.  Unless your ride is shorter than two hours, set the backlight at the lowest setting you can tolerate; at a fairly low setting you can get towards 10-hours of battery life.

Keep the Garmin from trying to send you back to the start of the ride:

  1. Click the Tool icon, bottom right-hand corner of screen
  2. Activity Profiles
  3. Click the Profile that you're using for the ride
  4. Click Enable - to be sure this is the one you're using for the ride
  5. Click Navigation
  6. Click Routing

Additional Recommendations

  • Turn the alert sounds off.  Because there are usually hundreds of turns on mixed-terrain, the sound will tend to get very annoying very fast.  We prefer to hear the crickets and frogs rather than our Garmins.
  • Turn down the speed for auto pause.  In dirt sometimes you are likely to roll slower uphill than the auto pause will expect.  On most Garmin models the screen will alert you of auto pause and restart – and will lock on that text.  This can be really irritating.  We recommend 1 mile per hour or no auto-pause at all.

Night Riding

Not much is different in setup between day and night other than:

  • One of the many reasons to ride at night is that you can have your Garmin back-light setting as low as it can go and it's still very easy to see at night.
  • Navigating is more challenging at night because the terrain comes at you faster.  This trains you to plan better.  Keep a closer eye on your Garmin; look ahead on the screen to find the next turn.  Once you've settled on a resolution - like 200 feet - don't change it.

There are as many ways to set up your GPS device as there are ways to traverse a rock garden.  What settings do you tailor for your mixed-terrain riding?

Finding The Right Trails

Garmin Says:  "Continue to Alley."  Now that's my kind of ride!

People very often ask us how we find all these fantastic trails.  How we map the hundreds of local trail sectors is complicated and time consuming.  One of the many tools of the trade is a Garmin 705 or higher.  It really is one of the best tools for the job.  We also use a pen and paper, paper maps, mapping software, and a few other disparate tools.

Used in creative ways, your Garmin can really set you free and fundamentally change the way you ride.  It definitely has changed the way we ride, route, explore, and enjoy.  Garmins get a lot of flack for lots of good reasons, but we wouldn't trade ours in for anything.  Some people seem to suggest that riders become slaves to their Garmins.  I suppose that could be true.  But, what's true for Overland Base Camp is that it really is a tool for accelerating freedom.  We get to ride and share more trails faster and in a more fun way than we otherwise could.

Do your electronics set you free or tie you down?  Which of yours do what for your riding enjoyment?

Weighty Matter: Bicycle Saddles

This is part of our ongoing series about making your adventure bike lighter, more durable, and funner to ride.

Today we're talking about saddles.  Choosing the right performance saddle is one of the easiest and best ways to pull more than half-a-pound out of your bike.

Saddle:  Contemporary vs. Classic Leather

Weight Savings:  Weight variation between saddles can easily be more than 250 grams or 9 ounces.  For example:

  • Fizik Alliante saddle:  250 grams.  This is a high quality, durable, contemprary saddle.  There are many like this.  You can get a durable saddle that's as light as 170 grams.
  • Brooks B17:  530 grams.  This is nearly 330 grams heavier - more than 11 ounces - than a good light saddle.
  • Brooks Cambium C15:  405 grams.

We can't tell you how many times we've hear "lightweight bike" and and "Brooks B17" in the same sentence.  These two concepts have a very difficult time going together.

Also, saddle weight is disproportionately noticeable on a bike because it sits so far from the bike's center or gravity that the weight is more noticeable when standing.

Of course, saddles are like shoes:  Everyone has a different preference.  

Most people choose a leather saddle for one of two reasons:

  1. Aesthetics:  If you prefer the style of a leather saddle, done.  Go for it.  but know that you are paying a high price.
  2. Comfort:   This is the primary reason we hear people switching to a leather saddle.  The best fitters we know remind us that if you think a leather saddle will solve your saddle-to-body issues, you're most likely wrong; something else is going on.  In other words, a leather saddle is rarely, if ever, the proper solution to saddle soars, saddle pain, numbness, or chaffing.  If you have any of these issues, work on the fit of the bike and invest in a high-quality saddle, but leave a leather saddle as the last resort; we bet you won't have to end up there.  Contemporary saddle quality and hundreds of options almost guarantee that you wont resort to leather.

Leather saddles also require care and maintenance.  The idea of protecting your saddle from rain and inclement weather, and having to adjust it as it breaks in, are two concepts we don't want to think about during a six-day adventure ride.

By the way, we love Brooks; they make some great items and they're very supportive of adventure riding.  They make some of their own goods - such as saddles, and they have a good spirit.  And, we rarely recommend any of their full leather saddles.