A lot of the moderately steep roads im the European Alps have been made or expanded on existing paths as military roads during the WW1 era. The inclination was chosen to enable transport of heavy artillery amongst others. Especially in areas where the front was fixed for a longer period or there was a threat deemed large enough, there are lots of nice gravel roads - although a lot in more remote areas have not been maintained for a long time.
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What Stuart says may be generally true but there are still some pretty vicious fire trails in the Brindabellas, and they do get snow there sometimes. It may be the case that in National Parks the aim is to minimise the size of road corridors where possible(?).
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Yep, I’ve seen/ walked up insanely steep fire trails in all sorts of places. They often have me wondering wtf the builder had in mind, since not much but a bulldozer could use them, and they invite erosion.
Can’t really comment much since I haven’t used this setup myself, but before Traka we installed it on a few of our customers’ bikes, and all in all, everyone had a positive experience with it (no mention of any issues). My only personal experience with it is replacing the shifter cage and tuning the gearing - all of which worked flawlessly so far.
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I purchased a V1 of the 12 speed 10-52 Garbaruk cassette that was on sale for my gravel bike a few months ago. After about 3 rides I noted that the teeth on the 52 tooth cog had bent. I contacted the seller and he put me in touch with Garbaruk who warrantied the whole cassette and sent me V2. I like the range of the cassette but have had issues with it making noise in the smaller cogs and shifting well under load. I can set it up so it shifts well in the stand but then it will be noisy in certain smaller cogs when riding. I’m using this with GRX shifters, a Deore XT wireless rear derailleur, and a waxed chain. I’d prefer to run SRAM on this bike but it doesn’t have UDH and wanted to give the new Shimano wireless stuff a go.
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Thought I’d share my experience…I have the v2 Garbaruk 13 speed 10-52, been using it for 10 days now with Force xplr mech and Force chain. Shifting is perfect, up and down the block and it is very quiet. Shifting is noticeably better than the eagle transmission it replaced, always one gear in the middle of the block it doesn’t quite like! Maybe the short chain stay on my mog…I have the Garbaruk on my gravel wheels and a force 10-46 cassette on my road wheels. To my great delight I can quickly swap in the road wheels, didn’t even need to micro-adjust the mech, happy days!
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I know this doesn’t answer the exact question, but I bought the 12 speed 10-48 cassette to replace my 10-44 cassette. It has worked flawlessly. I only had to make a minor b-screw adjustment. I’m very interested to hear a review about the 13 speed version!
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got a 10-52 13 speed cassette as not quite enough gearing for me with 10-46 on new gravel bike. shifts perfectly-as did the stock 10-46 and generally quiet but both it and the sram cassette are a little noisy in the 2 biggest cassette rings on bitumen-cant hear anything on gravel. did get the derailleur arm they suggest with it.
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Thanks Neil, which derailleur do you have?
My understanding is that the derailleur arm is not suggested for the Force mech that I have.
Interesting! I didn’t understand why XPLR added a cog, but kept the total range the small. I would have thought that the whole reason to go to 13 speed is in order to get smaller gaps while still having wide range.
Given the demand from both the tough end and the racing end for wider range cassettes, I’d have to think SRAM is working on a 13 speed wide range cassette.
Quick question: Did you also change out the stock rear deraileur cage to the Garabuk version for the 10-52? Or are you running the rear mech as-is stock?
Thanks!
I’ve been looking at both for an upcoming build. I suggest pulling your shifting history from your head unit and seeing what gears you spend the most time in, and where the jumps on the Garbaruk vs the SRAM cassette are.
I ran some Claude analysis on my riding and found that the 10-46 would actually give me better coverage overall than the Garbaruk.
Note I’m coming from GRX 2x and my gravel rides always include about 50% road just to get in and out of the dirt, so I need something that is a bit more swiss army knife than just lowest gear for the steepest climb.
red, hence changed the derailleur arm as they suggested and going fine so far with zero issues-shifting-perfect- and noise -mild on 2 easiest cassette gears-is identical to Sram cassette.
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Just reading in the comments you can keep chain length the same. Using SRAM Red XPLR does this mean you could run a road wheelset with 10-46 and a gravel wheelset with 10-52 and use the same chain? Paired with a 50T chainring that would be an amazing combo.
Officially, that depends on your specific bike chainstay length and chainring size.
Sram says I have to shorten my chain when I swap fro 40 to 38T chainrings, but it worked fine for me simply adjusting the rear mech without shortening the chain. Damned if I could tell any difference in shift quality.
I kept the Force mech as stock. Just removed the plastic guard and changed the jockey wheel cover as per Garbaruk instructions.
Chain length is determined by chain stay length and chain ring size. So if you’re just swapping the cassette you use the same chain. 50T is massive though, respect!
Ah - there you go again talking up big gearing!
We don’t do that around here anymore. 
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Thanks guys. Yes would need to upsize chain for bigger chainring for sure but I was thinking more for swapping between cassettes 10-46 and 10-52, sounds like it might be possible!
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