Last updated on November 26, 2020
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About once per season I make a poor riding choice, resulting in a need to do a bit of drivetrain maintenance. Today was another one of those days.
I set out after work to ride at River Bends, and after finding almost the entire old (existing as of two months ago) single track to be in fine shape I headed into the newest section. Jeremy had warned of the conditions there, but his post was from yesterday, we’d had some dry weather since then, and I had a fatbike, so I figured it would be okay. I was wrong.
There seemed to only be around 500′ of real problem trail in the whole 0.7 mile section, but this was enough to get clay sticking to my tires and sending everything going wrong. Conditions weren’t of the sort which would cause a problem for the trail but it definitely caused some bike problems. There was no rutting and no sloppy mud; just sticky clay which was a bit worse in places where the surface had been churned during recent trail construction work.
With a fatbike because the chain is so close to the rear tire, mud hanging off of the side often gets scraped off on the chain. This in turn gets carried into the chainrings, then on to the derailleur and into the cassette, and soon enough the whole thing is a mess. Combine this with a greasy corner in which I fell and laid the bike down packing the derailleur full and I was done. I rode one pass through the entrance trail afterward, but shifting wasn’t working right.
I’ve rinsed off the bulk of the clay, scrubbed the chain, and now it’s sitting in degreaser. This weekend I’ll have to find some time to properly clean it, as I’m hoping to ride the fatbike quite a bit this winter and I want to keep it as it was. With the forecasted rain it looks like cleaning time won’t be hard to find, though… Most of my riding will probably end up being on the trainer.
Beyond the one above, here’s two more pictures showing the build-up from the chain cleaning off the tire: build-up on the rear derailleur and chain-packed dirt in the cassette.
(…and yes, I realize how much this post seems to contradict the message in the one right before it. Ruts weren’t left, the trail wasn’t damaged, and the rest of it was fine for riding. I’d just lifted a bunch of crap from some select sections of trail and packed them into my drivetrain. I’m rather looking forward to things freezing solid so this will no longer happen.)