When I started bikepacking, I thought gravel bikes were the best all-rounder. So, in 2019, I was riding the French Divide on my gravel bike, which is when I realized I wasn’t completely right. There I was in the middle of France with 1,000km behind me and still 1,300 to cover on technical and rugged trails. My fingers were starting to go numb and my patience was disappearing as the days went by. At the end of the race, I barely cleaned my bike and put it aside (in fact, I still haven’t replaced the broken spokes!). It was decided: I was going to get a mountain bike!
Now, here we are in 2021, and I’ve had my SCOTT Scale 910 for over a year. It has been evolving since the start. It’s gone through several very different builds, such as 1). A long-distance gravel build with a Niner RDO BOOST rigid fork, an SP hub dynamo with a Sinewave Beacon, and a Redshift ShockStop Suspension Stem; 2). A light and fast gravel build with the Niner fork, Redshift stem, Syncros carbon wheels, and Schwalbe G-One tires; and 3). The latest build, my favorite and the one I present here… and the closest to what an MTB should look like, with a 100 mm Fox suspension fork and Syncros carbon wheels. No more dynamo since while riding technical stuff, speeds are too low to successfully charge anything.
Each of the above builds has its pros and cons, and what I find really cool is knowing that with the same platform I can cover all of these different types of riding by adjusting it to my needs. The build you see here left me with a feeling of “Ahh, this is what I was looking for,” and felt perfect from the first ride. With it, I have the feeling of having everything I need on the bike to ride for several days without feeling the weight of my stuff swinging around. Having a loaded bike, but one that stays light and that allows me to tackle technical sections without setting foot on the ground, not feeling like I’ll get kicked off the bike with every bump… it was really an incredible feeling, surely not new to most readers, but new to me, who was forcing myself to follow a hype, maybe, to ride fully rigid.