The plan was simple and slightly stupid: six days in the high mountains, every classic pass within riding distance, on the lightest frame we sell. 21,000 meters of climbing later, the notes are less about the climbs than the descents.
Up
A 685-gram frame doesn't make you a climber, but it makes honesty cheaper: the bike disappears and leaves you alone with your power meter. By day three we stopped crediting the frame and started blaming our legs, which is exactly right.
Down
Big-mountain descents are twenty minutes of braking, and this is where the week earned its keep: no fade wander, no chattering front end at 80 km/h, and seatpost flex that read as calm rather than vague through broken hairpins.
The one change we made
Day four: swapped to the 28 mm tires we should have started with. Ten fewer psi bought more descending confidence than any component swap could — the cheapest upgrade in the van, as usual. The bike was a Spear RDC Frameset build.
This is a test article — content is illustrative while the store is in staging.
