Evening, Based on the parameters and details you provided, I think that a Hillborne or Appaloosa would work well. Or an Atlantis instead of the Appaloosa. I have all three, all set up very differently, but each has gone through a lot of iterations. The key for me would be what type of trails you are wanting to ride, your size, and trail riding style. The Hillborne is a great bike, fun on the road and pretty nimble on the trail. The Hillborne has a smaller tire width max and lighter tubes. The Appaloosa or the Atlantis are longer and have stouter tubes. They also take up to a 2.2 tire. I've run both as primarily trail bikes and they handled pretty much anything I wanted to ride except for the most extreme trails in my local parks. They work really well as trail bikes. I've run them with 1x 11 (50 large cog) set ups, 3 x 9 with 11-34 cassettes, and now as 2x. I live in northern California and do a lot of climbing. The gearing has always been fantastic. My Appaloosa was my primary commuting bike for about five years.
Here's my Instagram if you want to get a look at some of the set ups that I've used over the years. It's mostly bikes: https://www.instagram.com/lith.o.carp.us/ Hope that helps! Erik On Friday, April 5, 2024 at 5:43:49 PM UTC-7 Bud Suttree wrote: With all that said, of the current offerings, what would y’all recommend? Thank you -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/078ef11e-5ee3-4327-a701-2fb3848a8e6cn%40googlegroups.com.