Doing a CX race on Sunday, currently -4C with 6″ snow. What bike set up would you recommend – I’m riding hobby class on a MTB with 50cm bars and 26″wheels, so:

1 x 9 gears or 38:18 SS ?
1.35 Schwalbe CX Tyres or 2.35F&R Nobby Nics or 2.35 NN Fr/2.35 High Roller rear ?

Course is 1 mile long with 35m up.

Advice appreciated, mainly on gears
Simon

What bike set up would you recommend

A very light one – you’ll be carrying it a lot in 6″ of snow!

1 x 9 gears and the Schwalbe tyres.
Good luck and have fun!

gears!

Gears might help as ss ratio might be too high for snow. But they might clog – maybe too cold for that though?

Tyres – I found ss tyres (35-42) worked well today even in uncompressed snow, I suspect 2.35s would be too hard work in compressing the snow.

Hamme Zogge Super Prestige, November 2008.

No idea what Nys, Albert, Pauwels et al were riding, but they were all still damned quick, even in Belgium’s worst snow for 30 years.

I’d go SS. Good chance your mech will get clogged up anyway. I’d go a bit lower on the gearing though.

I rode a CX race on my 26″ bike with those 1.35 Schwalbe CX tyres on Sunday with 32:15 (I had been riding 32:13 for the rest of the series). There was only a couple of cm of snow, but it was hard work on the uphill sections. I think if you are talking about 6″ snow, I’d go 32:18.

I did the tod’ cross race in Jan on 42×18 – that was too high a ratio for the hill and undulations, fine on flat. ace clearances! Just kept on working. could have done with something like 38/40×20.

racing in the snow can hurt;

http://vc-moulin.blogspot.com/2010/11/snow-cross.html

38 x 11/28 … in deep snow needed the low gear.

Tufo Cubus tyres running pretty low pressure… could feel the rim bottoming out on alot of course.