Nathan went all out on this build! From frame design to finishwork and all parts in between. You can see the amount of effort we all put in for this to be his daily driver and quiver killer. The custom geometry is fit to his body, riding style, and where it’ll primarily be ridden. It’s not a MTB so the BB height is low – anything smaller than a 700×40 will be a bit spicy – but that also means he can run 29×2.4’s and still feel planted when bikepacking and doing big rides on dirt. I guess this would be considered an ATB, or Allrounder, but i like Dirtdrop the best so that’s what I called it…basically a mountain biker’s “road” bike. It’s the kind of bike you use for most of what you ride and just change the wheels or tire size when you feel like it. Frame has full internal cable routing (metal bike version where you push in the housing and it comes out the other end so there’s no fiddling required). I included dropper post routing should he swap to that one day. It’s got rack mounts for in his case a Tumbleweed mini-pannier when carrying more stuff. We used Paragon Sliding dropouts to adjust the ride quality and add or remove tire clearance – further back means a lot more room for bigger tires and a smoother ride when touring with the longer chainstay length.
Most of this year he’s been using the Corvus Passhunter fork, which is only 435mm axle to crown, 50/55mm offset flip-chip, and fits a 29 or 27.5 x 3″ tire. It also has all the bosses for cages, rack, and fenders so it was a perfect match while he waited for the Squidfork to arrive.
Nathan plans to ride up and around as many volcanoes as he can with this bike so he had an idea of what to ask for in terms of finishing. Agave Finishworks came up with this stunning volcano-themed anodization. Nathan got his own headbadge design made which Agave used to match the compass icon on the seat tube. To tie it all together, Agave matched the ano on their Juniper collar and titanium stem, King cages, Eriksen Sweetpost, and Cane Creek eeWings.
So far this bike has ridden the Westfjords Way and the Rift gravel races in Iceland, gone back and forth along the the Denali Highway at the foot of the Alaska Range, and has done tons of urban assault and big mixed rides around Anchorage.
Ohh, nice!!