The almighty basket bike. It doesn’t need to be fancy. Doesn’t need flashy components. Just build it out for practical uses… like wallrides!
Earlier this year, Bailey got the idea to convert this older Rocky Mountain Hammer frame into a basket bike. His intent with the bike was to have a no-nonsense, do-it-all beater that he could lock up anywhere and not worry about it. Yet, because it’s Bailey, there was a twist to this bike’s use…
Intent
He wanted a bike he could climb our main artery singletrack on, the Winsor tail, and lock it up at the Wilderness gate, and then backpack into one of the many alpine lakes to camp for the night, returning to the bike the next day, only to descend back down to town on glorious singletrack. To give you some perspective, that’s a ten-mile climb with over 4,000′ in elevation. Then, it’s a 12-mile hike into his favorite lake spot. This is a feat not for mere mortals, yet something we can all aspire to.
Parts Breakdown
This is a parts-bin build for the most part, aside from the cockpit, which was an upgrade in the interest of comfort: a Thomson stem with a set of DOOM Bars, made in Albuquerque, down the hill from Santa Fe. Adjacent to the bars is a Monkey Wrench Cycles caddy bag.
The drivetrain is centered around a pair of period-correct Specialized Strongarm cranks, a RaceFace ring, paired with a 1x SRAM XX1 rear mech and shifter.
The SOMA rack holds a trusty Wald 139, used to carry… well, stuff!
Avid levers and XTR V-Brakes offer a choice upgrade in stopping power, aboard the Surly fork.
The bike has some bling too though! Matching Salsa quick-release seat collar, Wolf Tooth spacers, and yeah, those are matching anodized rack bolts.
That bottle? It’s from our friend Steven Nereo.
About that Wallride
I love this thing. It’s like an old drive-in movie screen, built atop a tasty, six-foot dirt embankment in the back of a neglected dirt jump course. Scattered throughout the jumps are massive piles of goathead thorns (Tribulus terrestris). Could that be why it’s neglected? These things wreak havoc on inner tubes all over the American West and last I checked, BMX hasn’t adopted tubeless technology.
Bailey and I saw this wallride this summer. At the time, we planned on returning another day to shoot this photo. That turned into months and today, on a cloudy, overcast afternoon, we decided to pedal out and examine the feasibility of nailing the wallride and photo.
As it goes, he hit it once, I got the sequence, and upon landing, his wheel folded. Taco’ing a wheel is just part of riding like this on old, radially laced wheels. We got the photos at least and I proceeded to shoot photos of the bike in situ with a disconnected front brake.
Basket bikes rarely get thrashed like this but everyone loves sharing their own, so post your basket bike up in the comments!
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