Is ‘grountain’ the new ‘groad’? Please, make it stop

Today has been one of those days where the news, at least from a bicycle tech standpoint, has been decidedly silly.

Hot on the heels of Assos releasing a winter jersey with a sunglasses holder on the upper arm (no, really), news has come across our desk of British brand Pashley launching (in its own words), a ‘grountain bike’, in the form of its new Wildfinder; a steel, suspension-corrected-frame with 2.4in tyre clearance, and mounting points galore.

There have been several attempts to smash the ‘gr’ from gravel into some ugly portmanteau in the past, with ‘groad’ being the only one that has, to a thankfully lesser degree, stuck. The bicycle industry has sensibly decided to either use ‘gravel’ or ‘all-road’ to describe variations of gravel bike from the road end of the spectrum, all the way through to the gnarly, lumpy bumpy extreme varieties.

Now however, primarily as a result of the likes of Dylan Johnson et. al. fitting drop bars to mountain bikes for the likes of Leadville 100, we are seeing more of these drop bar mountain bikes (no, not ‘grountain bikes’, how many times must I go over this). Lee Cougan has one, as does Ridley, and I’m sure there are plenty more out there, either officially or unofficially.

If it looks like a mountain bike but has drop bars, it’s a drop bar mountain bike. Hell, I’d even be happy to just say it’s a mountain bike and drop the ‘drop bar’ bit. If it was good enough for John Tomac it’s good enough for us.

If I use my cyclocross bike for gravel that doesn’t make it a gryclocross bike, and likewise if I take a gravelly diversion on my commute home my cargo bike doesn’t become a grargo bike (though I will accept gnargo bike, as it’s more audibly appealing).

We can’t just smash the start of gravel onto any bike we choose just because gravel is where the money is right now. While I do lament this ugly nomenclature, I do think we need to start adopting the ATB (all-terrain bike) label to more bikes. It’s far more elegant, and works for basically anything that isn’t a gravel race bike all the way to those machines, like this ‘grountain bike’ that are clearly just mountain bikes retrofitted with drop bars.