Trekking Bars?

[bjjoondo]

My wife and I got back into bicycling this year, we bought a couple of hardtail MTB's, thought we'd be riding mostly off road but have decided we really prefer paths/trails and road riding. We've converted over to thinner road type tires, added racks, etc. and even "extentions" to our straight bars but I've been looking at "Trekking Bars". Has anyone here changed over to Trekking Bars?  If you have let me know what you think about them. We still do some of the "dirt paths", in our area (Pikes Peak Greenway and Santa Fe Trail) so we didn't want to go to full drop bars, thanks any help would be greatly appreciated.

B.J. and Jo Ondo
Slowly working our way into touring!

[Galloper]

Not absolutely sure what you mean by trekking bars.  Do you mean butterfly bars?   These are the loop ones you often find on trekking bikes like Koga.   I have a pair of these on my Dawes Karakum and they're great general purpose bars.   They offer a good range of hand positions and excellent control.   

I tend to have my hands on the top section for climbing, on the sides on rough tracks and on the bottoms for cruising.

They're fine on dirt tracks and pave and other than full on MTB'ing work very well

[bjjoondo]

Not absolutely sure what you mean by trekking bars.  Do you mean butterfly bars? 

Thanks, I knew they had another name but didn't know it, yes it sounds like that's the bars I'm asking about. For some reason my LBS seems to be having a hard time finding a supplier for this style of bar, I'll give him the "Butterfly Bar" name and see if that makes it easier to find for them, again thanks. We've got high extentions on our MTB straight bars now but I think the butterfly bars would offer better usage riding roads!

[Galloper]

There's a shop/mail order company in the UK if you can't source them locally

http://www.jejamescycles.co.uk/id22440.html

best of luck

[bktourer1]

Nashbar carries them from time to time.  If you use a mirror look at they Zefal "SPY" mirror or the Ultralight mirror on the Ortlieb site.  I have both.

[gregg]

I have a Soma groove hardtail mountain bike that I use for touring, trail riding, and commuting. After completing a 1000 mile tour on it 2 years ago, I came back very dissatisfied with my handlebar setup, which (at that time) consisted of standard mountain bike bars with bar ends. After some research I switched to trekking bars and have been riding with those for the last two years. For me they were a vast improvement over the standard bars. I no longer experience any hand numbness, and am much more comfortable on the bike. They are fantastic for most riding, but (perhaps not surprisingly) do not work as well off road as the old bars. They are o.k., but not what I would use for really fast off road downhills that require one to keep your hands near the brakes while muscling the bar around. Given that, for my purposes they are ideal. I got mine from Wallingford bikes which are located in the USA at http://www.wallbike.com/

The model I got was the 570 mm bars.

[bjjoondo]

Thanks all for the tips, a kindly soul, had a spare set and gave them to me for "shipping", thanks again and my LBS finally got a source so now both our MTB's have been converted to the "trekking bars" and we couldn't be happier!! We noticed were not "shaking our hands" out and the little nagging pain in the lower neck is gone too and that's just riding around the area MUP's and Rail-trails! Now we just have wait till late spring/summer to try our hand at some overnight/weekend "mini-tours", working our way up to multi-days in the future, again, THANKS!

[trout]

I've been using the Nashbar Trekking Bar on my touring bike for several years and I do love them. They are a keeper for me.

[nancysv]

I've been using the butterfly bars for the past 20,000 miles or so and love them!  We took off on tour years ago and I had the standard mountain bike bars - after a couple months my hands hurt so badly we nearly had to call the trip off.  I raised my bars up and switched to the butterflies and it mostly took care of the problem.  We continued on for another 10 months after that, then took a year off.  Now we've been on the road for 18 months and I am still very happy with my butterfly bars!  I discovered that piling about 5 layers of bar tape on them so they are nice and fat makes them very comfy.

[dwnptrl_777]

I'm no 20K mile trekking bar user like the above poster (nice miles, nancysv!), but I switched to trekking bars on my Long Haul Trucker and can't imagine going back. A thousand miles of use later, including overloaded 70+ hill climb rides to using the setup for a duathlon this spring, I love it.

To those looking for trekking bars: good luck finding 'em at Nashbar. You're better off paying a bit more to ship 'em to the US from the UK, via http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/. The model I got from 'em is Modolo's "Yuma Traveler" in black. I set it up with bar end shifters (the stock ones from the LHT build), mated to Paul Thumbies (MTB version). Here's some photos: