Surly Moonlander Review: The Perfect Bike For A Bucket List Trip – Spencer Harding | The Radavist | A group of individuals who share a love of cycling and the outdoors.

The totally redesigned Surly Moonlander shocked fatbikers with its 24 x 6.2” tires, long wheelbase, and a Pinion gearbox. Surly Bikes had finally returned to their roots, designing a wholly innovative and ridiculous fat bike for equally crazy cyclists. There is a lot to unpack with the new Moonlander fat bike and its paradigm-shifting capabilities. See Spencer’s thoughts and his bucket list adventure with the new Moonlander below…

I was out on a ride with a friend from a local bike shop when she offhand mentioned some crazy-ass specs for the new Surly Moonlander. 24” rims? A Pinion gearbox? Mid-tail frame? What in tarnation was Surly up to? It seemed Surly was catching a second wind for the party they started when they released the Pugsley as the first production fat bike. The Pugsley frame and fork were both asymmetrical to work with available part standards. It was an insane bike by all measures. The Moonlander V2 takes up that banner of innovation.

Young Love

I was so enamored with fat bikes some years ago, and I dreamed of riding wherever the hell I wanted. The adventures of Steve “Doom” Fassbinder and Mike Curiak enthralled me. Likewise, I distinctly remember riding the first Moonlander when it came out. I was tall bike touring through SLC and stopped in at Saturday Cycles to pedal one around the parking lot. Monster truck was definitely an attitude, but my hype was quickly tempered when I learned about Federal Wilderness restrictions on bikes and that the huge tires didn’t like riding in untrammeled snow. I even learned that riding on a road closed due to snow technically became Wilderness. I’ve run up against it all at this point.

Since moving to Tucson, I have checked out from the fat bike world. A fat bike was now a bike I really wished I could own but could not justify. After going to extreme lengths to make my Crust Scapebot a singlespeed fat bike, I feel mostly satiated. Comparing the OG 26 x 3.8” tires to the 24 x 6.2”, you can really see how far fat bikes have come since their inception.

24” Fat Aint New

While 24-inch fat bike wheels may be obscure, the idea is not new. I was first introduced to the idea of a 24” fat bike rim via Erik Noren’s (Peacock Groove) line of Cake Bikes. Blix had a custom Cake Bike made around the 24 x 4” platform back in 2017. The smaller wheels allowed for appropriate proportions and a more manageable tire size. The same size wheels were also seen on a few kids’ fat bikes from Specialized and KHS.

Cake Bikes never took off, and it is a cryin’ shame; it was and still is a great idea for smaller folks. 27.5 x 4”, 26 x 5”, or 29 x 3” all have roughly the same effective outer diameter, making frame geometry for smaller people quite difficult. The new 24 x 6.2” still keeps with that large effective outer diameter but Surly making 24” fat rims at least means we can snag a backup pair of rims for Blix’s Cake Bike since HED only had a limited run of rims for Cake Bikes.

Surly Moonlander Quick Hits

4130 Steel Frame
Pinion C1.9 XR 9spd Gearbox
12 x 197mm hub spacing front and rear
Sizes: S, M, L(reviewed), XL
$4199 complete $1199 Frameset
Color: Lunar Dust Gray
Surly Molenda 24 x 6.2” 60 TPI tires (tubeless)
Surly Clown Royal 24” x 100mm rims
Lightweight TPU tubes (363g/ 12oz)

Pinion C1.9 Gearbox

There are, unusually, two elephants in the room: a pinion gearbox and those 24 x 6.2” tires. Let’s take a quick dive into the Pinion gearbox. Replacing the standard drivetrain is a bottom bracket-mounted Pinion gearbox. The C1.9 model has nine gears spanning a 568% gear range; for comparison, SRAM’s Eagle drivetrain provides a 520% gear range. As one can imagine, that leads to some pretty large jumps between gears.

The Pinion gearbox transmission and the rear wheel both freewheel, which adds up to a low degree of pedaling engagement between the two. Not ideal for single-track techy riding. I was dubious of the need for a Pinion gearbox on this bike, but I have been convinced otherwise. The Pinion gearbox has some faults, but if you plan to use this bike in extreme conditions, it passed my test.

Clown Royal Rims and Molenda Tires

Surly developed new rims (Clown Royal, lol) and Molenda tires specifically for the Moonlander. As I mentioned earlier, 24″ fat rims have existed but are hard to find these days. Years ago, Surly looked at the maximum chain line possible with current parts and found ~6.25” to be the upper limit of what was possible without making new standards or proprietary parts.

The Molenda and its 6.2” diameter are in a league of their own – the current largest tire I can divine from the web is a Vee Rubber Shoeshoe 2XL (26 x 5.05”). If you wanna dig deep into the MTBR forums and Mike Curiak’s tire/rim comparisons, check out these forum threads.

Now that Surly has kindly opened the door to such an insane tire combo and fronted the bill for the tire molds, I bet some frame builders will have a heyday building frames around these new components. It seems Jeny Curiak was already able to fit the new Surly Clown Royal/Molenda combo on her existing custom Meriwether.

All The Rest

I don’t wanna get super bogged down in all the parts specs – everything worked fine, but I have some gripes. The grips were the worst my hands have experienced in years. The pattern was like sandpaper after a few hours of riding, and the metal clamp between the grip and the grip shifter was a terrible idea.

Grip shifters limit your grip options and it is one of the main reasons I don’t like them. The Surly Terminal bar was absolutely the wrong bar for this bike (IMHO), so I swapped it for a generic Salsa flat bar. Moving this amount of bike around with a 735 mm wide swept back bar was an injustice I could not suffer. Everything else worked damn well good enough.

Geometry

THIS BIKE HAS 6.2” TIRES, GEO DOESN’T MATTER. The bike is long, not as long as a Big Dummy, but longer than “normal”. You aren’t going to buy this bike cause the head tube angle is .5 degree slacker than last year, you are going to buy it for the huge-ass tires. Moving on…

Get Outta Town

When I first got wind that I was actually going to receive one of these bikes (via a proper pallet freight delivery), my imagination was full of ideas. My mind instantly went to rivers. The Moonlander’s huge tires inspired me to think about rivers as a possible means of traversing territory relatively unridden by bikes. As climate change ravages all of our expectations of weather and cattle, alfalfa, and tamarisk suck up what remains of the west’s desert rivers, we can rethink what is possible.

In the end, one place shined through all my ideas, and I had to give it a shot. I have been eyeing this part of Utah ever since I saw some videos of Mike Curiak and Doom’s adventures. I spent hours with my buddy Tyler looking at maps, reading Mike Kelsey’s tightly spaced 6-point-font guides, and trying to figure out where the hell they had gone. After a day of planning and decrypting as much info as I could, I labeled the route “Really Bad Idea” on RWGPS and marked my calendar for early October.

If You Have to Ask, You’ll Never Know

Now I’m not normally one to gatekeep routes, but due to the risky nature of this trip and its logistics, I’m not going to share any route info. If you ask for details, I’ll assume you’re a pinecone cop and troll you as such. I stayed on established routes and durable surfaces throughout my trip and practiced strict leave-no-trace ethics.

Now that we have dispensed with as much of the technical side of this bike as I can stomach, let’s get to some experiences. There are few greater joys than riding an absolutely monstrously large tire, it’s why we all love Monster Trucks. Surly, can we get a limited Gravedigger colorway, please? The Moonlander reignited a spark of joy in my own and everyone else’s eyes who got a chance to ride it.

As I pedaled toward my canyon destination in the burning heat of an unusually hot October (hello again climate change) on the Colorado Plateau, I was happy for my summer conditioning of triple-digit heat for the past few months. The Moonlander, even modestly furnished with my most minimal camping setup, was heavy even before I added nearly two gallons of water to the mix.

1WD vs 2WD

When I tried to drive as close to my starting destination as possible, I quickly found that my 2WD pickup with bald tires wasn’t going to get me far. I parked and got the Moonlander out and rolling. This is where bikes shine as the truest form of an overlanding vehicle; I made much better time on the Moonlander than I ever could have in my truck. Riding down the rocky washes, the tires ate up the chunder and when I reached three-foot-tall washout drops, I just handed the bike down easily.

After a few hours of “gravel” riding on what I can assume was an old uranium mining road, I came to a humble cairn. In the past, I’ve been critical of rock stacks, but this was no decorative rock stack, this was a proper cairn. It delineated a hazardous but passable route down from the bench road to the canyon below. This was my moment to commit. I knew getting back up this trail with such a heavy bike was not an option. I could see more water in the river below than I had expected. How soft would the shores be? How deep was the water? Could I pedal out? Remembering back to our ill-fated Lake Powell trip, I was terrified at the possibility of quicksand.

Commit to the Canyon

After a few moments of having to lead my bike down the steep trail, standing in front, backstepping, and actuating the brakes as I lowered the bike to me, I got down to a more reasonable portion of the trail. I almost lost the bike as it started to run away downhill and dropped my ass as an anchor, causing both my calves instantly cramp from dehydration as I thwarted its escape.

Finally reaching the bottom was a euphoric moment. I was at the mouth of the canyon I had dreamed of pedaling for years. I dropped some of my camping gear and started back into the canyon, only to be greeted by a family of cows. I couldn’t believe someone was using this river as grazing ground, and I can’t imagine getting all the way back here to rustle up four cows. But then again, the math of grazing on public lands never really adds up.

At long last, I pedaled back into one of the coolest features of the Colorado Plateau’s grand staircase of multi-million-year-old rock layers tirelessly eroded by time, a slot canyon. Now, it wasn’t the narrowest, of course – the goal was to ride, not to get stuck.

The afternoon light reflected off the red cliffs high above the rift and bathed the narrow canyon in gorgeous warm tones. There was some hefting the bike over some rockier sections of the canyon, but there were a few longer sections where I was able to properly pedal. It was hands down one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had on a bike. Worth every moment of planning and all the sketchy descents.

Over the Moon, Down the River

The next day I started my run down the river. I had initially planned to catch the river at some of its lowest flows of the year in hopes of avoiding hiking my bike back up how I’d come down. The deposited silt layer on the banks of the river proved to be just shy of quicksand, while rideable (hell yeah 6.2” tires) I found the bottom of the river bed proper to be more compacted.

So there I was, pitter-pattering down the river like some wind-up toy duck. Pedals and bottom bracket just out of the water, gently grazing the surface with each pedal stroke. As the water was quite silty it was impossible to read the terrain of the river bottom. My teachings from learning to be a raft guide came in handy. I started to read the river while riding a bike. Of course, I missed a few small holes and got bucked as the bike sank just enough for the massive tires to buoy me and the bike. More often than not, the river provided the most rideable terrain. The shores were a mess of flood-cut mud ledges and tamarisk brambles both equally unpassable.

I plodded along, barely faster than walking pace but still riding. All in all, I pedaled down eight miles of river. The Pinion gearbox got submerged multiple times and continued to work without fail. I could see a regular derailleur being drug through the silty mess easily failing or being ruined from similar treatment. The Pinion gets my seal of approval in this situation.

After many hours and a handful of gooseneck river bends, I arrived at a proper road to get back to my truck. My time in the river was just long enough to allow pedaling down a river to settle into a form of normalcy. It was ludicrous –I had just done a small portion of a river trip ON A BICYCLE.

For most of this trip, I found myself using the easiest possible gear on the gearbox. Despite the large range, I never once used a gear above five on the grip shifter. I could very much have used one or even two gears lower in my situation. That gear seems impossibly low, but this was previously impossible terrain. I was dreaming of swapping the 36t rear “cog” (which is just a chainring) out for a 38t or 40t.

It’s here that the paradigm-shifting capabilities of the Surly Moonlander cemented in my mind. It was now somewhat possible to experience by bike places previously only accessible only by foot or floating. It’s easy to get lost in the hub spacing, tire TPI, or even tire pressure – we lose sight of what is truly possible if we get creative.

Surly has opened another door for the bike world again.

The Long Uphill Back to The Truck

The Moonlander will be a dog-eared page in the bike world in the same way the Pugsley or even the first Moonlander was. What is possible with bike design and tire size has changed.

In true Surly fashion, the new Moonlander uses all the same frame bits, dropouts, and steel as any old Surly you’ve ever had. The Pinion and massive tires are new things, while the rest feels oh-so Surly familiar. I believe, to its detriment, the steel frame makes this bike quite heavy. The bike needed to have a long rear end to maintain the tire clearances, frame rigidity, and ride quality necessitated for a bike like this. Would aluminum or carbon offer more flexibility in design and weight?

Possibly, but that’s not Surly. Maybe Salsa will make a new aluminum Blackborrow with the Molenda tires and shave many pounds off the weight of a steel Moonlander. The cranks and chainring spider were developed by Pinion and will remain available to the layman via Pinion. I bet some framebuilders are tinkering as we speak with this new tire/rim combo and I’m excited to see what is done with it. Surly innovated in the only way they know how, 4130 steel, so that’s what we got.

The door is open, y’all; what are you gonna do now?

I was over the moon (wink wink) finally returning from this trip that I had dreamt of for years. Could I have done it on another bike? Possibly. Has it been done similarly on other bikes? Yes, but this was my trip, and I had a blast through it all. I will cherish this experience for a very long time, and that, in the end, is what crazy-weird bikes and the places they take us are all about.