First Ride Thoughts: Riddler + Resolute

I just got back from Hildebrand Ranch trail, where I did the Two Brands loop once. This time, I took my Fuji Jari with a few new components:

- Easton EC70 stem
- WTB Riddler 45mm tire up front
- WTB Resolute 42mm tire in the rear

I got five miles of pretty fast and flowy dirt trails, a bit of rocky singletrack, and some rutted out truck maintenance dirt road.

The stem is 70mm, which is 20mm shorter than the stock stem. This helps me sit back a bit further on the bike for trickier descents, and helped me feel a good bit more confident. It's also likely that my bike is just slightly too large for me, and having the stem shorter fixes the issue there. I'll report back on the road buzz factor when I've tried it with more familiar tires/wheels/terrain, but I suspect the difference is minimal.

What I'm really excited about are these tires. My last set of gravel tires were the venerable WTB Nanos. I put about 1,000 miles on them before tearing the sidewall on my rear tire on some sharp rocks out of Salida. I liked them, but I often felt myself wanting more -- more volume, more grip, more speed. The Nanos would wash out a bit on the looser gravel on the Santa Fe Trail between Palmer Lake and Colorado Springs. They'd do OK on rocky mountain bike trails, but they just didn't have the volume and cushion to go really fast. They were decently quick on pavement, but heavy.

The Resolute and the Riddler are WTB's newer offerings. The Resolute is marketed as an "all-weather" tire, and it has wider spaced knobs to accommodate muddy riding. The Riddler is marketed as a fast gravel/dirt touring tire, and has aggressive cornering knobs to help with steering. I couldn't decide which to try out next, and I was a little hesitant to try a 45mm tire on the rear of my Fuji Jari, so I got both!

My initial impression on this combination is very good. The Riddler (setup around 27psi tubeless) absorbed a ton of rocky impacts well, and the Resolute spins up fast. It felt a bit quicker on pavement than the Nanos, and definitely much more confident on dirt.

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