First Ride on the Stampede Pass
The Compass range of tyres - named after various mountain passes in Washington State, USA, where their vendor René Herse Cycles is based - seem to have a real cult following. If you look for online reviews about them, they are more or less equally split along the lines of “most fabulous tyres I have ridden on, I wish I didn’t ever have to get off the bike” versus “disaster, total waste of money, puncture every time you show them a road never mind ride on it”.
https://www.lavelocita.cc/la-velocita-reviews/compass-bicycles-stampede-...
https://amp.reddit.com/r/bicycling/comments/5gq6wp/hands_down_the_worst_...
(Apologies, by the way, to anyone who thought this would be an article about a ride on the real Stampede Pass - maybe another time!)
Usually when you look at product reviews, a fairly clear consensus emerges with a few outliers. Here, there seemed to be no consensus and no middle ground - only the outliers! I was so intrigued that I decided the only way to settle the question was to try them myself.
My decision was helped along by a few other factors. The Compass Stampede Pass tyres would be a perfect aesthetic fit for my 1980 Dawes, which was almost due for new tyres anyway, as the previously fitted Panaracer T-Serv were well-worn after over 4000km. The T-Serv are excellent tyres, by the way, which Caroline and I have been running on most of our bikes for several years now - highly recommended. One of their few drawbacks is that the ride is a little bit harsh over the cobblestone surfaces which are often encountered in and around Potsdam, Germany, where we are currently living. From the reviews, I thought the Stampede Pass should give a much more supple and comfortable ride, especially over cobbles. Lastly, we have specified a very similar tyre (the Grand Bois Lierre) for the currently-in-progress restoration of Caroline’s 1950s vintage Jack Holland, so I thought I could gain some useful experience of what she can expect when she gets it back. Both the Compass and the Grand Bois tyres are physically made in Panaracer factories, by the way.
I found that the German distributor had just two left of the Stampede Pass “Extralight” version, so I gritted my teeth at the price, and ordered them!
To get a good test of the new tyres and compare them to the Panaracers which they were replacing, I planned a 50km route which combined tarmac roads with a couple of lengthy gravel sections, as well as 3km of the most hellish cobblestones which I have yet encountered around here! Frankly, that’s a section I would normally have avoided on the Dawes: I had ridden it a couple of times on my “Titanium Devil” which is more of a dedicated rough-road bike, shod with wider 35mm Panaracer Gravel King SK tubeless tyres - these give a much more cushioned ride and make the cobbles just about tolerable. The very first time I rode that route, I overtook a disconsolate-looking guy going very slowly on a racing bike. My cheery “Hey, these cobbles are fun, aren’t they?” got the response “No way, this is horrific - I think I’ve taken the wrong route”!
I rode the whole 50km test route first on the Dawes with its old T-Serv tyres, then a few days later on the Devil with the Gravel Kings. When I rode it on the T-Servs, I felt it was going really well and over the cobbled section they weren’t as bad as I had expected; I wondered why I was even thinking of changing them for something else.
Fitting the new tyres was part of a mini-makeover for the Dawes, involving a few other new bits & pieces too. The morning after it was all finished - having done a very short shakedown the previous evening just to make sure everything was working - I set off at 6am, my daily “non-commute” slot, when I can fit in a decent length bike ride before starting work from home during the COVID-19 lockdown. Having read those pessimistic reviews, I was at least half expecting puncture(s), so I packed not one but two spare inner tubes as well as my work mobile phone, in case I needed to inform my boss that I would be late for our morning call. A rain shower - which wasn’t in the forecast - was just passing over as I started, almost causing me to postpone the whole experiment, but I decided to ignore it and go anyway. Soon I was humming through the centre of town, and discovering that the tyres weren’t quite so grippy on *wet* cobbles as their predecessors! I stopped for a portrait of the newly-madeover Dawes outside an imposing building. (If you're wondering why the forks are a different colour, maybe I'll explain that in a future article.)
Then I crossed the Havel river and headed south to Caputh - all tarmac cycle path along this section, the tyres feeling silky smooth. I'd been a bit sceptical about all the hype, but it really was true; at least by comparison with the T-Serv, which is just a generally more rugged and stiffer tyre, and the Gravel King, which, though very supple, gives a bit of a whiny rumble due to the knobs on the tread. When I looked at my Strava ride stats later, I was surprised to find that I had equalled my personal best on the 5km Potsdam-Caputh segment, a time I had set in April on the Titanium Devil. I certainly wasn't hunting for personal bests at this stage of the ride - I felt I had barely begun to change up out of warm-up mode, the wind wasn't especially favourable, and I'd even allowed myself to be diverted by taking a "cockpit view" photo of the tarmac swooshing past the front tyre, which was looking extra-black due to the dampness of the road surface after that rain.
About 40 minutes into the ride, I was ready to tackle those extreme cobbles. I turned off the main road, started my manual stopwatch (as backup to the Strava segment timing) and launched in! My emotions through the approximately 10-minute segment followed much the same pattern as my previous two rides on the other tyres:
"This doesn't actually feel too bad - I remembered it bumpier than this"
"Hmm, it *is* quite bumpy actually and there's a long way still to go..."
"Help, I need a lower gear, do I dare to take my hand off the handlebar to reach the lever?" (Oh the joy of down-tube friction shifters!)
"Better switch to the gravel strip beside the cobbles here - ah, relief!!" (I had done this on the other two rides too, so it was a fair like-for-like comparison.)
"Aaargh, the bumps here are monstrous and it's uphill a bit too, really tough to make progress"
"ALMOST at the end now, last push!"
"Phew - tarmac! - thank goodness that's over!"
What I did discover along with all this is that the Stampede Pass tyres do actually feel much suppler and more cushioned on the cobbles than the T-Serv - quite close in fact to the feel of the wider, tubeless Gravel Kings. This was borne out by the segment time, which was actually a few seconds *faster* than on the Titanium Devil with the Gravel King SK tyres, and a full minute faster than on the Dawes with the T-Serv tyres.
Before you ask why I am so obsessed with the speed: I'm not, really - it's only an indicator of how well the tyres ride on the cobbles - the better the ride, the faster you go with the same level of comfort and control!
What I also discovered, when taking those detours onto the gravel to get a respite from the cobbles, is that the Stampede Pass tyres don't really cope well when you hit a sandy patch. To be fair, that's pretty much as expected, and I plan to avoid sandy trails as much as possible with the Dawes; I have a different bike for that! (Later I encountered a muddy patch from the recent rain, and they weren't great on that, either.)
Also, if you are wondering why I put myself through this at all: here in Brandenburg there are quite a lot of cobbled roads, both in urban and in rural areas, and you can't always avoid them - even if you know they are there, which not all route planners will tell you. (Strava, for instance, doesn't differentiate between cobblestones and other forms of "paved" surface, so you might think you were heading along an asphalt road and then have a nasty surprise! The mapping in Komoot is much better in this respect.) So, unless you don't mind long detours and/or roads with heavy traffic, it's important to have a bike that's capable of handling the odd cobbled section without ruining your day! Unlike that unfortunate fellow on the racing bike whom I mentioned earlier...
Now I was through the cobbled section unscathed - no punctures so far! Next was a fast tarmac descent back to the lakeside at Ferch, then on to the small town of Werder where I was more worried about punctures again due to the amount of broken glass we have seen there on previous visits - especially around the railway bridge shared by the bike path back across the river Havel. It was all good, though, and soon I was scrunching along the gravel section along the riverside and across to the island of Töplitz. The supple sure-footedness of the tyres brought a smile to my face and at some point I found myself thinking "have they done something to this road surface since I came along here last? I thought it was rougher...!" Once again my Strava segment timing was within a few seconds of the Gravel Kings and about 10% faster than on the T-Servs. I didn't stop for photos, but here's one of the Töplitz footbridge, from a previous visit.
Then it was into the last run home, with another bike path section on tarmac followed by a gravel trail across the fields to reach home. By here I was obviously flagging a bit, because my Strava segment time was well down, not only on my 2 comparative rides with the other tyres, but also on most of my other previous rides on this part of the route. (By the way, I currently hold the KOM on this segment - from a different, earlier ride - which is very unusual for me!)
Still no punctures! And I was home in time to grab a coffee before my first business call of the day at 08.30.
I put together a table of my (very subjective) comparison of the three tyres:
On the basis of this chart, why not just put Gravel Kings on the Dawes too? In fact, I actively considered that; but I don't want or need all my bikes to be the same. Also, the Dawes won't take tyres which are wider than 32mm or tubeless, both of which I think help to give the 35mm Gravel Kings their advantage.
In summary: with these tyres - as long as the punctures stay away - and with a few other tweaks, I can imagine the Dawes regaining its crown as my favourite long-range touring bike, just like it was back in the day! At least on tarmac roads and moderate gravel; for everything else, there's the Titanium Devil with its Gravel Kings...
Postscript 11/08/2020 - almost 1 month later: My very next ride on the Dawes - attempting 100 miles - ended prematurely with a broken spoke in the rear wheel; not sure whether this is connected with the pounding I gave it over those cobbles, or purely coincidental - it was a very old wheel!
Anyway it's reassembled again now and running very nicely, the wheel rebuilt by my local bike shop with new spokes on the vintage Campagnolo hub (fully overhauled) and also re-using the old Wolber rim, which was still in pretty good shape.
Have now covered almost 500km on the Stampede Pass tyres and still no punctures! I think I'll be happy if they go at least 1000km between punctures (for me that equates to about a month of cycling) and hopefully at least 4000km overall lifespan ... let's see how it goes!
Further update on 15/03/2021: Yesterday's ride took me past 1000km on the Stampede Pass tyres - without any punctures yet! My wish to “go at least 1000km between punctures” has been fulfilled - so I’m daring to hope that those reviewers who mentioned that they puncture easily might have been pessimistic, or unlucky… and regarding the lifespan of the tyres, there's no discernible wear yet, so that's good.
1000km equates to about a month’s cycling for me, so why did it take me so long? Not the tyres’ fault; I took them off the bike and put the more durable Panaracer T-Servs back on for use by a visitor, then I didn’t immediately get round to swapping them back, then I decided to leave the Panaracers on over the winter. With the onset of spring, the Stampede Pass tyres went back on a couple of weeks ago and I’m finding they are just as nice to ride on as I remembered from last summer!
In the meantime I’ve also written another blog post about trying out a fourth different set of tyres - and different wheels - over the same test route.
I’ve also edited my discussion about route mapping in the article above. In the original, I was complaining about Strava’s route mapping not distinguishing between cobblestones and other forms of “paved” road surface - and Strava not being interested in the support request I raised about this. Since then, I’ve started using Komoot for route planning, which does give a very detailed and useful breakdown of different surface types along the route (including cobblestones) as well as lots of other great information; definitely the go-to route planner of all the options I’ve tried. It’s a minor inconvenience to have both apps open on my phone - Komoot for route following and Strava for tracking - but worth it for the advantages.
Oh, and by the way I still hold that KOM :)
Puncture update, 09/05/2021: Found the front tyre flat when I took the bike out wanting to ride it - the first puncture after 1658km! A big thorn in the front tyre, must have picked it up on my previous ride. The tyre has had about 800km on the rear, then rotated to the front for another approx. 800km. So, expectations met so far on the puncture front, although we'll see if they come more often now that the tyres are starting to show a bit of wear. I'm still finding them lovely to ride on.
Comments
Please login to save your comment