Sola SL – Seven Cycles

Mike Bybee – From Above Payson

It’s always good to see Mike Bybee‘s name in the Seven inbox. It means we have good tidings (and great photos) from one of our favorite Seven riders out in the expansive American Southwest.

Seven Sola with custom racks on a rugged mountain road

Mike says:

Rode out from Payson AZ and up a mix of trails to a ridgeline and a summit about 5k’ that overlooked Tonto National Forest and Mazatzal Peak (in the back there).

Cleaned up some trail trash on the way back, and found a buddy with a pickup truck who’s going to come help me remove a couch and a CRT someone chucked along the way. The ride down from the little summit was a blast, with a couple 3′ + dropoffs and lots of stuff that was more fun to go *down* than *up*.

He also sent along this summit panorama.

Mike rides a Sola SL 29er.

Snowward Bound – The Four-Season Sola 2×2

The Four Seasons Sola covered in snow shines it's warm light into the night

We look forward to a good snowfall, especially one that sets up overnight leaving a fresh, untouched blanket in the local woods. Having just released the Four-Season Sola 2×2, we were anxious to get it out into some “conditions,” and our New England weather obliged.

Cyclist rides a snow forest trail in the night

We opted for 27.5″ x 3″ tires and our Seven Adventure Bar. Snow riding calls for keeping your weight back and balanced over the wheels. This was a heavy snow and the temperature was high enough that what was on the ground had a high ice content. We didn’t let that bother us, snaking in and out of familiar trails made entirely new by sagging of branches and obscuring of rocks.

A 'Four Seasons' painted Sola + SL top tube covered in snow

The bike was flawless, a perfect match for the pristine pre-dawn. Rides like this both exhaust you and recharge your batteries at the same time.

The Four-Season Sola 2×2

Design Mission: Create the most capable four season bike possible. As cyclists we are keenly aware of the weather and the many challenges it presents. Any cyclist who lives in an area that experiences four true seasons, like our home here in Massachusetts, will want a bike capable of tackling whatever the weather throws at them.

After building about a dozen variants of a year-round bike, we packed all our experience and research into this one broad-use, high-capability bike.

For summer and fall, with 29er mountain tires, the bike is a fast and agile race-ready bike, setup for technical single-track and short, punchy climbs. In the winter and spring, with 27+ 3” tires, the bike can do anything and go anywhere, with or without studs, in snow, ice, mud, or frozen terrain.

A Study in Contrast

It was 13F at ride time this morning. Small flakes darted around on the wind. As the morning progressed, they got fatter, drifting and chasing each other into small cottony piles. We rode, and it was nice. We like pushing ourselves through the falling snow, and there are usually fewer cars on the road.

It’s hard not to think of warmer days too, though.

Here’s a photo from FOS (Friend of Seven) Mike Bybee who was kind of us to put us in his new Sights of the Southwest 2018 calendar. Mike is an ardent explorer, bikepacker, and photographer. We built him this Sola SL 29er adventure rig a few years ago, and so he’s taken us on some incredible adventures.

A Seven mountain bike leans against a desert dirt ridge

A Message from the Mountains

We’ve said it a thousand times, one of the very best things about building custom bikes is that we get to know our customers. This message came in the other day from Len, a longtime Seven rider. You can find more of Len’s photography here.

the silhouette of a Seven head badge key chain hangs on the rear view mirror of a truck driving down a lonely road

Hi 7 team,

I bought my Seven Verve mountain frame back in ’03, and it has been a faithful ride. The first year I bought it I took it out to Moab to break it in…. On the drive to Moab I photographed the “7” head badge hanging from my rear view mirror and sent it to you.

Here is another image on the same topic – taken many years later. The scene is looking out the windscreen of my Land Rover Defender over a dry and harsh mountainscape at a little over 11,000 ft in elevation. The image was taken in the White Mountains east of the Sierra Nevada. When you spend a week or so between 11,000 and 13,000 ft even the air molecules in the mineral oil filled compass precipitated out of the oil solution to form an air bubble. The “7” frame performs flawlessly at high altitudes!!!

regards,

Len