First Trail Ride On The Gotway EXN

Today I took the EXN (thanks EUCO for the tester wheel) for my first mountain excursion ride on the GMR. I left from the usual parking spot and was planning on riding at least to Horse Canyon Saddle and perhaps further.

I've ridden this so many times now I can just about do it in my sleep. For some reason this time I decided to take a detour. As I was preparing to pass the Asuza Cross Trailhead I decided to take the trail instead of continuing up the road. There continue to be many trails accessible from the GMR that I have yet to explore. Today was an exploration day.

Turns out that this is a very nice trail that follows along the ridge of the mountains with a potential to complete a loop back to civilization. I took the trail all the way to here before I was dissuaded from continuing with signs that said the way forward was a private road that that there were attack guards. Also, it was illegal to take avocados. Later, looking at Google Maps and Street View, I think there's an avocado farm at the base of the mountain.

So that's unfortunate. This would make a very cool loop. In the future I'll continue to ride this bit of trail but will probably now stop at The Cross before returning to the GMR.

EXN Overheats

There were a fair amount of steep sections on this trail which made for a great little test of the EXN. I continue to be struck with how powerful this wheel feels. The pedals are rigid (I like to ride in hard mode) and with the slightest lean the wheel climbs. In this regards it reminds me of the MCM5 and to a slightly lesser extent the MSP. But since the EXN is such a massive wheel this power seems more striking. Going down steep trail declines also feels great - no sense of the wheel wanting to get away from you.

When I had stopped on the trail and decided that I needed to return I had already descending quite a bit down the mountain. So there was a long haul of uphill trail climbing to do. This is where the EXN temps slowly climbed until the magic 79-degrees Celsius was reach and the wheel beeped and tilted back, kicking me off the wheel. I let it cool down to ~75-degrees and proceeded on my way, but the wheel overheated a few more times. BTW, the outside temperature was in the mid-70's (Fahrenheit).

From my years of experience riding and overheating wheels, I'm not concerned about overheating wheels because they always stop before damage can occur. It's nice though when a wheel doesn't overheat. My sense is that the EXN is a hot running wheel. Under nominal riding conditions it's quite often running at 45-degrees. But when you start working it hard the temps increase. The Monster Pro seems the same.

So I do slightly worry how this wheel will behave in the hot temperatures of summer. Since I live where I don't have to worry about rain I may added some filtered holes in the shell to allow more airflow within the shell. I'll wait to see if I have overheat issues during the upcoming summer riding season.

When I returned to the GMR I continued up to the Horse Canyon Saddle and rode down towards the E. Fork Road. While there I paused to shot a video to help promote EUC World

The Route

For those interested, here's the route that I rode today along with the statistics. I ended the ride at 89.2-volts. You can download the GPX file here.