Product Spotlight: Surly's Bridge Club Touring Bike

Surly's been around since about 1998, when the 1x1 single-speed mountain bike showed up along with a small selection of single-speed parts. Their catalog has grown considerably since then, but the brand remains focused on versatile, no-nonsense steel frames. Pretty much any bike in the catalog can be paired with any drivetrain, handlebar, or wheel+tire combination you can dream up. Which brings us to the Bridge Club, Surly's all-road touring bike, designed to be comfortable and capable hauling gear on paved trails, logging roads, forest singletrack, and anywhere in between, including daily commuting. Surly offers the bike in two flavors: the off road variant seen here with flat bars and big 650b x 2.4" tires, and a more road-focused variation with 700c x 41 wheels/tires and a bar with more sweep, hinting at the versatility of the frame and all the different ways it can be built up.

For a long time, Surly's Disc Trucker, a more traditional drop-bar touring bike, was the king of modern touring bikes. And for a lot of people it still is. But if you're looking to fit a lot more tire and do a little backwoods bikepacking (or even just comfortably navigate the pothhole-strewn roads of the Gulf Islands) the Bridge Club should definitely be on your radar. It's part of a new crop of touring and bikepacking bikes that many are starting to call ATB's, bringing back the term from the early days of what we now know as mountain biking, when the focus was more on all-day rides through spectacular terrain instead of extreme lines and jumps. ATB's like the Bridge Club blend capability with simplicity and versatility for a bike that can do almost anything.