I ordered a "Universal" (i.e. non-ramped/pinned) 35t ring from Dan's Competition, and found that 35:20 did indeed work ... but, uh, only with a (possibly worn) ramped cog. With a 20t Novatec BMX cog it didn't quite fit, so I had to file maybe half a mm out of my dropouts. Here's a drivetrain closeup taken at home:
Note that the derailleur is still on the bike so I can run gears when I want - BUT is completely bypassed by the chain when I run SS, giving me a clean, efficient chain path.
I decided to try this out on a brief vacation my wife and I took last week to the Methow Valley in Northern WA, where we stayed with a friend who was house- and dog-sitting there. Just to see what my upper limit might be?on this bike, I decided to start out with a trail that's fairly challenging even with gears: Cutthroat Pass, just off the North Cascades Highway. The first 1.5 miles are an easy, non-technical climb (500 feet) to a lovely alpine lake. Then over the next 4 miles to the pass, you grind up an additional 1900 feet on a trail that's quite technical, with numerous trail obstacles of 8-12" or larger, and 15 or 20 tight switchbacks. Here are a couple of pics I took on the way up:
I'm not the strongest rider in the world, so I had to take a LOT of breaks on the way up - I might have gotten up it faster with gears, but of course that wasn't the point. I'm proud to say that one way or another I climbed pretty much the whole thing on my singlespeed!
Here I am at Cutthroat Pass, elevation 6800':
Here's the view looking west from the pass - some of the peaks in the center of the photo are really hard to see, BTW, because they're covered in glaciers:
And here I am getting ready for the descent:
The descent - my God, the descent! It was one of the best I have had in my life. I rode it really clean (with the exception of the switchbacks and one big rock), easily clearing stuff that would usually be tricky for me. And while I'm not usually an aggressive rider, I rode it really fast, at least for me. 13 to 15 mph much of the way, despite technical terrain and a total lack of suspension. My hands hurt like hell by the end, but I wasn't going to let that slow me down.
I really am starting to "get" what people are talking about with singlespeeding. I think I was a better technical rider than usual going up, because I didn't have to think about what gear I needed to be in or slow down to shift ... instead I could focus on my technique, the best line and the best speed. And being technically strong going up - plus the sheer pleasure in having been ABLE to ride up the thing in one gear - gave me a lot more confidence for the trip back down, which is why I did it so well and so fast. I'm still going to use geared mode for some of the more difficult rides, but this SS thing is really starting to grow on me!
Here's another view looking down from the pass to Cutthroat Lake, almost 2 thousand feet below (hard to make out, but in the center of this photo slightly toward the left):
Here are two of the dogs, down at Cutthroat Lake (the pass is visible in the upper right corner of the first photo):
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