Wakefield / Lake Accotink – Type of Bike Needed

[vvill]

Accotink is relatively tame but parts of Wakefield will be rough on a CX bike. Personally I like a CX bike more especially for the winters, but wouldn’t ride parts of Wakefield on it. More technically skilled riders might.

[Mikey]

Welcome to the hood! you have a few neighbors on this forum. Maybe we need a Kings park/Annandale/Fairfax coffee club now.

[trailrunner]

I live a few miles from Accotink and have ridden there and at Wakefield for a long time. I’ve ridden both those places on my fully rigid mountain bike back in the early 90s, and I’ve ridden them more recently with my latest and greatest full suspension bike, and I’ve ridden them once in a while with my cross bike. A FS bike is not overkill for those trails, but they all can be ridden with a cross bike if that’s all you have and if you have enough skill. Given the choice, I prefer to take one of my suspension bikes.

[hozn]

@csjohns7 121659 wrote:

I haven’t been on the trails at Wakefield of Accotink yet. My question is would a Cyclocross bike work on these, or would I need to get something with suspension?

Pretty much just a +1 for what others said. I would just get a ‘cross (or gravel) bike that supports bigger tires. I have ridden & raced my rigid MTB there many times; it’s a perfect course for rigid or hardtail mtb. I haven’t brought my ‘cross bike, but I wouldn’t hesitate to do so. I have larger (42mm) tires on my cx bike these days, though, so it’s more like a mtb-lite (with drop bars and a low front that is harder to bunny hop logs)

Honestly, though, I wouldn’t buy a bike based on whether it could be ridden at Accotink/Wakefield; that’s a pretty small set of trails. If you want to be doing MTB in the area, a cross bike is probably not going to be the most fun experience. But if I only had one bike, it’d definitely be my ‘cross bike — and I’d probably try to ride as many of those trails as possible.

[Author]

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