While an ultra-stiff and uber-lightweight carbon frameset might be prized in competitive road and cyclocross arenas, when you're exploring the outdoors doing some loaded touring and racing, nothing but the sun, durability and ride comfort is king. Sure, carbon or some other exotic material has its place when marginal gains separate the sport's best from a spot on the podium, but let's remember that the original racing frame material was steel and it's still the one that's trusted when venturing off the beaten path and miles of uncertain chunky gravel define your travel. If this sounds like where your riding intentions lie, have a look at the RLT 9 Steel GRX gravel bike. With plush, high-volume 650b tires, there's no limit to where you can go.

When we look back at what we wrote above, it sounds like this bike can't be competitive, but that's simply not the case and it'll happily toe the line at a gravel race or fondo, however, that Road Less Traveled ethos means that the RLT Steel is most at home on remote, wilderness trails and spending week-long trips exploring the unknown. The frame's geometry is a fairly good mashup between Niner's hardtail mountain frames and that of its barrier hopping, mud bogging 'cross-specific BSB frameset. Making it more adept off the racecourse, the RLT 9 features longer chainstays, a lower bottom bracket, and a slacker head tube angle. This provides a lower center of gravity and a position more "in" than "on" the bike for more confident cornering and improved stability, both of which you can never have too much of while bombing down rut strewn, washboard riddled descents at speed.

In this day and age where almost every frame, and component for that matter, is constructed from carbon, Niner bucks the trend and is one of few brands this side of a custom builder that still constructs frames from Reynolds 853 steel. The material is prized for its super compliant ride over bumpy surfaces, yet it doesn't sacrifice much in the way of stiffness, so it still accelerates swiftly. The ride is a revelation if you've never ridden steel before, and Niner does choose a carbon fork to drop some weight without detracting from that magical steel ride. The Carbon RDO fork helps soak up the hits while smoothing out road vibrations but don't get confused thinking it's a lightweight, spindly road fork, far from it, as it has disc flat mounts, a 12mm thru-axle anchoring the hub in the dropouts, and rack mounts with a 45-pound carrying capacity that's happy to share the load during overnight duties and commutes. Niner has constructed rigid carbon trail forks for years so we're not in the least worried about durability here.