Endurance road geometry has been quietly diverging from racing geometry for years, and the Ritchey Montebello sits firmly on the endurance side of that line. Tom Ritchey designed it as a go-anywhere endurance road bike after studying how to make a more comfortable platform for longer excursions, drawing on the roughly 15,000 miles he logs in the saddle each year. The result is a triple-butted Logic steel frame with a taller front end, longer wheelbase, and lower bottom bracket than the Road Logic — proportions tuned for stability when the ride stretches past sunset and into the next morning.

The frame is TIG welded from heat-treated, triple-butted Ritchey Logic steel tubing, with the brand's fastback seat stay/seat tube junction handling the cluster and securing the seatpost. Tubes are treated with electrophoretic deposition coating for corrosion resistance, custom flat-mount thru-axle dropouts carry weight-reducing cutouts, and the forged 1-1/8" head tube is machined to trim mass. Two bottle cage mounts sit inside the main triangle, and the frame carries the fender and rack mounts that buyers of earlier Ritchey road frames had been asking for.

Tire clearance lands at 700x40mm without fenders or 700x36mm with fenders installed, which opens the door to road tires, light gravel rubber, or fully fendered all-weather builds without forcing a choice between them. The frameset accommodates 1x or 2x drivetrains and uses external cable routing for straightforward maintenance, so this is a steel platform that stays serviceable in the field rather than fighting you at every cable swap. One note before building: the frame's fork crown mount does not accept a rack, lights, or accessories.... Read More