Salsa Journeyer GRX 600

The Salsa Journeyer GRX 600 is the company's gravel-cum-adventure tourer whose laid-back front end makes for a good companion on jaunts that take you away from the road. It's easy to live with, with a comfortable ride that takes the sting out of the terrain while letting you enjoy the scenery. It's fun too, with only its weight and price just taking the edge off the shine.

Salsa describes the Journeyer as a workhorse all-road adventure machine, which builds on the success of the Journeyman model, reviewed on our sister site off.road.cc in 2019, with added performance and functionality.

> Buy now: Salsa Journeyer GRX 600 from Firetrail for £2,350

Its geometry is much slacker at the front end than many gravel bikes, which means it lacks a bit of speed from a handling point of view, but you only really notice that on technical descents, especially those away from the trails where speeds are likely to be higher. Salsa's choice of a short stem does keep a touch of quickness to the steering.

Everywhere else, it feels a confident-handling machine. Even on the lightly treaded tyres in the middle of a UK winter I found the Salsa very easy to control – even sliding about on wet mud or chalk – helped by its lengthy wheelbase, and its 10.47kg weight also making it feel planted in such situations.

That overall weight does detract a little on the climbs or when sprinting out of the saddle, but the wide spread of the gravel-specific groupset takes the edge off, and with the bike unladen I was able to tackle the local steep climbs in the saddle without too much huffing and puffing. We all have differing levels of fitness and power, admittedly.

This is a great bike for getting out there and enjoying yourself. Within a couple of miles of my front door I have access to hundreds of kilometres of gravel trails, much of it I haven't even set tyre on yet, so sometimes I just like to head off with the bags packed full of supplies and disappear for hours.

Riding style

The terrain changes hugely, from hardpack to grass, and the Journeyer is just the type of bike to get out there and explore it. It cruises well, rolling along on the flat or steady inclines, and I found the geometry to give a relaxed riding position while still allowing you to get down in the drops should you fancy cheating the wind for a bit.

Comfort levels are good too. The Journeyer uses a short seat tube considering the frame size, which lets you run a lot of post for a bit of added flex.

The frame is impressive as well. Even with the 38mm tyres pumped up hard for a road ride, the aluminium alloy frame feels supple enough to take the sting out of the ride, and that's the same off-road too.

I never got bored of riding the Journeyer, even on long routes. It does enough to keep you involved, especially if you fancy a little blast down that wooded trail you spot out of the corner of your eye, but never becomes too much of a handful that it becomes hard work when you're tired and irritable.

For the wet conditions I was riding in at the end of the test period, I fitted some wider tyres with deeper tread, and this made the Salsa a lot of fun in the soft mud. Slides were predictable and controllable, which gave me the confidence to not need to scrub off too much speed when conditions beneath the tyres became slippery.

Summing up the ride overall, I'd say it favours distance over speed, but you have to push hard to find out that answer.

Frame and fork

The Journeyer's frame is made from 6061-T6 aluminium alloy, with a real mix of tube profiles and diameters, their dimensions a little muted by the pearlescent white paintjob, which seems to soften all of the edges, making the oversizing look less aggressive.

I like the colour a lot, I must say, and it does a good job of disguising the, shall we say, 'chunky' welds; they're more functional than cosmetic, when it comes to appearance.

As you can see from the pictures, the Journeyer uses a very compact frame, resulting in two small triangles which helps in terms of stiffness. It looks like a much smaller bike than it really is.

In fact, that's worth bearing in mind.

This is a 55cm model with an effective top tube length of exactly that, my ideal size. Salsa specifies a much shorter stem than found on many gravel bikes, though, which when paired with the 401.9mm fork length and 150mm head tube, makes the distance from saddle to handlebar feel shorter than you'd expect.

I'd probably be slightly better off on the next size up, even though on paper it looks too big for me, if I don't take into account the stem length.

Anyway, I put a slightly longer stem on and everything felt great with no noticeable difference to the handling.

As regards the geometry elsewhere, stack and reach for this size are 570mm and 376mm respectively; the seat tube is 450mm long with an angle of 73 degrees, while the head angle is just 69.5 degrees.

The wheelbase is a confidence-inspiring 1,051mm thanks to chainstays of 440mm, and the bottom bracket drop is 70mm.

Fork offset is 50mm, and the fork itself is Salsa's Waxwing which has a full carbon fibre construction and the now pretty much standard tapered steerer. Like the frame it offers a good ride quality while being stiff enough to not suffer any chatter under heavy braking.

When it comes to cargo capacity, as Salsa calls it, the frame and fork are both adorned with mounting points. To be precise, you can fit three bottles inside the triangle of the 57cm and 60cm frames, two on most smaller bikes, and one on the 49cm frame.

You also get:

• A Three-Pack mount on top of the down tube
• Bottle or accessory mount on the underside of the down tube
• A top tube bag mount for direct-mount bags
• A Three-Pack mount on each fork leg
• Rear rack mounts and low-rider front rack mounts

It's good to see that the mudguard mounts are in the traditional position on the frame, so there shouldn't be any need for drilling or fettling of stays. Up front, the mounting for the stays is on the inside of the fork leg, so they will need a little bit of tweakage.

You'll also find 12mm thru-axles front and rear, with flat mounts for the brake callipers.

Tyre clearance is a generous 50mm for 700C tyres, and 55mm if you go down the 650B route.

Groupset

This Journeyer is based around a Shimano GRX 600 groupset, with the front and rear mechs from the RX810 line-up and GRX RX400 brake callipers.

If you haven't already, you can read Mike's full review of the GRX 600 groupset here.

It's an 11-speed system, with quick and relatively precise shifting, if not quite as slick as the higher level GRX 810 groupset.

The thing I like best about Shimano's various GRX shifters is the flat section on the front of the brake lever compared with the road setups. This gives a more secure platform for your hands when braking hard over rough terrain; your fingers feel a lot more secure and don't tend to slip, especially important in the wet.

As for the gear ratios, Salsa has paired a 46/30-tooth chainset with an 11-34T cassette. I find that's a good spread of gears at both ends. The 30x34 lowest gear option worked well enough for me on all but the steepest of climbs when loaded up with some kit. And if I was riding with the bike empty, it was more than adequate.

The gaps between the bigger sprockets aren't that big so won't affect your cadence much – one of the benefits of the 2x system over 1x in my opinion.

Stopping power from the hydraulic brake setup is great, with the usual balance of power and modulation using 160mm rotors front and rear mated with GRX RX400 callipers.

Finishing kit

The majority of the finishing kit is from Salsa's own catalogue. The Cowbell handlebar has a shallow drop and a slight flare, which brings more stability when riding in the drops at speed. It's alloy, as is the stem, and while they might not exactly flick the excitement switch, they do a decent job. The same can be said for the alloy seatpost.

The WTB Volt Medium saddle is okay, the shape being pretty generic and unobtrusive, but I found the padding a bit too soft, which caused me a bit of numbness on longer rides.

The bar tape is also Salsa branded, and I found it thick enough for riding off road.

Wheels and tyres

For the wheels Salsa has gone for Shimano Tiagra RS470 hubs mated to WTB ST i23 rims, which are tubeless ready, with an inner rim width of 23mm, 28mm outer.

They're shallow at 17mm deep – not that aero is that important on gravel – but with a 28-spoke build front and rear they seem to be plenty tough enough. They aren't light, though, at around the 2kg mark.

As for tyres, you get a set of 38mm Teravail Washburn Durable tyres which are also tubeless ready; in fact our wheel and tyre combo arrived set up tubeless, with sealant installed.

The tyres themselves don't offer a huge amount of grip away from firm surfaces, but they aren't as bad as you might expect. Their width, while not massive in this day and age, helps them not sink into soft surfaces too readily. On hardpacked gravel they roll well, and grip is reasonably okay.

On the road they scoot along at a decent pace, and you can corner relatively hard without a huge amount of understeer. The test period was a real mixed bag of weather conditions, but I didn't have any issues with punctures or damage to the rubber or carcass.

Value

Value is the one main hurdle for the Journeyer when you compare it with other gravel bikes in the marketplace.

Merida's Silex, for example, is similar in its design, with a relatively long top tube, tallish front end and a short stem. We tested the £1,000 Silex 200 last year, but there are two models currently available for £2,150, the Silex 700 and Silex 4000. The Silex 700 also has an alloy frame but gets a GRX 810 groupset, which is a higher spec than the GRX 600 here, while the Silex 4000 comes with a carbon frame, but the finishing kit is downgraded to 10-speed GRX 400.

I tested Dolan's titanium gravel bike, the GXT, earlier this year, but there's also an aluminium version, the GXA, which has a GRX 600 groupset and Mavic Allroad wheels. It costs £1,899.97, which includes an upgrade to a fork that has the same mounting points as the one found on the Salsa.

Conclusion

Taking just the ride quality and geometry into account, I reckon the Journeyer is a belter. I love the way it behaves on those longer rides – it's just so easy to live with, while still having a fun edge to it. It's only when you look at the spec you get for the money that it tends to struggle against the opposition. It's a great bike, but others are better value.

Verdict

A bit pricey for the spec, but fun to ride and highly capable