Spanish mountain bike giant Mondraker has been busy over the last few years getting a foot in the door of the gravel world.
The brand’s first effort was the Dusty, an electric gravel bike, and now Mondraker has followed up with the Arid, a non-electric gravel bike.
Mondraker is a mountain bike brand at heart and it has adopted several frame features from the off-road world for the Arid, starting with a ‘suspension-corrected’ fork.
In simple terms, that means Mondraker has accounted for riders who want to use a gravel suspension fork. The bike we’ve featured here doesn’t have one, but if you want one for your bike, it won’t throw the geometry massively out of line.
Mondraker has also taken a mountain biker’s view towards how the Arid should handle, with a super-short stem, paired with a slack head tube. And there’s internal routing for a dropper post.
As for the rest of the frame, the key figure is the tyre clearance. With space for 50mm gravel tyres, the Arid is adventure-ready.
There’s also the eye-catching, twin-spar seatstay design. Mondraker says this provides a little more comfort and traction at the back end of the bike, but it’s also part of the ‘design language’ carrying over from Mondraker mountain bikes.
In the spirit of adventure, there are several storage options dotted around the bike, including a small door that swings out of the way underneath the down tube bottle cage, to reveal a handy compartment.
Inside, Mondraker says you can fit a spare inner tube and tyre levers, a mini pump or CO2 canisters, and a multi-tool.
If you want to really load up the Arid, there are fork mounts for carrying up to four water bottles. There are also mudguard mounts for riders who live in places that are less, well, arid.
In a nod to practicality, the integrated cables enter the head tube through the top bearing to keep things clean. However, by running the cables on the underside of the stem, Mondraker says the stem is still easily removable, so you can tinker with your position as needed.
The bar has holes for internal routing, but Mondraker has also added channels on the underside of the bar if you want to keep everything easily swappable. Elsewhere, there’s a T47 bottom bracket and SRAM’s UDH dropout, so the bike is future-proofed to run a direct-mount Transmission rear derailleur.
The build on show here has a SRAM Force AXS XPLR groupset, with a power meter and Maxxis Reaver tyres on Mavic Allroad Pro Carbon SL wheels. It’s priced at £5,800.
