Tanglefoot is based in an off the grid sugar shack in East Poultney, Vermont. The three person operation began in 2017 and encompasses three different product lines: Tanglefoot, who produce bikes for MTB, Gravel/CX and Touring/Rando uses, Discord, who produce various components including stems and top caps from aluminum and steel, and Fifth Season, who specialize in soft goods like saddle bags and sacks.
Whichever product line strikes your fancy, Tanglefoot’s domain is high adventure, whether in their native Green Mountains, or your own slice of backwoods fun.
The Tanglefoot Moonshiner is the unofficial state bicycle of Vermont, and it encompasses the state’s ethos of outdoorsy adventure, with go-anywhere geometry, 27.5 x 3″ tires on 35mm internal width rims, and triple rack mounts on fork legs, R-10 braze ons for rear seat stays, and traditional rack mounts on dropouts and near the tops of seat stays.
From Discord components, the Peeper stem is, according to the Tanglefoot website, “named after the spring peepers that live in the pond where we get our drinking water, and tougher than a boiled owl.” It offers a 1 ⅛ steerer clamp for most threadless forks, 75mm stack from bottom of stem to center of bar clamp, and a 31.8 bar clamp. The Peeper is made of milled aluminum with stainless bolts in New Jersey by Swift Design Works.
And from Fifth Season comes the Key Pa saddle bag, made in Vermont from all U.S.made parts that include brass, leather and canvas elements. The website claims that, “With a modicum of care, this bag will outlast you.”
About that website (www.tanglefootcycles.com): it’s a medium for Tanglefoots’s unique and iconoclastic way of interacting with customers. In their own words:
“We are awash in the lurid excess of the new. Culture produces without knowing the reason for production. The headlong rush for the new ignores lessons learned in the past, leading to repeated failures and waste. Education is the only weapon against such waste. By knowing the past we can understand our current and future needs clearly. If we only look forward, we are blind. The CATALOG seeks to educate and illuminate a path forward.”
Like the Roman God Janus, Tanglefoot Cycles looks ahead and behind simultaneously. And that, for its customers and fans, provides the proper perspective.