Following a year of World Cup downhill racing as the bike supplier for Team Maxxis, Rocky Mountain is releasing the culmination of what it has learned with the launch of the completely redesigned 2010 Flatline.
We put Yeti's sliding-rail DH-light chassis through more than 400,000 vertical feet of tough love.
After three years of development, the Trek Session 88 DH is the best DH bike to ever emerge from Trek’s R&D lab.
The Specialized SX Trail 1 delivers a first-class frame with a business-class spec. See how it held up over the long haul.
Read how the Norco Shore One lived up to several abusive months on the terrain for which it was named.
The radical geometry of this long-legged trail bike promises to make climbing enjoyable. We’ll see about that.
Jamis bills the XAM II as an “aggressive all-mountain” bike, a designation this baby blue beauty had no problem living up to. Witness the headtube-downtube junction: a triple-decker-submarine-sandwich-sized mass of 7005-aluminum tubes and gussets. In fact, everything on the frame, from the massive chainstays to the oversized swing-link and shock mounts, is seriously overbuilt.
"This scale has got to be wrong,” I thought. Sure, this Ibis Tranny was built as a singlespeed, but it’s got a 4-inch-travel fork with a through-axle, and it certainly looks the part of a brawler…. But 20 pounds, complete?
Bionicon Golden Willow SC I: This transformer of a trail bike takes some getting used to, but makes for a savvy singletrack slayer.
This 7.5-inch-travel rig comes with stout, solid parts and is ready to tear into steep, sketchy trails. See how the Mongoose Pinn'R Apprentice faired in Bike magazine's Bike Test.
Pump some estrogen into a tried-and-true Kona Stinky and you get a women's freeride ripper that's not afraid to roll with the big boys. Introducing the Kona Minxy.
THE DAKAR XCT IS JAMIS’ TAKE ON THE 5-INCH, GO-ANYWHERE, do-anything, Downieville-style-of-riding bike. Jamis claims it descends as well as its bigger brother, the 6-inch XAM, and pedals like the company’s cross-country race bikes.
IN THIS FAST-PACED WORLD OF AT LEAST three “proprietary technologies” per frame, hotshot riders signed to high-profile contracts, and confusing kinematic equations used to describe every aspect of the ride, Foes sticks out like a big, red, sore thumb.
TWO POUNDS. TWO FREAKING POUNDS. THAT’S HOW much lighter a complete Santa Cruz Blur LT carbon is than last year’s aluminum version—with a very similar spec. That might not sound like a lot, but as the clock ticks deeper into a multi-hour ride, those two pounds will loom a lot larger than they did in the showroom.
After the successful release of the “Magic Link” equipped CoilAir mid-2008, Kona has unveiled a radical revamp of that design, and also recently announced a scaled-down (travel-wise) sibling to the new CoilAir—the Cadabra.
SCOTT HAS LONG BEEN MISSING A TRAIL MODEL TO BRIDGE ITS race and aggressive all-mountain categories. The original Genius was sold in Europe, but because of pivot-placement-patent issues it was never imported into the United States. Now, with a redesigned frame and an overthetop rear shock, the Genius platform is available in America.