#!markdown
Ehh… plenty of 160mm bikes have great climbing platforms with their shocks
wide open. You can't make broad assumptions about how a bike climbs based on
travel anymore. Only argument might be geometry, but trail bikes are chasing
"enduro" geometries so hard now that even that doesn't amount to much. At
best, a trail bike might get a lighter fork and shock and maybe a degree
steeper HTA to recommend it as a more efficient bike. But then toss that
handful of grams out the window with the big tires and call the slack HTA a
wash against the slow-steering plus tires, and what have you got? I'll tell
you: 30mm less travel traded for undamped tire suspension.
April 15, 2016, 12:32 p.m. - JohnnyV
#!markdown Ehh… plenty of 160mm bikes have great climbing platforms with their shocks wide open. You can't make broad assumptions about how a bike climbs based on travel anymore. Only argument might be geometry, but trail bikes are chasing "enduro" geometries so hard now that even that doesn't amount to much. At best, a trail bike might get a lighter fork and shock and maybe a degree steeper HTA to recommend it as a more efficient bike. But then toss that handful of grams out the window with the big tires and call the slack HTA a wash against the slow-steering plus tires, and what have you got? I'll tell you: 30mm less travel traded for undamped tire suspension.