I think a lot of riders bored with the excess of the 160, 170, 180 enduro/super enduro bikes are looking for a little more fun/connection with the trail and their bikes. Now that geometry and suspension are so well sorted, bikes like this offer some great fun.
Last year I was on a Knolly Chilcotin (160/170) and while that bike could just blast through anything... sometimes it felt like you could just close you eyes and ride, haha. I sometimes felt "bogged down" in all that travel. And all that travel really only seemed necessary in a very few, infrequent situations. (Especially with hindsight).
This year, I'm on a Knolly Fugitive 138. But I didn't want a shorter travel bike to hold me back from some of the double/triple black trails/lines I love to ride. So I upped the front travel to 160 (from 150), put proper tires on it with inserts (tannus), coil shock and slackened it a little more with a Wolftooth angleset. Now my neutral setting is proper slack and for the extra gnar days, I've got a super-slack setting (so fun!).
This bike is probably the most fun and rewarding bike I've had in years. Short travel with lots of progression allows you to wind the damping out and gives you very supple initial to mid stroke traction, while the progression has your back for the bigger hits. Riding within less relative sag gives a bike so much more liveliness, pop and fun... yet if set-up right, I've found I haven't been held back from riding anything I rode on my bigger bike. Like Neils said, these bikes force you to be more active and engaged in the ride... no more closing your eyes and pointing it. And I've been very surprised by how often I've realized that it wasn't the bigger travel of my previous bike that allowed me to ride certain lines or trails. It seems it really is more about geo and properly sorted suspension kinematics, performance and set-up.
I think the only place these bikes will fall a little short is at the big bike parks (Whistler). But for me, I visit so infrequently (once a year if I'm lucky?) that I'll just rent a proper DH for the park and use this bike for everything else. Which also has the side benefit of keeping park lap abuse away from my daily driver.
And turns out, Strava says I'm faster... even on my gnarliest trails. Think I might stick around this level of travel for a while. Only thing that has me thinking now is... what a mullet set-up would feel like at this travel? Even easier to dance around and pick the right lines? Hmmm.
June 3, 2022, 10:33 a.m. - IslandLife
I think a lot of riders bored with the excess of the 160, 170, 180 enduro/super enduro bikes are looking for a little more fun/connection with the trail and their bikes. Now that geometry and suspension are so well sorted, bikes like this offer some great fun. Last year I was on a Knolly Chilcotin (160/170) and while that bike could just blast through anything... sometimes it felt like you could just close you eyes and ride, haha. I sometimes felt "bogged down" in all that travel. And all that travel really only seemed necessary in a very few, infrequent situations. (Especially with hindsight). This year, I'm on a Knolly Fugitive 138. But I didn't want a shorter travel bike to hold me back from some of the double/triple black trails/lines I love to ride. So I upped the front travel to 160 (from 150), put proper tires on it with inserts (tannus), coil shock and slackened it a little more with a Wolftooth angleset. Now my neutral setting is proper slack and for the extra gnar days, I've got a super-slack setting (so fun!). This bike is probably the most fun and rewarding bike I've had in years. Short travel with lots of progression allows you to wind the damping out and gives you very supple initial to mid stroke traction, while the progression has your back for the bigger hits. Riding within less relative sag gives a bike so much more liveliness, pop and fun... yet if set-up right, I've found I haven't been held back from riding anything I rode on my bigger bike. Like Neils said, these bikes force you to be more active and engaged in the ride... no more closing your eyes and pointing it. And I've been very surprised by how often I've realized that it wasn't the bigger travel of my previous bike that allowed me to ride certain lines or trails. It seems it really is more about geo and properly sorted suspension kinematics, performance and set-up. I think the only place these bikes will fall a little short is at the big bike parks (Whistler). But for me, I visit so infrequently (once a year if I'm lucky?) that I'll just rent a proper DH for the park and use this bike for everything else. Which also has the side benefit of keeping park lap abuse away from my daily driver. And turns out, Strava says I'm faster... even on my gnarliest trails. Think I might stick around this level of travel for a while. Only thing that has me thinking now is... what a mullet set-up would feel like at this travel? Even easier to dance around and pick the right lines? Hmmm.