can you ride anything on anything?

weeksy59

Cracking thread this, especially considering i'm 2 days away from taking my Giant XTC 29er to PDS.

I'm still having HUGE debates about doing this, even so much as to put an offer in on a Spec enduro in the classifieds.

rockmonkeysc

The Enduro will be easier to ride down the steeper, rougher trails & is less likely to break if you make mistakes.

felix.london

Yep - depends if you like a challenge - I ride my Rockhopper on everything except lift accessed DH. I eat up the 120mm travel on a regular basis but then it's really excellent on long climbs & flat fire roads and when you wanna just really hit the gas

As I've said many a time, if I could only have ONE bike out here it would be an Enduro (or something very similar) but I'm happy with the XC bike - although to be fair I've turned it into more of a short-travel AM bike to make it a bit more Alp-friendly

bluechair84

Yup, one bike would see me on a 160mm travel stead with air cans all round and light wheels (flows have been awesome for me). I feel I could ride anything on a bike like that, and I currently have a 150mm and a 170mm bike. I'm wondering what they each bring to the table that I couldn't do one a single bike...

Woody80

bluechair84 wrote:

Yup, one bike would see me on a 160mm travel stead with air cans all round and light wheels (flows have been awesome for me). I feel I could ride anything on a bike like that, and I currently have a 150mm and a 170mm bike. I'm wondering what they each bring to the table that I couldn't do one a single bike...

That's why I bought my Strive, thought a 160mm bike with 36s was the perfect all rounder. All day rides through to DH runs, ideal. Looking forward to the Alps in 5 weeks!

ilovedirt

Max888 wrote:

The first time I went to Morzine I rode my 100mm Cannondale F5 hardtail. The second time, a Cannondale RZ140 with Lefty :twisted: . From my experiences you can ride pretty much any trail on any bike. The only differance is the speed of descent and how many bricks you sh!t.

On a bike which is not suited to the terrain you go much slower with more walking and being clipped in is fricking dumb as the bike just can't go over the obstacles, especially on an XC bike as the BB height is low. The angles are also too steep for some of the runs. Meaning that you are pretty scared most of the time. On the same trails the RZ was much faster and easier to control due to the fact that the suspension could actually handle the terrain. More fun and not as painful.

The best guage of what type of bike is best is by looking at what the locals ride. Many of the kids were riding DJ, AM and FR bikes. Few had fully blown DH rigs. Nearly all of the DH bikes rolling around were ridden by tourists. It really is a matter of rider skill in the end. If you can pick the smoothest line with less sh!t in your way then you will be faster down the hill than a tourist on a 2 week old Santa Cruz V10 carbon.

Best is a 140-160mm AM bike mainly because you can ride it uphill to get to the secret trails! And you can use is in the UK, 'cos who really needs 210mm in Richmond Park. Yep I have seen a session crawling the trails...

Clearly you've never done much proper downhill in the UK, yeah the runs aren't as long, but they're just as steep and tech. There's no substitute for a proper downhill bike if you want to go fast.

Also, all the locals are faster on smaller bikes because they know the trails much better than the tourists.

paul.skibum

I cant see me needing anything more than say a Stumpy EVO, maybe an Enduro. 145mm seems to cover any sort of craziness I might be tempted into, remains pedalable and within sensible weight limits. 32 lbs or thereablouts is the max I'd want to spin up a hill of any noticeable size.

When I worked in France a mate of mine had a Orange 5 built up to be a proper AM bike - he wasa skilled rider, powerful but very light built chap and he could use that bike for pretty much anything, his favourite was to head off on all day epic explorations with 1000s of metres vert gain without a lift but the next day for a rest he'd do DH anf FR stuff.

I am not saying an Orange 5 is an ideal bike but his seemed to hit the Alpine needs of strong, simple and idiot proof!

weeksy59

Well i think i've jumped in an the Giant won't be going to Morzine....

I believe a SC Heckler will..

Thewaylander

Simple answer to everyone...

Yes you probably can, but if you access to more apprpriate bikes why the hell wouldn't you use them.

felix.london

felix.london wrote:

There's plenty of guys on that mountain that I'm sure if I gave them my 'hopper could hit way bigger stuff than I can on my Session

Might have to retract that statement after yesterdays session...was hitting some pretty big stuff 8)

bluechair84

poidh.
You know the drill

felix.london

bluechair84 wrote:

poidh.
You know the drill

hahaha! Indeed. But was having far too much fun to for that kind of thing

And you've gotta understand, when I say big I'm talking a double and a couple of 2-3m drops. But improving all the time and getting a good feel for the bike now. Just ridiculous fun with the proper bike