Building bikes is about the journey, not the destination, right? I appreciate beautiful builds with a clear end-goal in mind, but there’s no final state to any bike I build because the evolution is the point. Particularly with mountain bikes, the frame is just a starting place. You can make the same bike feel radically different by changing the parts hanging off it.
Last summer, as my beloved Specialized Epic EVO was feeling a bit stale, I started looking around for a replacement. The option in this XC-but-capable space — perfectly coined Downcountry by our old friends at Pinkbike — are plentiful. Almost every mountain bike brand has something in the 115-130mm travel range that would be roughly suitable for my local riding. It’s also the range I think 90% of people with big trail bikes should be shopping in these days.
What is my local riding? It’s southwest Colorado. It’s dry and rocky at lower elevations and less dry but still rocky up high. The trails alternate between smooth, packed dirt, marbles, dust, baby heads, and big ol’ rocks. It’s technical but in a high-speed sort of way, not the pick-your-way-through-a-boulder-field kind of technical you might find on the East coast of the US, for example.
The Epic was the perfect bike for these trails. The new one probably is, too. You want roughly 120mm of front and rear travel. Maybe up to 130 mm in the front if you’re not racing (I do race sometimes). A head tube angle between 65.5 and 67 degrees. Suspension and brakes that can handle high-speed chunk. Tires that roll fast but don’t get sliced open too easily.
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