Yes many other forums and discussions of this topic online. But i’m a triathlete at heart and wanted ST opinion :-). Looking to make a foray into MTB’ing. Not sure if I should get full sus XC bike or a trail/downcountry bike. Here’s my specifics:
No MTB racing planned, but I am a roadie at heart and would not mind being able to go after strava segments on the trails, and be quicker on the smooth stuff.
I live in CT. my local terrain is a mix of gravel roads and very rocky, rooty, technical trails typical of southern new england. includes sudden and steep ups and downs of all sorts, including some are in the realm to perhaps necessitate short hike-a-bike sections. no long sustained mountain-y climbs (although, would love to be able to if i travel with the bike to VT or NY). i have trails i can ride to from home, so a typical ride could also include a couple miles on pavement as i scoot around to different areas.
I don’t plan to do any downhilling or bike parks with big jumps and such.
I don’t want a fat bike but winter could be a time i embrace the MTB most, so riding in modest snow cover is a consideration if it matters (tires between the two types?)
While newer to MTB, i’ve rented MTBs on a couple occasions and generally am a good bike handler, and i run on the trails I’ll ride on so i’ll know them well. so I anticipate being average or better than average in terms of bike handling, line choice, etc.
My daughter is getting better at riding and i’d probably use this bike to mozy around the neighborhood with her, if that matters.
What say you ST? I’m hoping to get more serious about my search so specific model recommendations are welcome. the spectrum of these two categories appears quite wide. some bikes advertise themselves as the perfect blend between the two. MTB choice seems to be a calculated choice of which terrains you want to excel at and which you want to compromise/accept some inefficiencies on. in that case interested in how road-minded riders view the transition and which areas you accepted inefficiencies on, and how that went for you. i feel like i’ll still remain a roadie at heart, wanting to remain fast-feeling, so therefore maybe getting an XC and compromising on rougher sections/descents in order to be quick on flats/climbs/smooth stuff. But some online discussions say that’s a narrow-minded choice and its better to just embrace the comfort and go-anywhere-without-care mindset of a trail bike right at the start.
I’m not sure a full-on XC rig makes a lot of sense if you’re never going to race. Granted, XC bikes these days are pretty capable. There are a few bikes that kind of blur the lines between trail and XC like Rocky Mountain Element or Trek Top Fuel. Santa Cruz Tallboy might fit into that category too. I think the Top Fuel is as close to a default answer as you’re going to get here.
As a road-minded rider who mostly rides flowy trails I built up a steel hardtail a few years ago and it’s been great most of the time. It’s a lot of work when things get gnarly but I don’t care about speed. When I ride with full-squish dudes they just kind of plow over everything whereas I have to pick my way through more carefully. I’m not suggesting a hardtail for you, but when considering the amount of travel you want, consider whether you like the idea of speed and comfort vs a rougher, more technical ride - different folks have different definitions of “fun”.
I dont think a true XC race bike is a good choice unless youre racing. But the newest “down-country” bikes are a blast; theyre light enough to climb efficiently, and go downhill very well.
I have a Pivot Trail 429 as my “daily” mountain bike and love it! I wish it was a bit lighter for 50+mi races, and I have a bigger bike for shuttle days, but it is a great bike for 95% of my riding.
I’d reccomend looking at bikes in the 120mm travel class. I doubt you’d be dissapointed.
Buy the best dual suspension bike you can afford. Modern dualies climb well and are almost as fast as XC hardtails. Yet you will enjoy being able to ride anything and the feeling that the bike is capable of anything you throw at it.
Thanks. when you say true XC race bikes, do you mean only the uber focused XCs within a product family or brands XC offerings? For example, under specialized’s XC category they have epic, epic evo, and epic world cup. epic evo is the downcountry offering, so you’re saying the epic world cup is a bad choice? or ALL epic family? epic evos are 130mm travel. regular epics are slightly between the two, would that fall into your classification of “true XC race bike” too? or only the world cup evo?
further examples of this are canyon - lux trail vs lux world cup. lux world cup certainly is the true xc race bike, but what about lux trail? specifically with canyon’s offerings its interesting because it appears to be either the lux trail (120mm front) or next jump up is neuron (140mm) and is fully a trail bike, not really downcountry. I suppose lux trail is sorta their downcountry offering?
I have a Trek Top Fuel and it is a really nice bike that is very fun to ride. I actually ride faster on it than I do on my Canyon XC bike (but I am not the best mountain biker).
Part of the issue here is that the things that you want to do are all somewhat counter to each other. I live in Maine, so my “every-day” bike is a Juliana Furtado (Santa Cruz 5010) with 27.5”+ tires. It’s a shorter-travel trail bike, great for riding on the local rocky, rooty, punchy trails. My cross tri race bike is a Chisel FS Comp, because that’s more appropriate for the “going fast” part - and would also be great for tooling around the neighborhood with your kiddo. If you want to ride on deep or packed snow, you really will want wider (anything less than 4” runs a high risk of damaging groomed snow trails). The tires that I’m running on my fat bike are twice as wide as on my Juliana.
There is not going to be one tool that covers all of your needs perfectly here; whatever bike you choose is going to be a compromise. Something in the 120mm-ish range up front probably gets you closest to what you want speedwise and with your paved/gravel needs, but at the expense of some comfort.
If you plan on buying an modern or new bike my vote is for a XC bike. Most new XC bikes have plenty of travel (110+mm is plenty) for whatever people think they need for downhill while still being able to climb. I recently went through this process and ending up on a Cannondale scalpel. I have a motocross back ground so I can get a little sendy and I have no problem keeping up with freinds riding trail and down county bikes on an XC bike.
Yea, you’re following my thought process pretty well. I would avoid a Epic WC, Supercaliber, Lux WC, etc. Those will likely leave you feeling beat up and under-biked somewhat too often. You’ll be able to get them down the more aggressive trails but you likely won’t be as happy.
The Epic EVO is a good do-it-all bike, I personally wouldn’t go with the regular Epic as an only bike but it would certainly work. Most of the 120-140mm bikes have enough travel to get rowdy, are light enough to pedal uphill all-day or ride the road to the trail system, and while your buddies are bragging about their long-travel bikes at the trailhead, you’ll be feeling great at the top while they need a 30min lunch break.
I know it can be tough in todays direct-to-consumer world but I would try to go demo some bikes, even if it isn’t the exact bike you want, you’ll get an idea of how different brands feel (suspension kinematics are huge, not just total travel) as well as how much travel you think you actually need. VPP (Sant Cruz) has a very unique feel, any of the DW bikes (Pivot, Transition, etc) have a different feeling, and the more traditional horst link bikes (Speciailized) feel different again. Not that one is necessarily better than the others, but you may get along better with one style over another and you can’t know until you go ride them. I’m not familiar with the NE but if there is a big MTB hub like Bend, Bellingham, Asheville, Boulder it would be a fun weekend.
@csb146 has a good point too; being under-biked is, in my opinion, better than over-biked. In other words I would rather have a bike with less travel rather than more. BUT, you can get in over your head with too small of a bike and it ends up being more of a survival ride than a party. I can absolutely ride my Trail 429 anywhere, and have, but I would rather not take it to a park or down some of the big trails in Bellingham/North Shore/Pisgah, that’s where the big bikes shine. But I would prefer to take my 429 to Bellingham than take my enduro sled to Bend which is mostly XC.
I’d go with a FS light trail/downcountry bike in the 120-130 travel range. Others have already posted some good suggestions - Spesh Epic Evo, Trek Top Fuel, Pivot Trailcat SL (replaced the Trail 429), SC Blur TR or Tallboy, Transition Spur, Revel Ranger, etc. If you do ever decide to jump in a race, any of those bikes would be fine and all of them will be fun and capable on your local trails. I’m in the northeast as well and I’ve (currently) landed on a 2-bike solution of a gen 7 Epic Evo for racing and XC trails, and a Transition Smuggler (140 fork/130 rear) for rowdier stuff, flow trails, etc.
Keep in mind that it’s not just about travel numbers. Trail bikes tend to have slacker head angles, taller stack heights and longer wheelbases which help with comfort and downhill stability but give up some of the crisp handling characteristics of XC bikes. XC bikes tend to be lower and put more of your weight out over the front of the bike which is a faster position but can feel a little twitchy at times. All that being said, XC and trail geo have been converging over the last few years, with XC bikes getting longer and slacker and trail bikes prioritizing climbing efficiency.
I’m a roadie at heart as well and I’ll say that I don’t think it necessarily translates directly to enjoying XC bikes more. Mountain biking is a different animal and if you don’t plan to race then you should look for the bike that’s the most fun to ride. Keep an open mind - if you’re a strong rider with good skills you’ll be able to rip on pretty much any bike. I do enjoy riding my Epic but in many situations I like the Transition better - it’s light for a trail bike (well under 30#), climbs reasonably well, and it’s so much more fun on flowy trails and downhills. I wouldn’t race it, but if I could only own one bike it would be closer to the Transition than the Epic (the Transition Spur might be the perfect compromise).
Unfortunately for my wallet, one of the things I love about mountain biking is experimenting with different bikes and figuring out what works best for me personally. It’s a trial and error process and if you end up falling in love with riding you’ll most likely end up with more than one bike. As someone else mentioned, there’s really no one bike solution but I think two can cover the vast majority of riding needs.
I’m not familiar with the NE but if there is a big MTB hub like Bend, Bellingham, Asheville, Boulder it would be a fun weekend.
Ranch Camp in Stowe, VT is a great place for this. They are at the base of a great trail network called Cady Hill and they usually have a big demo fleet. Plus good food and beer. And Stowe is a fun weekend trip.
I started my ‘life’ doing MTB CX racing in the forests of the uk. In fairness as a kid I used to ride my road bike around some bridleways doing what is now probably called gravel riding but in the early 1980s was just called ‘weird poor kid’ riding what he had.
I (still have) a cannondale F2000SL lefty hardtail that was my race bike, and for years rode that around the MTB trails of Rotorua in NZ. I had demo rides on a few bikes but nothing really inspired me to make the ‘leap’. I tried a stumpjumper FS and was nice, but not enough to open my (very tightly sealed yorkshire) wallet. Then did a second lap on an Epic Expert and within 200 yards had the biggest grin on my face in years. About 500m further round the course I was hammering so fast I lost the front end. Got back to the carpark where the demo day was based 10 mins later, blood down my arm and asked if they had a card machine and I could ride the epic away (they said no, but I went straight to the dealer and got one). Was just the perfect bike for me.
Now that was 2012. And whilst I’m now on my 3rd frame (LOL @ specialized lifetime warranty at that time), I still really enjoy it. However, courses have become more technical over the years. And when I jumped back on the ‘dale then it really highlighted just how much skill you need to ride 26” hardtails with 1.8” tyres and 80mm travel…. Even my Epic is a handful on Grade 4 tracks (in my hands).
If I do ever replace it then it would definitely be an epic evo at least for the XC courses round me. Back in the UK forests, not sure, but round here then I know that all my road / tri riding means that uphills are where I gain a lot of places. Even vs e-bikes in a couple of races. But downhill then I have a huge queue behind me and end up enduring as opposed to enjoying.
So if you’ve got good ride fitness then anything other than a hill downhill rig will be fine to ride around. And then just have some good safe fun that a mid travel, slacker head angle bike can give you.
I rode a Transition Spur and I think thats the bike that almost everyone should get. If you race get a race bike and if you have more gnarley aspirations then buy more bike, but for almost everyone you want a bike thats forgiving and enabling but still feels fast and nimble. You can throw on bigger/badder tires if you’re venturing into more aggressive terrain (or light snow) and faster tires if you ever want to dip your toes in a race.
Unless you “have to have” the mtb equivalent of a road super bike you will almost certainly be more comfortable and go faster on a trail bike. If you have roadie vs mtb handling and tech skills the trail bike will effectively mask those “lack of” skills.
I was in this exact same situation 5 years ago and chose poorly and boy did I learn the hard way!
I bought a pure XC Top Fuel. Very aggressive. Probably moreso than any modern bike. The lack of forgiveness really caused handling issue for me with no prior mtb skills. A more slack geo is sooo much more forgiving and easier to ride.