Perhaps this was true 2-3 years ago, but that gap has closed a lot now. The cost of a Santa Cruz CC frame is inline or not much more than others out there.
Anyone use an Ochain thingy?
- Thread starter ChrisRobin
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Elastomers, what a joke.
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Elastomers, what a joke.
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those plus a suspension seatpost, stem, some flexx handlebars, a shockster.... these flex cranks are part of a healthy disembodied riding experience!
Obviously not and obviously that's not the rub. Can't speak for willy but there at least used to be a lot more pockets of people involved in the sport, a company or two, and a hell of a lot more.....let's call them a less gentrified riding populace who weren't part of a publicly traded 'holdings' conglomerate with someone just constantly recycling bad ideas, riders who couldn't suck those up fast enough and simultaneously taking part in a world with mostly better bikes to go with now shittier trails. It used to be a lot more escapable. General trail riding has become as lame and homogeneous as xc racing used to be. The companies, the people making up the biking population, and most importantly the trails.
There's an absolutely crazy phenomenon that's a lot more prevalent in the dirtbiking world. It's called bedding in a trail, riding it, and then shutting the fuck up about it so it doesn't get found, overun, selfied to death, and eventually destroyed. Because that group of people know the consequences. That used to be a hell of a lot easier with mtb trails in some places, even 10 years after strava and the gram were ruining literally everything. Now the clones swarm everywhere, with no escape. I can't even pass by someone with a moutainbike out in the woods and not hear the word 'trailforks'
spoken ouloud. It's all just so canned.
The incessant marketing of the mountainbike 'lifestyle' has brought in a lot more of the all the typical trappings of ruthless consumerism and growing the customer base. That base is full of exactly the kind of people susceptible to that marketing. That has all kinds of shitty downstream effects. I'm not even going to get into what the forest service is doing. Hiding trails and being threatened with fines was better than having grownthesport™
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I don't know about "not speaking for me", you spoke for me pretty well right there. Don't really have much to add.
Maybe I'm just slow up the uptake in that I'm still fighting for public stonings and shaming companies that pull this shit in the hopes that things can improve.
Maybe I'm just slow up the uptake in that I'm still fighting for public stonings and shaming companies that pull this shit in the hopes that things can improve.
The industry is just serving a customer base of rubes and dipshits. The solution is pretty simple, don't be a rube or a dipshit.
And that worked great for a really long time.
Then the rubes and dipshits reached a critical mass that started driving the ship. Anyone can not buy a thing, that's not some great insight. But exclusively driving that relationship between snake oil and the rubes has fucked up all kinds of real tangible things that actually matter.
There used to be a legit trail here. This is what replaced it thanks to the fucking geniuses that inhabit this sport now.
count them. I dare you.
that's 3k of elevation
Imagine applying that same logic to another industry - like the pharma industry. "Don't buy that medicine, just don't be a dipshit" - fuck that noise, I don't have a biochem degree with an extra 4 years of medical school plus residency to learn that. I want to be able to trust my doctor when they tell me to use a particular medicine, and I want to be able to trust that medicine has been vetted and is safe for use.
You shouldn't need to have an engineering degree and spend hours looking at each product to decide whether or not its good. It doesn't feel unreasonable to me to suggest that all the bullshit made up misleading graphs and stats (among other things) in the bike industry that exist exclusively to push consumerism frequently at the cost of performance need to get called out.
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Think of all the mid corner skidding you can do!
Say what you will about the days of road bike geometry, but those things filtered out about 95% percent of riders after getting launched OTB every few minutes.
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I had a trails and recreation supervisor at the forest service at the regional level (as in region 5 which is all of California, like 11 different forests) try to 'explain' to me how bikes created in the last few years have allowed mountainbikers to ride places like downieville, whereas 10 years ago that was unfathomable.
That dude has some dumb motherfuckers in his ears.
You're not wrong. The essentially dh bike geometry we all pushed for for years to make bikes more capable doing truly stupid things opened the door for all the punters to ride flow trails. It's a problem.
They'll look at that switchback disaster which took hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to build and think it just "needs berms"
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I had a coworker who bought a used enduro bike and on his second ride was going down "expert" flow trails. He was confident that he was an expert level rider. I may have traumatized him a little when I showed him around some other trails. He kind of realized he had a lot of learning to do but there are certainly people around here that when they experience the same thing simply demand trails be built to their noob standard instead of trying to progress. No idea what the percentages are as I generally do my best to simply avoid people these days.
I can only imagine all the horror expressed at some of the 'exits' up your way by people who think duthie is extreme.....with shit built 20+ years ago
we need all that dnr land down here
Not sure what your point is @William42 . Memory's a little hazy but I seem to remember some DH frames back in 2012 wouldn't have been far off $4K
And I don't know if you've ridden a 2012 DH bike recently but plenty current 170/180mm bikes outperform them. And they're not necessarily as expensive as $4k
And I don't know if you've ridden a 2012 DH bike recently but plenty current 170/180mm bikes outperform them. And they're not necessarily as expensive as $4k
today I learned gary is the target market that never truly rode a dh bike for what it's capable of
that ain't the bike
I rode a 2012 turner dhr for way too long and did things on that bike I would never even consider on ANY trailbike
Same for every real dh bike I owned before that going back another 10 years. A dh bike is a lot more than just frame geometry.
This is on a 2004 dh bike and you couldn't pay me enough to try this on a trailbike
Virgin - Craig Saunders (cmoney)
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me too
and that includes gapping things into rocks that break shitty little stupid trailbike wheels and tires
and sometimes headtubes
Its all too common
Oh a tricky root? Lets cut out.
Oh a bunch of tricky roots? Lets go around them.
Oh a tree is causing me to turn and avoid it? Lets cut it down.
Oh something is "hard" and therefor it must be washed out or something? Lets dig another shitty section of trail.
Oh a flat corner is tricky? Lets stick a stupid berm on it.
Its all too common
Oh a tricky root? Lets cut out.
Oh a bunch of tricky roots? Lets go around them.
Oh a tree is causing me to turn and avoid it? Lets cut it down.
Oh something is "hard" and therefor it must be washed out or something? Lets dig another shitty section of trail.
Oh a flat corner is tricky? Lets stick a stupid berm on it.
That is the way it was in Virginia. Here people demand that someone else build them easier trails. In some ways I prefer this as the good stuff can remain good and those folks get to ride something that I can ignore.
Not relevant, but a few days ago I randomly found a new, insanely steep, loamy, raw, natural 1800 ft DH trail about a mile from my house on Snow King. I rode it yesterday. Was genuinely scared on sections. There are two of these now, right next to town. I am sure this one will get shut down, but as of today, doesn't appear on any heat map. (I didnt turn on Strava on purpose).
The point? Some newskool kids are OK, and still being gnarly. (It reminded me of steep woods sections in Oaxaca)
View attachment 1000004226.png
(This is a hiking track, Woo should like the contours!)
The point? Some newskool kids are OK, and still being gnarly. (It reminded me of steep woods sections in Oaxaca)
View attachment 1000004226.png
(This is a hiking track, Woo should like the contours!)
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It has DH tyres.
I wasn't ready to admit it holds speed/momentum better but still doesn't lose out in tighter stuff to the old 26" DH bike either.
But riding them back to back there was no doubt about how much of a disadvantage I'd been at riding the ol Session.
Never rode an old DHR tho.
I wasn't ready to admit it holds speed/momentum better but still doesn't lose out in tighter stuff to the old 26" DH bike either.
But riding them back to back there was no doubt about how much of a disadvantage I'd been at riding the ol Session.
Never rode an old DHR tho.
You're still not getting what I'm saying. I can think of a million trails that are faster on a trailbike because of rolling efficiency. I'm talking about shit that breaks trailbikes. Why dh bikes exist.It has DH tyres.
I wasn't ready to admit it holds speed/momentum better but still doesn't lose out in tighter stuff to the old 26" DH bike either.
But riding them back to back there was no doubt about how much of a disadvantage I'd been at riding the ol Session.
Never rode an old DHR tho.
I mean it's fine if you don't roll that fast. You've already made clear that age has taken its toll on you. The industry is finally making the rolling machines for folks that only ever benefitted from dh bike geometry and nothing else about them. Westy and I were just talking about this.
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Wait, does the Ochain thingy make switchbacks better? I'm confused. 
And for the record I appreciate well built switchbacks. The steeper, the rockier, the more impossible, the better. Helps to keep dumb asses off the trail. Just don't put a water bar of some sorts at the apex. Duh.
And for the record I appreciate well built switchbacks. The steeper, the rockier, the more impossible, the better. Helps to keep dumb asses off the trail. Just don't put a water bar of some sorts at the apex. Duh.
If you can actually get bearings and they aren't using some kind of one-off extended (ass)hat-lip design instead of spacers or just a design that doesn't need spacers.
So if they are standard bearing sizes, sure. But the industry tries to fuck this up on purpose.
Yeah no kidding. That's literally the case everywhere. Don't get hung up on the pic, that's just one I know of that's older than 2012 on a bike with truly dated geometry. But it was tough enough that I had no fear abusing it.....which was my point. Not doing some dumb drop with a graded landing. My point was that I knew if I clipped the landing or overshot it, the thing would stay in one piece (and increase the chances of me staying in one piece)
That stuff is rare, I spent 99% of my time on bikes smashing rocks on the ground. I just have fewer pics of that
Modern trailbikes have the same geo as most decent 2012 dh bikes. Different sized wheels are a wash, you can put those on anything, and honestly that accounts for most of the rolling efficiency. DH bikes are made tougher than trail bikes. There's very well justified spectrum of trust between the two for that reason. And the idea that modern trailbikes are just as 'capable' as old dh bikes is bullshit. They break. If the stuff you ride is faster on a trailbike, that's great! But that doesn't mean that all trailbikes are faster than all old dh bikes on real dh terrain. The only thing really great about modern trailbikes is that they basically ARE just lighter versions of 2012 dh bike geo.
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But-ter-cups?! Allegedly they make all the difference.
On top of that, all the people who are saying that their fancy new trail bike is just as capable as a DH bike are comparing it to the last one they owned in, like, 2014 or whatever. Sure, the geo hasn't changed nearly as much (besides actually coming in sizes for tall people) but suspension and brakes and all that stuff has gotten way better, and that makes a big difference too.
Fixed
those plus a suspension seatpost, stem, some flexx handlebars, a shockster.... these flex cranks are part of a healthy disembodied riding experience!
I mean, there are way fewer bikes with totally fucked kinematics these days, air springs have gotten better (no, not coil-like), and I do think a lot of newer dampers work better than many options from 10 years ago.
Are there still misses? For sure. Was everything from 10 years ago terrible? Definitely not. Has the overall state of things improved? I sure think so.
ETA: I'm also talking about relatively stock suspension that most people are riding more so than high end custom tuned shit. People have known how to make suspension work well for a long time, but the median stuff is better now.
Are there still misses? For sure. Was everything from 10 years ago terrible? Definitely not. Has the overall state of things improved? I sure think so.
ETA: I'm also talking about relatively stock suspension that most people are riding more so than high end custom tuned shit. People have known how to make suspension work well for a long time, but the median stuff is better now.
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Just to confirm...
I was comparing my 2023 Giga to my 2012 Session. Both ridden on the same day on the same (local) DH track recently. The Giga is faster at Glencoe DH track too. a UK DH track with a reputation for being gnarlier than Ft William. I haven't had both bikes at Ft Bill. But I'm confident I know one's going to be quicker down it.
"Capable" is a spectrum too Woo. and yeah. Obviously a DH bike is definitely the one when you want to push the boudaries in the gnar stakes. And it's interesting a lot of freeride guys choose to size down DH bikes for big tricky shit actually erring more towards 2012 geo.
I intentionally didn't use the word "capable" I used the word "outperform". As the above revelation surprised me too.
I like how I post one picture just to demonstrate one aspect of several in the realm of consequences, even told you not to harp on it, and nothing else I typed made it into your brain.
Other than length, which for me was never an issue, modern dh bike geometry IS 2012 dh bike geometry
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