I was fine in the park on a 140/130 bike on green/blue trails. Burke mt, right?
1 Like
yep!
Tallboy is going to be awesome
Any other options? I feel like the DH bike is going to be too much and the Tallboy is kind of not a lot of bike for lift-access riding. Though it will definitely be fine on green/blue trails.
How often do you really get the chance to experience a full-on DH bike in the environment it’s meant to be used? I say go for the DH bike for the park day.
Yes you might be “fine” on something else, but hell this is vacation not the bike you have to own forever.
3 Likes
This. Do they have any bigger bikes that aren’t DH bikes? I mean, DH are great, but any longer travel enduro bike (150-170mm) would be suitable and usually more adjustable (lots of DH have coils that don’t give a fuck about how much you weigh).
Yeah, this is why I’m wary of the DH bike option. It’ll be fun no matter what, but a relatively dialed long-travel bike vs one that isn’t are going to be two different kinds of fun. And it is just a different experience pushing that much weight and travel around than, yeah, a 150-170 air spring bike.
I rented at KT once (but not Burke lift-access) and they had us send them our weights and stuff to set up the bikes. I assume the attention to detail up in that region is probably pretty good in general.
1 Like
shameless plug: I’ve got two '21 Yeti T3 SB115s with AXS that will be available after the weekend if they don’t get claimed. One medium one large each have ~40 miles. Available for a song(compared to msrp) for any reputable tarck members. PM me.
6 Likes
when did belopsky change his handle?
3 Likes
Is that the guy who can’t settle on which fixie/crosscheck is right for him? Not me bro, I’m just trying to slang these baller AF full squish bikes that were “demos”.
1 Like
Do the Tallboy for the 2 days and the DH bike for the park. Tallboy can do everything but the lift stuff at Kingdom. I’ve done a lot of the other stuff and it’s not too gnarly.
1 Like
We went to Kingdom Trails earlier this summer because my wife is on an MTB-buying quest similar to yours, with the added constraint of a max of 70cm standover. One of the shops there had multiple tiny Julianas she could try. I Don’t Mountain Bike™,** but for the sake of having some understanding of the bikes my wife was testing, I rented a Tallboy for a day. The shop seemed attentive to adjusting suspension for rider weight and that sort of thing (although rental bikes and demo fleets all put ludicrously wide bars on their XS bikes - I’ve been hearing rants about that all summer). The Tallboy seemed like a good fit for those trails. If I did mountain bike, I think I’d want something that felt a bit less boingy when climbing and a bit more nimble on the more typical rocky/rooty New England trails, but what do I know?
After one day of MTB, I’d reached my limit (that is, I was starting to feel somewhat confident so I returned the bike before hurting myself). The next day, I took my road bike and rode to the Canadian border with an ice cream stop at Tim & Doug’s in Newport - 80ish miles with 55 on dirt roads. The final day, I rode up Mt. Burke and overheated my disc rotors on the way down. After stopping to let them cool down, I tapped the rotor with the back of my hand to check the temp and my sweat sizzled.
** The last time I went mountain biking, I told my friend “I know my fitness is going to outstrip my skills,” which happened in spectacular fashion 10 minutes later when I went OTB and broke my collarbone the day before my wife and I were supposed to leave on a 2-week bike tour.
6 Likes
yeah that’s the one. no offense intended just he’s the guy who is like “here’s an expensive thing that i rode once but then got a very similar expensive thing instead” and he just did a for sale thread for two sorta niche hybrids that he rode for like 50 miles and i’m a little bit drunk
PMed the moment i read this post
3 Likes
so i’m doing two days of xc trail riding at KT and one day at burke
burke lift accessed bike options (non-DH bikes because i can’t use all that bike) are:
trek slash 8
scott ransom 920
then i guess i’ll do the tallboy for the other two days
2 Likes
Both would be rad bikes. Scott will have their ‘twin lock’ system that can change compression/lockout settings and have more cables on the left side. But you also won’t really use it until you want to ride to the top of burke mountain.
Slash also pretty classic enduro rig. Looks like it still has lyrik while you get 38mm on the ransom.
1 Like
I think this is a case of mtb’s coming speced with 800 wide bars no matter what frame size. Then rentals don’t choose to cut them down because when they sell them after 1-2 seasons they want the buyer to have the “catalogue spec”.
1 Like
Any one of those will be enough bike for bike park/double black diamond shenanigans.
1 Like
Yeah, that’s definitely why. The problem is they’re making their sales job harder because there’s no way to make a bike fit, feel good, and handle well for a 5’2" (157 cm) woman when there are 80 cm bars on the bike. And then the bike industry wonders why they can’t sell more bikes to women. And then they cut the XS sizes from their lineup because “they don’t sell well.”
3 Likes
oh boy, you’re gonna have fun. Do they rent knee pads?