Sussex-MTB

During the recent Quest Adventure demo day I was lucky enough to get a quick spin on the Marin Attack Trail. The trouble was a quick up and down spin on smooth downland trails didn’t really do the bike justice and I wanted to give it a proper go on some more challenging terrain. So I was really pleased when the guys from Marin said they’d drop it back for me to peruse at my leisure

Marin Attack Trail

I intended to ride it a few different places and see how it felt as a trail bike as well as checking out it’s credentials as a burly descender.

So to that end the first ride scheduled in was up at Pitch Hill. I went with the express purpose of sending it of the larger part of the Judge’s seat, which quite frankly I’ve not really had the balls to do unless you count the one time a few years back when I did it on ASBO’s Intense.

Judge's Seat

So I rolled up to the lip, marked the line I wanted with a small pine cone the went for it. Of course not being on a hardtail it left me wondering what the fuss was about. The Attack Trail just sucked it all up and laughed at me. Perhaps I’ll have the guts to try it on the Hummer now…..

Continuing on round our usual loop of Pitch Hill trails it was a lot of fun and the descents were an absolute scream, I guess I was going quicker than I would have dared on my Hummer, but it all felt perfectly in control as well (for a change). I guess the only time the bike was an issue was on the ’switchback trail’ where I had trouble fitting the bars between a couple of trees. The other aspect was with a longer fork and a more laid back head angle I really had to work to hold it on line on the tight downhill switchbacks. I got round though and booted it off the drop at the bottom too, so that was nice.

Night riding fun

The second ride was on more local trails on the South Downs. Just a usual ‘Tuesday night’ style loop. To be honest I found it a bit hard going, but then this isn’t really the bike you want if you are intending to go out mile munching. It got the job done obviously, but on one or two of the long smooth climbs the extra six pounds of heft over my Hummer was very noticeable.

The third and final ride was going to be super lush, a long morning up at Swinley with the Boyz and a chance to ride loads of singletrack and the amusingly names “Sandy Chute”, it sounds saucy, but the rest of us know it as the jump gulley.

I was really up for this ride and despite having spent the previous day walking round Legoland I had bags of energy. The bike felt great and rolling through the jump gulley preloading the suspension I was amazed how much of a boost I could get from the lips. The doubles at the end were easily cleaned first time with minimal effort.

Jump gulley

The downhill run to ‘the labyrinth’ was silky smooth and as fast as I dare let it go. It’s the first time I’ve cleared all the jumps so I was very happy.

Dropping in

So what’s the verdict?

Well I gave it back before I got too attached to be honest. I really enjoyed riding this bike. The Lyrik forks were silky smooth and soaked everything up nicely. The Hammerschmidt worked superbly. I still don’t really like the way it looks, but you can’t fault the execution, it’s great. Hopefully subsequent revisions of the Hammerschmidt will make it a bit lighter / prettier / cheaper!

The bike is a real blast to ride, it flows through singletrack well, although you have to work a bit harder on the really tight stuff. When the trail points down it really comes alive. Flattering your poor line choices and giving you a feeling of invincibility.

Point it uphill and, providing you’re not in a hurry, it’ll surprise you by giving out bags of grip enabling you to get up stuff that shouldn’t really be possible (despite my comedy wipe out at Swinley).

If I could find a way of monetising some of my less important internal organs I’d hapily have it in the shed for those fun days at Pitch / Swinley, and of course it would give me a good excuse to enter the MegaAvalanche