Sussex-MTB

It’s come round again, this Saturday (March 13th) is the next Quest ride, all are welcome and don’t forget your cake money for Parklife afterwards

Last month's ride

February rabble

So get yourselves down to Quest Adventure in Broadwater on saturday at around 09:45 to roll out at 10:00 (or when my capuccino cup is empty, whichever happens first!). Thread here.

As ever all are welcome and helmets must be worn.

Cheers,

Hummerlicious

I’d been looking forward to riding the 2010 Genesis Alpitude, I rode last year’s and loved it so I was keen to see if this year’s model was as fun to ride.

The Alpitude differentiates itself from the Altitude by it’s slacker angles, beefier tubing and longer travel fork. When you first lay eyes on this bike the low slung frame and long fork make it look mean as hell and you know it means business.

The top tube is dropped with a neat gusset linking it to the seat tube, not unlike the Pace hardtail frames. The main triangle tubes are made from Reynolds excellent 853 steel and are oversized (although still skinny when compared to an aluminium frame), the compact rear triangle is made from much more slender tubing and the overall result is a very pleasing looking frame. It also has the nice (almost essential) UK friendly addition of crud catcher bosses on the underside of the downtube, which proved very handy on my two test rides! It also has chain guide mounts should you want to fit a chain retention device or perhaps a Hammerschmidt crank.

Genesis Alpitude

It’s kitted out with pretty much an entire SLX groupset, the only differences being the rear mech (upgraded to XT) and the shifters (downgraded to Deore). As is usual with a full Shimano build it all works together faultlessley, with the light action of the shifting a real pleasure to use. The highlight though is the buttery smooth Rock Shox Revelation fork, but more on that later.

After a bit of fiddling with the set up I finally arrived at what seemed to be a good compromise on the tyre pressure, it was very muddy and 25psi seemed to stike a good comfort / grip balance.

One of the unique features of this bike is despite the slack head angle the seat angle is quite steep, this makes it an exceptionally well mannered climber, there’s little in the way of front wheel wander when climbing, except on all but hte steepest climbs, and even this can be dialled out by dropping the fork down to a shorter travel temporarily.

Genesis Alpitude

So how does it ride? Well in a word fun. It wants you to ride quick, it needs you to ride quick. When you really start to push it the bike comes to life, the ‘twang’ of the steel frame is really enjoyable as you speed your way through the singletrack. The compact back end makes manualling over roots and obstacles a piece of cake.

Turn the terrain steep and gnarly and it excells. It’s easy to get your weight off the back and the fork does a great job of keeping everything tracking smoothly in the direction you want to go. Popping of jumps and drops with ease is the name of the game, again the fork saves you if you get it a bit wrong.

You can push it as hard as you like on the downhills and it just laughs back at you, it’s a bike for scaring your mates who have paid significantly more on a full suspention bike as you buzz their rear tyres and then overtake with a grin on your face!

Genesis Alpitude

The only real downside would say is maybe it would climb a bit better if it was a bit lighter. But that said it would probably be at the expense of it’s bombproof descending ability, so perhaps it’s just that I need to get a bit fitter.

For the price this is an amzing bike for riding round these parts, South or North downs singletrack will be hammered with ease and in all likelyhood the only limitation will be your ability to hang on when it encourages you to really go for it.

Hummerlicious

Ice Bike 2010 – Saracen Kili Flyer Ti

Originally uploaded by 18bikes

A lot of you guys out there probably see Saracen from their ‘Ur bike iz saracen’ Halfords days, but some of us can just about cast our minds back to the first explosion of popularity this MTB’ing thing we love so much had.

Saracen were there and their steel frames were something to aspire to, the top end models were sweet. Well Madison have set out to rejuvenate the brand and they have some pretty nice looking bikes too.

But here we have the Saracen Kili Flyer in Ti. Will it get made in 2011? Well I hope so, it makes me go all misty eyed and nostalgic!!

It’s taken me a while to get round to writing this review, mainly because I was hoping to get another go on this bike. But it’s popularity has proved such that’s it’s been pretty much booked out from Quest since it came in.

I’ve managed to get two good rides in on this bike, one on the last month’s Quest ride on the south downs and one on a Sussex-MTB ride on the north downs. Also I did the SD ride with the chainstays on long and the ND ride with them short just to see the difference.

Unfortunately though the weather was pretty appaling for both so I’ve not really had a chance to fully let rip on the 19, hopefully I’ll get it again some time in the future though, I certainly hope so as it’s great fun to ride!

So what about the bike? Well the first thing I really noticed was the weight. This bike weighs around 24lbs and as such is nearly 4lbs lighter than my Hummer! My god you notice the difference, though most of that is probably down to the fact I have a coil Pike on the Hummer and that does make it rather lardy.

Whyte 19 trail - excuse my fence!

So back to the Whyte, it’s really nicely specced, to be honest the same sort of spec that any of the Sussex-MTB boyz (or indeed lots of other riders) would actually choose themselves; Fox forks, SRAM X0 gears, Thomson seatpost and stem, Easton carbon bars and of course the lovely new Hope brakes which look like lush machined jewels!!

Hope brakes

So really there’s nothing there that you would want to change from the off, except maybe the crank, but that really depends how much of a tart you are. Truvativ have come a long way with their styling now and the Stylo chainset fitted not only looks good but goes with the styling of the bike very nicely.

Bling!

The ride? In a word nippy! They say “light enough to race, tough enough for trails”. I certainly wouldn’t argue with that. Point this bike uphill and it’s like having an invisible hand pushing you, it’s so light it flies, the balance is great with the 120mm fork long enough to soak up the bumps, but not so long you struggle to keep the front end down the the steep climbs.

Adjustable drop outs - in 'short' mode

The bike is super stable descending, especially with the chainstays on their ‘long’ setting. However I enjoyed it the most with them as short as you could run it. It gave the bike a more playful feel and made it a piece of cake to manual off roots and drops. Initially I struggled to bond with it on the more technical trails of the north downs, however I stopped for a while and took the time to adjust the fork more for my riding ’style’ (I use the word loosely). Speeding up the rebound made all the difference to me as the fork was packing down a bit over multiple root sections. With the rebound adjusted though it was more to my taste and I was able to forget that I wasn’t on someone else’s bike and really let rip on it and just enjoy the ride. Most notably when Michael shouted “Come on grandad” to me at the top of ‘Barry know’s best’. He was forced to eat his words as I overtook him into the first big berm and beat him to the bottom

So what do I think? This bike is a lightweight trail mashing monster. You’d be hard pressed to find something as light and as durable for blasting around these parts. Thoroughly recommended.

Now I’m looking forward to trying the next demo, the new Genesis that’s in the shop.

Don’t forget you can swing your leg over the Whyte or indeed any of the other bikes that are lined up for the 2010 DEMO DAY which is on March the 20th. Contact the shop for more details………

Hummerlicious

I’m a bit late with this one so I’ll just say that it was an amazing turnout, 31 people! Probably rather too many for one ride, but we managed to keep it all together, although the puncture fairy was out in force

As per usual there was a nice wee climb in the route as well as some sweet singletrack

Big group

A nice route profile!

Climbalicious - few made it, but everyone gave it a good go

A few more pictures here…..

It’s come round again, this Saturday is the next Quest ride, all are welcome and don’t forget your cake money for Parklife afterwards

Last month's shortened ride

Pete relaxing

Phil

After last month’s snow related hysteria and general chillines I think this month will be muddy and normal service resumed, well unless we get more snow that is!

So get yourselves down to Quest Adventure in Broadwater on saturday at around 09:45 to roll out at 10:00 (or when my capuccino cup is empty, whichever happens first!). Thread here. Facebook page here.

As ever all are welcome and helmets must be worn.

Cheers,

Hummerlicious

This one was posted a bit late so it was no surprise that only 5 of us turned up at The Lookout car park on the outskirts of Swinley Forest, Bracknell just after 10.30 last Saturday. The weather was changeable and the remains of the previous 2 weeks snow was clear to see but looked to be melting fast so rain or not this one was going to be wet.

After my normal amount of faffing (double most peoples) we were ready to role and headed out of the car park and straight in to the singletrack which seemed to be a lot clearer than the fireroads which still had about 2” of snow across them.

Chilly riders

We started out along some of the singletrack that I had been shown by one of the locals when I did the Singletrackworld forum ride in November last year. This took us out towards “The Corkscrew” over Caesar’s Camp way where we stopped for a play on some of the jumps and natural drop ins and Hummerlicious got to grips with the Marin Attack Trail he had borrowed for the weekend from Quest Adventures and as his report shows, he quite liked it.

Jumpin' Jimbo

After a few photos and a bit of tuition from Hummerlicious we decided to head off and started out towards one of the newer trails that Swinley has to offer which I have called “The Berm Trail”. It’s not much to look at as you stand at the entrance but after about 500m of mud and roots the armoured singletrack begins. This has some fantastic berms and even a shore bridge in it and is worth seeking out just for the first of these berms which needs to be taken as fast as possible in order to be able to whip round the 2nd of the berms which comes straight after the first one. None of us managed to master this as the photos show.

CTD

Jo

Dougal

BigSi

Popping back out on the fireroad we hung a left then first right in to my favourite Swinley trail “Tank Traps”. It’s a nice long section of singletrack running round the side of a ridge. Open and flowing at first it ends in a series of switchbacks with exposed roots all over them and today a stream running along the bottom of the gully which meant that keeping speed was a bit of an issue.

By the time we had finished these sections the effort of pedalling through the slush and mud was starting to tell and Bikerbabe, who had not been seen on a bike since I don’t know when, looked like she needed coffee & cake. It was decided that we would head on over to “Labyrinth” and then back to The Lookout car park.

On the way over to “Labyrinth” we hit the singletrack that runs around the downhill course and I have to say it gets better each time I ride it although I think that I have found a weakness in the 29er. It doesn’t handle tight technical rooty downhill’s too well but that could just be the rider, still it’s a good excuse to look at getting another bike in the near future and yes it will still be a 29er.

Labyrinth

We finally make it to Labyrinth via the wall climb rather than the more acceptable but longer “Deer Stalker” trail. With hardly a break at the top we set off down the trail that runs to the left and has more berms but fewer jumps when compared to the right hand trail but we did still manage to find plenty of water in between the final two table tops. At the crossroads which signals the start of the long singletrack section I some how managed to get in front of Hummerlicious, Dougal and my other riding buddies, CTD & Bikerbabe. I was going to pull over and let Hummerlicious & Dougal past but instead decided to put the hammer down and see how long I could sensibly keep them behind me. I didn’t want to hold them up but I also didn’t want to let them past me before we got to the end. I soon found that I could pull away on the flatter sections but was being reeled in by Hummerlicious on the short downhill sections as he was really flying when the Attack Trail was pointing downwards. We soon got to the end with massive grins on our faces, soaking wet from the massive puddles we had been ploughing through and completely knackered.

Looking at my watch I was surprised to see that we had been out for 4 hours and were at the furthest point of the forest from The Lookout so there were no arguments when it was decided it was time for coffee & food. We pointed the bikes along the fireroad and headed for the cars.

30 minutes later we were clearing the café out of its cake supply & still grinning.

BigSi

Excuse my fence!

This weekend I’ve had the new Marin Attack Trail 6.8 for company. I’ve been looking forward to riding this bike since I saw the new catalogue. I was a big fan of last year’s Attack Trail and I wondered how the new one would compare. There have been a few changes and some weight shed too, so it all looked promising. The travel has been pushed up to 150mm and last year’s Pikes have been replaced with Revelations, the rear shock is a Monarch. Gone is the large plate gusset on the front end, replaced by a much more pleasing looking tube.  The headtube is tapered and the downtube has been beefed up a bit too. The shock links have also been machined out and lightened up too.

New links

Tapered headtube

It would also seem that finally Truvativ have managed to make an attractive set of cranks with the Stylos, very nice. Not bad in the weight stakes either, hopefully the black will stay on the sides and wear well. Amazingly I am well known for my rather cack footed pedalling style but despite all the mud I never scratched it up with my heels.

Stylo cranks

Speaking of which on last years bike I caught my heels once or twice on the swing arm and on the links too, but it didn’t happen at all on this bike, maybe it has been slimmed down a bit?

So how does it ride?

Well I think my companions on the Swinley ride will tell you I was loving this bike from the off. I’m not quite sure how my ’style’ of riding is best described, but this bike fits me like a glove. I never once even thought about how it was preforming, I just rode it with a grin on my face.

Tweakage

The Attack Trail is well at home on the singletrack, but you do have to keep an eye on your pedals as sometimes you can clout them on trail obstacles. But it’s the downhill sections where it really announces it’s intentions, somewhere along the lines of “Is that the best you can do?”. It’s really stable, flickable, and unusually it manuals at the drop of a hat. Those last minute hucks off trail obstacles are easily accomplished and the 150mm of travel are a real get out of jail free during those awkward moments!

Berm fun

The downside? Well I guess if there is one it would be this bike is never going to win any uphill races. However that said it does seem to be lighter than the previous model and you don’t really notice the weight that much. Coming from a bike that is a few pounds lighter than this I can’t say I really felt handicapped. There is an unexpected bonus though, on a steep climb when the bike is in the granny ring the quad link system seems to seek out every last bit of grip there is, providing you can get forward on the saddle and get low you’ll still be riding when your fellow riders are off and walking. It shouldn’t be possible on a bike like this, but it is

Verdict:

So what do I think? I love it. Is this much travel really necessary on a bike round here? Well I ride a hardtail, so clearly no! But if you want a really comfy bike that climbs well, descends like a mini downhill bike, is quick and nimble through the singletrack this is the daddy. You can ride the Attack Trail all day and not feel beaten up. It really is a hoot to ride. It encourages you to ride like a loony and rewards you by getting you to the end in one piece with a big grin on your face, you can’t ask for more than that!

Hummerlicious

During the start of this batch of snowy weather I was ill and missed out on getting some snowy rides in, so I was really looking forward to the Quest ride and getting myself bogged down in some of the stuff!

Although it was cold there was a good turn out down at Quest and the women’s ride was on the same day. As there was only the two of them this time they decided they’d tag along with us too.

Keen group

After a bit of indecision I decided to take the route up past Hill Barn golf course and the long bridleway up to Cissbury ring. Conditions were pretty good, the path had obviously been used a bit and there was a nice crusty line down the middle which allowed us to make good progress…..

Chilly!

….Until we got to the big climb in the middle! Amazingly the grip was actually pretty good up here. But about a third of the way up there had been an obvious thaw then a refreeze and there were a couple of tyre tracks that were un avoidable. These had pretty much everyone off and walking. A little further though and we were able to remount for the slog to the top.

Push time

A little bit of playing around occured further up. There were a couple of good drifts and a bundle developed! Then I stopped to take some pictures, only to have my bike buried when my back was turned! We continued through the top gate with the intention of doing the diagonal downhill to the right, but the snow was more than hub deep and it proved impossible to get any momentum at all so we gave up on that idea.

More pushing!

I decided that the lower singletracks were probably the best bet and we crossed Cissbury and dropped down the side into Findon valley. Once out the wind we realised that we were actually having a lot of fun and decided to continue for a bit longer. We crossed the A24 and climbed up Church Lane, which proved to be grippier than when there is no snow! We had to push through a couple of deep drifts at the top and then we headed back towards Salvington eager for cake!

Someone mentions cake to Uncle Phil

A quick cheeky descent and we were back into the valley and riding along the gallops trying to dodge the sledgers. It was great to get into Parklife and have a hot Mars Bar milkshake and a toasted cheese sarnie to warm up!

The rest of the photos are here.

Some pics on Martin’s photostream here.

Hummerlicious

It’s come round again, this Saturday is the next Quest ride, all are welcome and don’t forget your cake money for Parklife afterwards

Snow is forecast so put on your thermal undies!

Last month's route

Hopefully it'll be snowy not muddy this time!

After last month’s slog through the mud we’ll be hoping for snow and frosty singletrack…

So get yourselves down to Quest Adventure in Broadwater on saturday at around 09:45 to roll out at 10:00 (or when my capuccino cup is empty, whichever happens first!). Thread here.

As ever all are welcome and helmets must be worn.

Cheers,

Hummerlicious