by Eric Wright
I peer over the edge. There’s a good five feet of nothing between the lip and the landing, but from where I sit, it seems like a lot more. Near the horizon, over the Snowy Range mountains to the west, towering storm clouds roll slowly toward me. I take a deep breath and try not to see them as a bad omen.
My friend below counters with encouragement. “You got this. No problem,” he assures me.
My hands are shaking – probably my whole body. But I turn my bike around and get moving so I don’t notice it and pedal back up the trail to the point where I’ll begin my approach. “It’s not really that high,” I say to myself. “It just looks like it.”
I stop just below where this trail, 31, and another Pole Mountain downhill-only trail, 13, meet, take another deep breath, and after a couple of pedal strokes, coast toward the biggest drop I’ve done in my life.
I blame my neighbor.
Nearly a decade ago he encouraged me to shuttle the North Fork trail from a start point near Brooklyn Lake down to a trailhead near Highway 130 above Centennial, Wyoming. Back then I was still riding a hardtail, a custom steel 29er with a belt drive and a head angle that would make a crit bike envious. The long, single-track descent had me white-knuckled a lot of the time. Spring runoff had left sections of the trail washed out and boulder strewn, and some of the less intense sections still challenged me with loose gravel and steeper pitches. Near the bottom I stopped to survey a particularly ugly run of haphazard boulders. “I’ll never be able to ride something like this,” I said out loud.
“Yes you will,” my neighbor replied, then blasted past and continued on down toward the creek.
He was right. But it definitely wasn’t on that steel single speed.
I still have that hardtail, but it mostly gathers dust in the garage. I’ve moved on, and my tastes and aspirations have changed. Where once I looked to shave grams from my bike and seconds from my xc race times and fretted over my BMI, I now seek out rough descents and bermy flow and relax post-ride with a bowl of ice cream. I’ve grown fond of my Enduro rig with its ample wheelbase, slack head angle, and plush suspension.
But, at least for me, a big bike begs the question, “Is it too much?”
Maybe. Maybe not.
First, and probably the least persuasive argument, is how they look. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Porsche-like sleekness of a cross-country bike, the way their no-nonsense minimalism screams “speed.” But there’s something about the monster-truck brashness of an Enduro ride. It doesn’t have to scream. It just whispers, “bad ass!”
Here’s another reason. Recall the beginning of this blog. Remember that drop I mentioned? To some, five feet may be little more than a bunny hop, but to me it seemed like a leap of faith. And this is where my second argument comes into play. I’ve found that a big bike gives me confidence. The extra millimeters of suspension not only make a jarring route like the ‘Goat Trail’ smoother but turn potentially painful and bloody mistakes into the sort of close calls I remember and learn from time and time again.
So the next time I drop in I know it’s not the bike that’s holding me back from sending it bigger and faster. Could I ride all of our local destinations with a trail bike? Of course. But could I ride them the way I aspire to? I doubt it. And even if I reach a point where every trail at Curt Gowdy, Happy Jack, Pole Mountain, and Schoolyard becomes too easy, more challenging routes are on the horizon locally and already exist just over the hill at Steamboat and Winter Park.
But an Enduro bike is just so cumbersome and heavy, you might argue.
I disagree. Many of them, though their wheelbase may be long by trail-bike standards, are made more nimble with shorter chainstays and a smaller back wheel. This ‘mullet’ option is available from many makers. At Link Cycling here in Laramie, a number of bikes in this configuration are available, including the Santa Cruz Nomad and the Ibis HD6. And with the advances in rear suspension design, modern geometry, and shock and fork improvements, these new big bikes climb nearly as well as their smaller counterparts. As for weight, generally, you’re looking at at most a five pound difference between what are sometimes called Down Country bikes with 120 to 135 mm of rear travel and an Enduro bike with 160 to 170 mm of shock. As an example, the Santa Cruz 5010 and the Nomad specced with the Sram GX Axs build weigh 31.16 and 34.55 pounds, respectively, according to the company site. A few less post-ride Rocky Roads and I’ve negated that difference.
I’ll concede that the ride isn’t the same. A trail bike is quicker and arguably more agile. So if going up and across terrain ranks as equally important to you as going down, then perhaps the Enduro might not be what you’re after, but if you love the scary-adrenalin rush of technical descents and possibly the occasional adventure into lift-served or jump-line, bike park territory, then it could be just the right amount of bike for you, too.
I’ll admit it wasn’t pretty. I landed that first big drop on Trail 31 a little too level – a result of tugging on the bars too hard during takeoff, I think, but I DID land, and the extra travel in the back of my ride made for a pretty cushy touch down.
I had that landing in mind when just a few days ago I travelled to Steamboat for the first time this season. I rode my usual blue runs, such as Rustler’s Ridge, but I tried to ride them faster than ever, and I put a little more air between me and the earth on the jumps. But at the end of the day, when I finished off my session with a cruise down Tenderfoot, I looked upslope at the two constructed drops at the bottom of Lower Rawhide. The larger of the two has to be probably 20 feet high (a quick Google search reveals that it’s actually eight-feet high), but as I gazed up at this massive feature, I thought to myself, “I’ll ride that someday.”
