All

Such a waste of so much hard work and so many good ideas. And people. BOOOOOO!!!

I actually didn't hate the Judging much this year, I thought line choice and amplitude got a lot more points this year compared to others, hence Brendan scoring well, and the top 5 were the guys doing the biggest, fastest stuff. The slope guys that did big spins on smaller stuff all scored lower than they used to. Zink's lines were pretty sizable and that flip was way more huck and pray vs slope. I think if Alba hadn't stopped before the finish and tossed his helmet that first run he'd have been top 5.

for the last few years, i've wondered if rampage would be better off as a jam format.

Yeah, this bothers me too. I guess it is done to accommodate the television production, to show the score with the rider in the finish corral, big drama and all, but it must suck to know that if you are one of the first few riders, no matter how well you lay down your run, it will be scored lower than it otherwise would have been if you'd had a better start position. They could easily not post the first run scores until after all of the first runs, allowing the judges to make adjustments after all the runs have...

Today's full-suspension trail bikes are versatile, refined pieces of equipment. With blithe disregard, riders can approach ribbons of dirt all over the world on a single bike. What if we took a magic eraser and rubbed out that rear shock and pivots? If we left only the geometry and components attached to a rigid alloy frame, what would we have? Meet the new Devinci Kobain — simple, cost-effective, and heralding tidings of endless woodland fun. Vital has been rediscovering the roots of mountain biking in this wave of hardtail trail bikes and sought to find out if the Kobain makes...

Putting aside my opinion on ebikes, Marin is killing it on all fronts recently!

Looks the goods. I'd love it if they had a hightop version though. Zip-sided hightop too. Like my work boots.

I've got the fleaxair and the defend pants. Agree that the flexair are great and comfy. The defend pants have the polartec grid in them and they are lovely and warm for the UK winter shit-fest that we get, when it is damp and cold. Really suited to DH days where you're not always pedalling. Fox got it right this year.

I had a baby-blue Bottlerocket with brown Revolution 32 wheels and coil suspension front and rear, I friggin LOVED it! Super cool to see this. Looks like the only "needed" update was wider bars?

Nailed it! It's not MTBers, it's the internet commenters of the world. The only ones bothering to comment most of the times are the ones with really strong opinions. No one else gives enough of a damn to hammer away on the keyboard. Most MTBers area a really good and supportive group of folks out in the real world. We've even proven this through an experiment of sorts. I've been a long-time leader in advocacy and building trails locally (Seattle/WA). Back in the day when we were doing outreach meeting for either Colonnade or Duthie (blurred together in my mind)...

I think it was cheaper for me to use a VPN subscription for 1 month and watch via Canada. What a joke. Good idea sending the letter.

It's good to hear they're back. I hope there is no animosity between the brothers.

I think the open face versus full face debate is more complex than full face is (all other things being equal like the helmets being compared are both MIPS or not etc) always safer. Two issues here I’ve been thinking through lately. 1 - There’s an argument (made by a medical friend of mine in ICU) that you can reconstruct a face but not a brain. He sees some (not all of course) head trauma victims wearing a full face with untouched faces but brain injuries, and some wearing a half lid with smashed up faces but untouched brain. In...

"Be a fun piece to really get into where someone should spend their money on their bike." You're looking for the min-maxing articles over on NSMB.

Having ridden this stuff myself, albeit short-term tests only, I disagree with the statement that it "doesn't do anything better." The shifting performance under load is impressive, far better than Eagle, and it does also offer 1 extra cog of range. It also seems less sensitive to getting knocked around, the Eagle derailleur is notoriously finicky to set up and will start having trouble with shifts once it gets a bit beat up.