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I did the full Back 40 loop about a year and a half ago. It’s pretty xc, with a few bonus side trails or loops you can do. There’s a good amount of cumulative climbing. The Little Sugar system across the highway is similar, but with more jump lines, tech sections, and has the Huntley Gravity Zone as well. It felt to me like Little Sugar has more climbing too.

yeah parts are still hard to come by. I mangled both a derailleur and a rotor in Bentonville about a month ago. The only 12sp derailleur in town and at all of Phat Tire's shops in the region was an XTR for $270. Nope. Online all I could find were a couple Deore's and a single SLX. So I got the SLX and also got the SLX shifter since my XT one had been having issues. I actually like the SLX shifter better.

If you got the pistons out some, best to open up the system via the bleed kit cup wd mentioned above then you can get them back in easily. You need one anyway as a lever bleed is super quick and easy with it, and most of the time it's all you need to do. Link to kit Also you need the shimano mineral oil As for the derailleur, did you disengage the clutch?

yeah the run up to that is a bit janky and pretty blind. Also, I often do a ride-by before I hit it because a couple of times there have been some big rocks sitting right in the middle of the landing.

awesome stuff, fellas. i'm liking the teamwork on these videos, it's always cool to get multiple perspectives of a ride. I also like the view of that expansive landscape and how you can really see the trail way up ahead.

good stuff. that looks like a fun ride, I need to get out there one of these days. Mom videos forthcoming? (that didn't sound quite right...)

I have both of these. got the Skyline to replace a regular camelbak but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. It seemed pretty big. After I got the evoc I just couldn't really go back to something with shoulder straps. It's the closest I could get to the free feeling of not having a pack at all. The skyline only gets used on really long days in the summer, but most of the time the evoc with its 1.5L bladder and another bottle on the bike is enough for me. I'm kind of opposite from y'all in that I prefer the bladder to putting bottles in the pack pockets. A good hack is to use a retractible badge reel (the kind you attach a security card to for office access) to keep the hose from getting pulled away too easily if that is an issue.

Yep it's super dry out there. Unfortunately I think we're heading into a 2011-type summer.

BCGB today. I wanted to make a quick edit to see how much faster the new laptop is vs my old windows box. yeah it was quite the improvement...it rendered the video in 2 minutes, what would have taken 20+ on the old one.

As a sort of follow-on to Twice's experience with the Ripley and expectations vs actual riding, I had a Revel Ranger this past weekend. Got 3 rides in on it, and it really surprised me. Based on its geo and the 115/120 travel, I expected kind of a boring twitchy XC bike, but it wasn't that at all. The climbing was great which I anticipated, but was also really good on the downs and in chunk. Actually excelled at climbing chunky tech sections. I had a ton of fun on it, and even though I didn't take it on any really hardcore terrain, it handled everything I threw at it with aplomb. I think a lot of that is due to the CBF suspension platform which I'd read good things about, and now I understand why. It just goes to show that it's hard to judge bikes on their numbers alone, and you need to ride them to get a true feel.

^^ what they said. however, if you do carry tire levers with you (and I usually do in my hip pack) then you can get a set of these which double as quick link pliers. If you don't want to wear a pack, you can get a frame strap and squeeze a number of things into it (tube + co2 canister/inflator+ levers, multitool + bacon cartridge, or just a taco). I do that a lot of times on rides where I'm only bringing one water bottle and no pack.

Congrats on the new bike, Twice. Sounds like you're gonna really dig it. As for storage options, this needs to be you:

I can only speak to my own experience, and I haven't ridden Rockshox in many years. But I didn't get along with the 34 and fit4 damper on my Occam. If I tried to make it a bit more plush, I'd end up bottoming it out on bigger hits. It would be too harsh if I tuned it for big hits. I started playing with volume spacers, but then went to angelfire and that was it for me. It was just overwhelmed there, which I suppose is to be expected for a 34 in a bike park. After that I wanted to upgrade, and was going to get a Lyrik or a Pike just to switch things up. But all I could get at the time was a 36 so that's what I went with. That fork has been great, and has the fit4. The Grip2 damper is the best they offer, and I think has a better rep than the fit4. But my 36 has a fit4 and i have no complaints. About a month ago a buddy and I switched bikes for a ride out at Pedernales Falls. he had the 34 with Grip2 damper, and I thought it felt great. better than my old 34. I believe the Grip and Grip2 damper may actually have been developed my Marzocchi, which Fox now owns.

Yep I have an Occam. There are 2 or 3 AL versions of that bike. Right now I guess you do have to go with what you can get, as the supply chain is still kind of jacked up. But I see shops getting more and more bikes in. The owner of the shop where I saw the Ripley AF's told me that Ibis would just randomly send them and he would have no idea they were even showing up.

yeah the Tallboy does seem to be better if you're a more aggressive rider and hitting rough/steep descents. But the AF version of the Ripley has a HTA half a degree slacker than the carbon version, so maybe a tad bit better on the downs. It really is a surprisingly good value. Both are great bikes.

Damn, that sucks. Fuck thieves. But at least shopping for a new bike is always fun. If you're trying to stay at 120 and aluminum, I can only think of a couple others off the top of my head besides the ones you listed, like the Giant Trance and new Trek Top Fuel. The Trek seems to get good reviews. Of those, I'd go with the Ibis - good value and DW-Link. The last couple times I stopped by the shop they had a couple of them in stock. Looks awesome in that green color. If you were open to a bit more travel and even a carbon frame, you would have a lot more options. Fezzari has some pretty good value around the $3500 mark.

Funny, I was out there yesterday too, kinda doing the same thing (sans the sailing bit). Sort of surprised I didn't run into you, but it was pretty crowded up until 1:30-ish. Agreed on Sidewinder - that trail is lots of fun. I tend to enter it from Centipede so that I can try to hit those 2 tables before the bridge. Most of yesterday was spent running Antidote, Sidewinder, and Venom trying to work on my jumping ineptitude, but didn't really make much progress as usual. Also, I didn't bust the gopro out until the afternoon which was unfortunate as the sun had come out by then and made for less than ideal filming conditions. I'll take a look at it later and see if it looks interesting or not. Also got some footage at Flat Rock Ranch on saturday. We hit a couple of the new (to me) enduro lines out there. Looks like they are in the process of building some bigger jump lines too.

Excellent, thanks for the info. I'm planning to get back out there sometime soon-ish and I'll check it out. I guess I've unknowingly ridden right past it a number of times, but I see now how I would never have noticed it. As for Full Commando, it's sort of across to the east from Vulture off of RPR Loop. The way I get there is by riding the Race Loop clockwise from the gate and turn onto RPR Loop. Not far up RPR (like maybe a half mile if that), you'll start to get on the granite and there's a spot where you will notice one or 2 of those orange arrows. RPR loop kind of winds across and generally up, but if you go straight up the hill from there, you'll see more of those arrows. I just kind of try to follow those up to the "top" of that trail. In true RPR fashion, it's somewhat hard to find and follow. And if you recall once you're heading back down Full Commando, you'll pass through the spot where you entered off RPR loop and it dead ends back into Race Loop.

Nice ridin' there Johnny. So how exactly do you get to Vulture? I've seen videos of it before but have never come across it. Looks like it might be up there near the top of RPR loop, maybe further up from Full Commando? Kinda threw me off when it ended at a fenceline tho.

Agree with Braff re: tire pressure, and there are a number of variables that go into it. I'm running a 2.5 front, 2.4 rear and most of the time i'm about the same as you with 20/28. That changes based on what trails I'm riding though along with conditions. And if I know I'm going to be riding high speed chunky downhills, I'm definitely running more pressure at least in the rear. Earlier this year I was running at not quite enough pressure on a downhill run in New Mexico and dinged my rim on a hard hit at high speed. Luckily that happened to be my last ride of the day on the last day of the trip. I will admit though that I mostly go by feel with the squeeze test, and I don't know how accurate the gauge on my pump really is. Recently I got one of those quick read digital gauges so I could keep tabs on it more closely, but I keep forgetting to check it.

I somehow found myself with paid subscriptions to Strava, Trailforks, and Alltrails. I only paid for Trailforks myself, the others were gifted to me for one reason or another. I like Strava to keep track of stats, and to sort of also track against loose goals I have for myself such as monthly and yearly mileage and elevation gain. I do like the leaderboard feature and ability to look back at my past performances on segments, to see if I'm getting faster or slower. And I am also a little competitive with a couple of friends. But I'll likely not renew it even as much as I'm into stats, the basic stuff is enough for me. Trailforks is super useful for navigating your way around places you've not ridden before and worth the mere $30/year or so they charge. I find Alltrails only useful for hiking, so I rarely use it.

A lot of the trails are certainly doable on a hardtail, but I'll say it just won't be as enjoyable. You'd get beat up and fatigued quite a bit more, as angelfire is known to be kind of rough. If you go, I would recommend renting a FS from the shop at the base - they have a pretty good selection. With that said, my wife did one run down the greens on her hardtail. I think she had another run in her but she crashed near the bottom so that was it for her. She did finally understand why I've been telling her it is time for a full suspension though. And yes, camera setup is just a GoPro with chest mount.

Couple vids from Angel Fire trip last week Weather was incredible. A bit of Diesel and Chutes and Ladders which is a super fun North Shore style trail: And a run down the upper part of Angel's Plunge. Fast and loose, like how I like my women:

You going hipster on us? lol A 44x16 would be pretty nuts on a mtb. I have a SS that I used to ride down to slaughter creek trail or just the southie trails in general. I barely ride it anymore. I think it is 32x20. That gearing works fairly well on the trails, but you get spun out very quickly on the streets or longer flat sections. The guy I bought it from said he rode the Enchilada Buffet on it (that's about an 80 mile ride of 5 or so major trail systems in Austin, riding the streets from one to the next). I assume he changed up the gearing for that ride as that would suck hard in its current config.

awesome, thanks for the info. That lines up with what I've read on the interwebs. The first climb is the only part that concerns me, since it is the very first thing you do without even a chance to warm up the legs. I read somewhere that if you follow the signs for 164 that should get you there. I'll also have the offline Trailforks map, so with luck I'll get down to Taos without issue.