TESTED THIS MONTH
Here at mbr, we’ve always been big fans of shorter-travel trail bikes. Bikes capable enough to ride everything on, but still tight enough, and light enough, to let you interact with the trail. Bikes that will showcase your skills on your best days, and hide your lack of fitness on your worst days.
They bring trails dulled by ever-increasing suspension travel back to life, where pedalling efforts are rewarded in spades too. Flowing sections don’t get sucked into a soft mid stroke, as these short-travel shredders accelerate forward rather than simply tracking the contours of the trail.
That’s the theory, at least. To put it to the test, we’ve rounded up three premium short-travel trail bikes from three boutique brands: Pivot, Santa Cruz and Yeti.
All three bikes boast 120mm travel, but as we found out they don’t all deliver on that travel promise. Most strikingly, subtle differences in geometry, frame stiffness and the suspension response, meant that the test results were as surprising as they were diverse in terms of approach.
Two months of testing our trio on every sort of trail imaginable definitively proved that ‘120 is plenty’ whatever vibe you’re after. So it’s clear to us that the best short-travel bikes are better than ever; the trouble is, what’s happening to the bikes either side of the short-travel category?
Obviously, mid-travel ‘super trail’ bikes are getting more capable, more controlled and tough enough to tackle full-on enduro trails and occasional park days. They still pedal really well though, so why wouldn’t you want more ‘just-in-case’ travel for bad days? Taken to its logical conclusion, why not go all in and get an enduro bike?
Meanwhile, cross country bikes are now regularly coming with 120mm of travel, high-volume tyres and increasingly aggressive geometry. This shift in focus lets them handle super-aggressive, drop and rock-infested race courses or fast trail riding. Too far in the opposite direction? Possibly.
Now, if you’re looking for a Goldilocks trail bike, then our three bikes in the 12-14kg short-travel bracket could be just right. Slimmed down in all the right places to gain an efficiency edge over their heavier relatives, they still beat out the throroughbred XC race bikes for grip, comfort and control.
They offer a take-no-prisoners assault on the most challenging trails and any longer-travel bikes they find lumbering along them. And having blasted and beasted these three bikes for two months, we’ve come away super-impressed. Down official black, red and blue runs, beautifully sculpted DH cheeky trails, wilfully ugly rock jank and off-piste forest debris, they’ve all shown they’re outstanding in their own unique way. In the opposite direction, we climbed up endless fire road drags and ultra-awkward tech climb challenges, and even took on some big sub-zero and sloppy moorland epics.
That’s a pretty broad spectrum of trail riding, and the test winner managed to impress up, down and along almost every metre of trail ridden. So to find out which bike that was and why, plus whether that’s the bike that will best suit the way you ride, let’s waste no more time and get stuck into the action.
CONTROL TYRES
To make the testing process as fair as possible, we fitted the same Maxxis tyres to all three of the short-travel trail bikes in this test. And because they are shorter-travel trail bikes, we prioritised speed and reduced weight. That’s
