When it was released in the summer of 2016, the Slash 29 didn’t just turn heads, it blew minds. Trek’s decision to make its premium enduro racing bike a 29er, with no small-wheel version, showed confidence and gumption. Despite bikes like the legenda

Of all the things we carry into the mountains, water is the heaviest and most voluminous. For a while, we carried it in backpacks even on short rides. In those days, space for a water bottle inside the front triangle was considered little more than a

For years, Graham Agassiz’s name was practically synonymous with Kona Bikes. He started riding for the brand as a teenager and spent 12 years building his profile—and Kona’s—into a force in freeride. His inimitable style and penchant for pushing the

WHEN I SPOKE TO COLIN MEAGHER SHORTLY AFTER I’D HEARD ABOUT THE DIAGNOSIS THAT WOULD END HIS PHOTOGRAPHY CAREER, and ultimately his life, I wasn’t sure how to start the conversation. What do you say to someone who’s being robbed of everything—his lif

Shooting natural light in the dark forests of British Columbia doesn’t come without its challenges—a patch of fog can be the difference between a forever-buried hard-drive image and coming away with something you’re stoked on, as was the case with th

We’ve all been there. A rowdy, memorable party train suddenly derails when someone hits the deck. With any luck, the injuries are minor and it’s a short ride or hike out. Reality is sometimes a different story, though, and trail extraction can requir

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” Henry Ford was definitely onto something with that one. With just a handful of short, simple words, he perfectly described the vicious cycle between expectation and outcome. Of course

“Can’t forget this little treasure,” he said, waving the bright-orange puck held in his hand before stuffing it into an outer pocket on a suspiciously large and overfilled backpack. Considering the relative brevity of the ride we were about to undert

AUGUST 5, 2018 | 10:50 A.M. | MOUNT PAEKTU, NORTH KOREA You submit an itinerary. It gets approved. You follow it. You do not deviate. Not even a little bit. “It’s not the supreme leader himself who approves it, but somebody high up,” explains Dan Mil

THE photographer’s hands sit steady on the bar top, palms down, relaxed, a glass of beer between them. These are hands that have seen some work; decades of bartending, gripping handlebars on rocky singletrack descents, aiming big-lensed SLR cameras w

WE WERE READY TO FLY halfway around the world to northern India. Then, thanks to the live weather channel that is Instagram, we saw an unseasonable winter storm dump more than 2 feet of snow on our targeted destination. Our bikepacking trip between t

There was a time when 130 millimeters of travel (then called 5 inches) was the only sensible choice when buying a small-wheeled full-suspension bike. Any less, and it was XC. Any more, and it was DH. Today, the median seems to have shifted closer to

In January of 1994, a 13-year-old Travis Engel—now Bike’s gear editor—was coping with a local strain of cabin fever that afflicts most Midwesterners that time of year. Then, an unseasonably warm day provided some relief. But instead of seeking it on

We probably shouldn’t be too surprised that Dave Weagle is still coming up with new linkage designs. It’s kinda what he does. He probably even has a couple more warming up in the bullpen as you read this. What should surprise us is that those new lin

Calling a bike a ‘quiver killer’ is about as clichéd as calling it ‘vertically compliant and laterally stiff.’ So you’re not going to see that phrase here, but it’s going to take a metric crap-ton of effort not to use it. With 130 millimeters of fron

The SB130 is long. It also has travel. Therefore, it’s a long-travel bike. It’s a long-travel bike in spite of its rather diminutive actual amount of rear-wheel travel, of—you guessed it because it’s in the name—130 millimeters. Truth be told, we sta

As I climbed out of a truck in Utah’s Gooseberry Mesa parking lot, toothy, redrock peaks filled the view to the north and east, highlighted by the world-famous skyline of Zion National Park. I’d been told to expect a two- to three-hour ride that was

Close your eyes for a second and picture the typical Evil rider. Let me guess, the rider is wearing kneepads, baggy shorts, a T-shirt, Five Ten shoes and a hip bag with a PBR in it. The person is a gravity-focused ‘shredder’ primarily concerned with

You hold in your hands the 10th annual Bible of Bike Tests. We five-fingered creatures love measuring milestones in multiples of 10. But it’s just another number. Really, the most impressive landmark in the Bible’s history was in launching the very f

THE RELEASE OF A NEW XTR GROUP HAS HAPPENED JUST SEVEN TIMES IN THE PLATFORM’S 25-YEAR HISTORY. And for its first three generations, it set the bar for grading every fancy, expensive, shiny (or dull) component in hopeful competition. Then, in XTR’s f

I was pretty close to flipping a coin on this one. The Yeti SB150 was gonna be heads. That bike felt like home to me. It puts up similar numbers to my current go-to big bike, and I had none of the trouble managing it at slow speeds that other testers

by nicole formosa | photo: dan milner THE LONE SLIVER OF SINGLETRACK SNAKING DOWN THE HILLside had been catching my eye for months after I moved into a new neighborhood—a dirt diversion as I ran mundane errands or merged onto the freeway headed to my

by tess weaver strokes | photos: liam doran ANY TRAIL NETWORK THAT KEEPS avid—even elite—mountain bikers from driving an easy 28 miles to the famed singletrack of Crested Butte, Colorado, is worth riding. I made that mental note last summer when I ro

by kurt gensheimer | photos: james adamson “CLIFFED OUT AGAIN, DAMN IT.” Paul Hart stood before a massive rock outcropping on a ridgeline between Second and Third Divide trails above Downieville, California, cursing out loud. We were deep in the wood

BY NICOLE FORMOSA PHOTO: CRAIG WOLFROM MY HEART SANK AS I READ THE LIST OF TRAILS BURNED: Upper Section of Los Pinos, All of Yeager Mesa Trail, Upper part of Bell Ridge, Upper Holy Jim. These have been home to many members of Bike’s staff over the ye

by nicole formosa | photo: alex domingo pou IF ONE CONSIDERS MOUNTAIN BIKING TO BE A RELIGIOUS EXperience, then El Bosque de Las Cruces, or The Forest of the Crosses, would certainly qualify as a mecca for the sport’s devoted. Héctor Saura, founder o

Due to a freakishly late-season snowstorm, we crossed the entirety of Azerbaijan in search of snow-free mountains. We ended up in Car, a small village near Dagestan and Georgia. By asking about local hiking, we found a trail ascending a ridge, gainin

by travis engel | photo: anthony smith IN THE MID-1980S, AMERICANS WERE RETHINKING HEALTH and nutrition. The era brought us the bran muffin, Diet Coke and Jane Fonda’s workout tapes. It also saw the birth of the modern energy bar. At the time, Canadi

BY BRICE MINNIGH PHOTOGRAPHY BY SVEN MARTIN In the star-studded universe of gravity racing, few, if any, have shined as brightly as Sam Hill. While the downhill racing world has seen no shortage of superstars—giants like Nicolas Vouilloz, Greg Minnaa