sea-otter-2015

Ryde Rims Ryde Rims showed up to our booth one morning with a new rim. Ryde was until recently known as Rigida, and is now going after a higher end part of the market. This is the Trace rim ($135), which will come in 22, 25 and 29 mm internal widths in both standard and asymmetric. ...

Based on the success of its Fatboy, Specialized debuted the new Fuse (men’s) and Ruze (women’s) 27plus at the Sea Otter Classic, a platform the company has dubbed “6Fattie.” Built from Specialized’s M4 level aluminum, the 67 degree head angle is slacker and more trail bike worthy than the Fatboy and the bottom bracket is also ...

Subaru Subaru is one of the key sponsors of Sea Otter and it had a collection of vintage cars and bikes in its booth. It’s amazing how dated the mountain bikes look but the car from the same era seems commonplace.     Ergon The new GA1 grip from Ergon has been hugely popular, both ...

Raleigh Raleigh had a two new prototypes at the show, both still in unfinished matte carbon. The Roker is a carbon fiber version of Raleigh’s well received Tamland and Willard gravel bikes. Expect the same geometry as the previous bikes, room for 40 mm tires, thru axles and three bottle mounts for those long dirt ...

Polygon A new entry to the U.S. market, Polygon expands its line up with a few more bikes. The Syncline 9 is a 27.5 hardtail race bike. The full carbon frame, XTR wheels and Di2 drivetrain and Fox Factory 32 fork make this a top-level racer right out of the box. $4,200 direct to consumer price. ...

Sultan 27plus There’s no doubt this is the year of the 27plus bonanza, and Turner is one of the first brands out of the gate with a revised Sultan built around the new wheel size. With an overall diameter roughly equal to that of a 29er, modifying the design was simply a matter of making ...

With all the tire size and hub width standards getting pushed around lately, it might have been easy to overlook something as simple as a dent in a handlebar. But with the industry ready and willing to throw convention out the window these days, why not rethink bike sizing as well? The PDent is Kirk ...

Here at Dirt Rag we’re huge fans of classic steel hardtails, and today we got an introduction to a new brand with a unique business model that is giving back to the associations that support cycling. Advocate Cycles is a new venture from industry veteran Tim Krueger and its first product is the Hayduke, a ...

We first got a look at the Sherpa concept last spring at the Sea Otter Classic, and now one year later Rocky Mountain is ready to introduce the bike to the world. Built around the 27plus tires—in this case WTB’s 2.8 Trailblazers—the Sherpa is loosely based on the Element 29er and contains much of the ...

Introduced a few years ago, the first Trek Stache was a conservative, if not somewhat boring entry into the 29er trail bike market. Well no longer. We were shocked when this 29plus trail slayer showed up on our doorstep a few weeks before it was officially announced today at Sea Otter. Looking more like a ...

If the name Chris Curries sounds familiar, it’s for good reason. The bike industry veteran owned Speedgoat Cycles, a Pennsylvania bike shop that grew into a major player. When he sold the company he moved to Portland to shepherd his Asylum brand. Now he is the creative director at Stan’s NoTubes. While he’s been a ...

Shimano’s flagship XTR mountain bike line made the jump to 11 speeds last year, and while we have certainly been impressed with its performance, it will always remain a bit of a halo product, out of reach of most mountain bikers. The new Deore XT group features many of the technologies first debuted in XTR ...