Donny wanted a lifelong bike, something he could rail on from Crested Butte to Chile. He wanted to have a stiff rear triangle for out of the saddle climbing, and a rig to bikepack around South America where he spends a lot of time being a ski guide. The geometry could take many routes with these desires but after a lot of thought I made the bike a full on fun all-mountain style geometry since bikepacking these days involves bags instead of racks most of the time. So in my opinion it’s better to have a bike you like to ride all the time rather than a bike just for camping. As such, this frame is moderately slack and has short chainstays for a 29er…but not too slack and short.
– 69 degree HTA with the Fox Talas set at 120 which translates to about 70 degrees with the fork set on the lower travel setting (90mm) for better climbing geometry. I really like this aspect of the Talas fork and I use it a lot. The difference is definitely noticeable and helps.
– 74 deg effective STA to shorten saddle setback and center him between the wheels better with the short chainstays. I’ve found that you also have quicker transitions to seated/standing climbing and a more spunky feeling to the bike in general. Since he likes to climb standing up a lot, i felt this was the right call.
– 420mm chainstays (16.5″), fits a 2.25″ easily, will be tight with a 2.4″ tire.
– 12″ high bottom bracket
– 580mm (22.8″) top tube length, 665mm front center.
– Bent tubes all around. Downtube bent for fork crown clearance and to give me some room to separate the top tube and downtube on the 98mm Paragon head tube. I like using the bent Nova downtubes for this reason alone, no compound miters. Bent top tube and wishbone seatstays for looks. Bent seat tube for tire clearance. Radiused wishbone seatstays.
– 31.6 Reverb dropper post with under downtube cable routing with the cool Ragley cable clamps that use a water bottle boss to attach up to 3 cables.
– 142×12 rear axle, hooded Paragon dropouts.
Leave a Reply