The Radavist

Over the past few years, the mountain bike industry has been gradually dialing up the pricepoints on their carbon full suspension offerings. It’s relatively easy to walk into a shop and see complete rigs toppling the $5k mark with an XT kit, or $10k with XX1 and ENVE. That or coming in a hair shy.

For what it’s worth, the technology you’re given at the high end is a lot more merited than the high end road market. Or at least in my opinion. In short: you get a bigger bang for your buck dropping $5k on a MTB than you do on a road bike (custom market excluded). There are more moving parts, more technology and both help achieve the ultimate squish.

XT, XTR, XX1 are all worthy groups for a rig like the Yeti SB95c. Topped off with your choice of Rock Shox or Fox forks and shocks, you could come pretty damn close to the ever-elusive perfect ride.

Recently, I was loaned a top of the line Yeti SB95c 29’r to rip through some local trails here in Melbourne, thanks to My Mountain. While the terrain wasn’t as nearly as gnarly as my last outing in the Alps, they proved to be ideal testing grounds.

Now, what on Earth would I have to say about this bike? Keep in mind, this was one of many high-end 29’r I’ve gotten to put a few hours on in the past year… Giving me a bit of perspective as I shop for one of my own full sus rigs.

Check out my full review below and more photos in the Gallery!

If you enjoy riding up and down ranges in the ‘wood, or tearing down fire roads, then Santa Cruz is heaven. There’s even great road riding but this trip, we stuck to the trails. USCSC has a ton of trails on its campus, all of which cross, zig zag, ascend and descend around neighboring systems. When I initially headed down from SF with Brian Vernor, my cross bike was in the car, which would have been a fine vehicle for the day but I made a few phone calls and ended up demo’ing an Ibis Ripley instead. Let’s just say the day was probably a lot more enjoyable (hopefully I’ll be able to review that bike extensively in the future).

Garrett from Strawfoot, Vernor and I did a series of loops, ranging from relatively technical, loose and sandy descents to wide-open, no fucks given blast-fests down through Wilder. None of us had a Garmin on our bikes, so I have no idea how long we were out there, or how far we traveled, but my legs told me around 30 ish miles and in trails, that’s a long afternoon, especially when Santa Cruz was spiking into the 90’s and no, that’s not a reference to the vernacular style of the town.

Santa Cruz was heaven for those few hours and people often ask why I don’t shoot photos of the more technical, beautiful singletrack when I ride MTB. It’s because we’re going too fast and no one wants to stop! Except when someone wrecks…