Sea Otter 2008 Expo
words and pictures by Jason Van Horn
Next up, we came across the Norco booth where super cute Norco Pro rider, Darcy Turenne showed off her team issue slope style bike and gave us the run down on the Norco gravity line.
super cute and friendly, plus she rides better than you: Norco Pro Darcy Turenne shows off her slopestyle ride
With riding buddies like Ruben Alcantara, you know she rips.
Norco jumping bike
Norco also had trials superstar Ryan Leech on hand doing demos. Um. yeah, he has major skills.
the Ryan Leech show in action
But you ‘ve seen the videos, so you already know that.
After watching Ryan wow the crowd for a bit, the next stop was Scott: They were one of the first companies offering a sub 28lb 6” travel bike. Even more interesting, The chain stay mounts are compatible with their super adjustable dh bike, allowing for a maxle-compatible dropout to be run for more aggressive riding.The dh bike, with replaceable chainstays, has a number of different lengths available. One of most adjust able production dh bikes on the circuit, it also features an adjustable headtube angle that can be configured to run 1 1/8 or 1.5” steerer forks.
Scott bikes - super adjustability.
My favorite bikes of the expo though, were the new bikes and suspension platform from Trek. The new bikes are sweet – not only do they look rad, (especially for a Trek) and appear to be some of the lightest bikes in their class.
Andrew Shandow poses with the new Trek DH bike, the Session.
According to Michael Brown of Trek Bikes, the Session FR 7" travel freeride bike comes in at 38lbs bone stock, while their top of the line 6" travel bike comes in at around 28lbs. Assuming those weights are accurate, that pretty much spanks the similar offerings from both Cannondale and Specialized. The first lust worthy bikes from Trek since the Y-22, (which was a cool bike when it was first released in the day) if these bikes ride as good as they say, Trek is back on the freeride map.
The Trek Session 88 FR: 7" travel freeride bike. Silver and gold, baby.
(not pictured) The Trek remedy 9 features a production Fox 36 suspension fork with a 1.5” steerer at the crown that tapers to1 1/8 at the top. The cool thing with this design is that you are able to run a conventional stem. Unlike Specialized, they chose to work with an existing manufacturer to supply the suspension- what this means to us as riders is that we'll be able to get parts for our bikes, and it is more likely that the new standard will be around for a while.
Other companies are stepping up to the big mountain/ free ride plate as well- we ran across some of the newest offerings from Foes and Yeti. Yeti has adapted their rail suspension design to other models.
The new Foes Freeride bike- set up for the Sea Otter DH
next> the Sea Otter Experience