As a self-proclaimed group of mountain bike nerds, who look over and analyze countless press releases and review the latest crop of bikes every year, Singletracks has done a number of geometry analyses over the years. Mostly, they’ve been reserved for trail bikes, which we’ve called the category with 120mm of travel up to 150mm. And we’ve done enduro bike geometry analyses, with travel ranging from 150mm to 170mm.
And every time, we’ve chewed on what categories mean and why we call them what we do. Long-travel/enduro/park…it doesn’t really matter does it? Some people will buy an “enduro” bike and never race it, but it is a convenient catch-all for whatever the zeitgeist is for that category.
And them came “downcountry,” with the word peaking in popularity in the summer of 2020 according to Google. Why 2020? No idea. We have posts dating from 2018 with the word, and Singletracks forum users chatted about it in the summer of 2020 too.
Santa Cruz released their totally revamped Tallboy in summer 2019, calling it the “downhiller’s XC bike” and got more people who haven’t traditionally been into short-travel bikes stoked about them. Transition released their Spur in summer 2020. In early 2021, Ibis introduced the Ripley AF. No doubt, these bikes have helped build a ton of momentum for the category, though a few brands were already making aggressive short travel trail bikes—before the D-word was ablaze.
For Evil Bikes, it started in 2015, when the industry and consumers were figuring out to do with two new wheel sizes.
“The Following launched when 27.5″ was so young it was still called 650b,” said Evil CEO Jason Moeschler. “At the time, 26″ was dying and there was an entire class of riders that was saying all 29ers were dumb while the entire industry was in the process of brainwashing the consumer during the shift to 27.5″ wheels. The easy thing for Evil would have been to make a 150mm 27.5” bike. As hard as it might be to believe, the design criteria for the Following were to create a 120mm 29″ wheel bike with similar playfulness to the Uprising (a 150mm 26″ wheel all mountain bike). Evil wanted to maintain the bike-shaped skateboard feel of the 26″ Uprising while integrating all the best capabilities of the DELTA suspension system into a 29″ geometry and kinematics package — something that had never been done. It was a huge risk given the consumers’ newly found affinity for 27.5″ wheels. We didn’t build any alternate geometry test mules. Instead, we utilized a head tube large enough for an adjustable angle headset and integrated flip chips on the rear end, which allowed us to slacken/steepen the bike and give it much more versatility.”
Shortly after, another core MTB brand released its first short-travel 29er/27.5+ trail bike in 2016, after starting with a 26/27.5″ downhill and enduro bike.
“We wanted to make a Guerrilla Gravity bike for the riders whose average trails weren’t quite steep enough or rocky/rooty enough to justify a long travel rig, but who appreciate the benefits of the longer, lower, slacker geometry GG has been known for since 2014,” said the brand’s president, Will Montague about their Trail Pistol.
“This type of bike provides a fun combination of playfulness and sportiness, while still being able to maintain composure when the rider does find themselves in high speed or rough and rocky trail sections. Obviously, this needs to be combined with the right suspension kinematics, which our Chief Engineer, Matt Giaraffa, has always been great at designing. For these shorter travel setups, you want something that’s sufficiently soft off the top, but has plenty of ramp up so riders can still push the bike hard.”
So, while a flock of new bikes around 2020 helped move the downcountry category, they weren’t necessarily trailblazers. Let’s get into the numbers now.
Downcountry geometry
We split some hairs in this analysis and gave the downcountry a 10mm spread from 115mm to 125mm of rear travel. It’s tighter than any other time we’ve reviewed geometry, but it’s also a more niche category. Not everyone will be pleased with that, or that some bikes have been left out and that’s alright. But 100mm-110mm still feels extremely cross-country, and at 130mm, we are squarely into the trail category. Besides, when we look at the averages of the bikes we reviewed, the travel numbers that make a downcountry bike are already there.
The averages of these 21 bikes tell us this: a downcountry bike has 120mm of rear travel and is paired with a 130mm fork (on average), and has a 65.75° head tube angle, a 76° seat tube angle, 450mm of reach (size M), an 1,189mm wheelbase, and 435mm chainstays
Downcountry head tube angles
There was a range from 67.5° (Revel Ranger) to 65° (Rocky Mountain Element in slack setting) with the median being 65.75°. The mode, or most commonly occurring number was 65.5°. While a lot of the measurements vary bike to bike, like the wheelbase, the stack heights, and standover heights, most bikes seemed to settle on a pretty narrow range of head tube angles and seat tube angles.
Seat tube angles
There were a few outliers here. The range of seat tube angles varied from 74° (Cannondale Scalpel SE) to 78.3° (Guerrilla Gravity Trail Pistol), with the median being 76°, same as the mode. While 74° might seem slack for a seat tube angle these days, the Scalpel SE also had one of the more conservative head tube angles at 67°.
Downcountry reach
As a reminder, we chose to analyze size medium bikes. The range varied from 430mm (Scalpel SE) to 471mm (Alchemy Arktos 120). The median was 450mm and the mode was 445mm. Reach has obviously grown quite a bit over the years. We had a much bigger range of bikes when we analyzed trail bike geometry in 2018, but our size larges averaged 446mm for reach then, almost the same as size mediums for this analysis. However, if we look at one of our more recent trail bike geometry analyses from 2021, the size large average was about 470mm, likely putting mediums at 445-450mm, however this included bikes from 115mm of rear travel up to 150mm.
Wheelbase
With reach, wheelbases have steadily increased. Numbers ranged from 1,148mm (Scalpel SE) to 1,229 (Cotic Flaremax). The average wheelbase for a medium downcountry bike was 1,189mm with the mode being 1,174—only two bikes had the same length, though most seemed to settle between about 1,180mm and 1,200mm.
Chainstay length
Chainstay lengths mostly resembled characteristics of the wheelbase: most are on the shorter side, giving the bike agility and cornering maneuverability, but I suppose it depends on what we call short these days. The range of chainstays was from 430mm (Pivot Trail 429) to 448 (Cotic Flaremax) while the median and mode were 435mm. If we call 430mm short and 440mm long for a set of chainstays, then most people landed right in the middle. The biggest change to chainstay sizes of late is of course the decision by many to produce size-specific chainstays on certain models.
The other numbers
We often focus on the numbers above as some of the most important for mountain bike geo. Stack heights had a wide range, influencing the “upright” position on downcountry bikes, blending what’s always been a big difference between “on-the-bike” XC bikes and “in-the-bike” enduro bikes.
Standover height was a fairly low average at 715mm for mediums accompanying short seat tube lengths for longer dropper posts, and it seems just about everyone has settled on short fork offsets for their short-travel trail bikes. Only two out of the twenty used a 51mm offset.
While most of these bikes have a very similar geometry, it’s important to note that even two bikes with very similar geometry will still ride very differently due to the unique angles, their suspension designs, frame material and frame design. Having ridden five or six of these modeIs, I can say that no two feel similar, even two that share very close geo and the same suspension linkage.
So what’s the point of this then? Some bike brands arrive at these angles and bikes earlier than others. Some take the risk of getting to a “new category” more quickly than others while some safely arrive later. But anyone who nerds out on numbers until they’re numb can have fun seeing what the latest trends are and what they mean. It does also seem like many of these numbers are slowing down and geometry is reaching a point of diminishing returns. But if that’s not the case, we can look back on this and see how much things have again changed in a few years.
The future of downcountry
Though downcountry has been a thing for a few years now, it hasn’t slowed yet. We’re still seeing brands come out with their versions of short-travel trail bikes, like the Commencal TEMPO or the REEB SST. Evil and Guerrilla Gravity don’t seem intent on following trends and if the precursor to downcountry bikes is any indication, they’ll stick around.
“The Following launched in 2015 and it has been a pillar of Evil’s bike line ever since,” said Moeschler. “The goal of the Following has never been to categorically check a box for the bike industry. Evil is in the business of selling fun. In designing the Following, we wanted to make the most fun 29″ bike possible. If the customer wants to build it as a lighter weight 120/120 bike, that’s great. If they prefer to slap a 150 fork on the front and take it to the bike park, go for it. Either way, it will be awesome.”
Montague from Guerrilla Gravity believes the downcountry category will blend again with trail bikes. Their Trail Pistol has been a favored bike from the beginning too.
“Honestly, it’s been one of our most popular bikes since we released it, it just didn’t have the fun category name,” he said. “Our perspective is ‘downcountry’ will move more towards just ‘trail,’ which we think is an apt category name for—ya know—your standard mountain bikes, that 80% of riders throughout the country use to ride their local trails.”
