Roots, Rocks, and Big Drops
The latest dirtworthy dualies take the pain out of off-road terrain

By Marc Peruzzi

STEVE CASIMIRO

MOUNTAIN BIKING hurts. Maybe you've accepted this fact and continue your regimen of singletrack masochism, or maybe you've lost your mind and taken up golf. Either way, it's important to distinguish between good pain (turning your legs to jelly on a three-hour climb) and bad pain (discovering that knot in your back, that creak in your knee, or, most frightening for a guy, that tender swelling below which could be a sign that your—how shall we say it?—pocket swim team is being euthanized). The former brand of pain is why you ride, the latter a side effect of what you ride—namely, an unsuspended frame (or hardtail) that sends every trail shock directly to your joints.

You need a full-suspension bike to take the hits for you. Forget, if you can, the suspended rides of five years ago that pogoed and bobbed their way uphill and weighed a ton. Full-suspension bikes have come of age: They've lost weight (all the bikes we tested are between 24 and 28 pounds) and gained durability (the Teflon pivot bushings that collected trail gunk and wore out in one season have largely been replaced with sealed bearings that last for years). Indeed, the days of trial-and-error design seem to be over, and today's dualies generally fall into two categories: single-pivot or four-bar linkage.

A single-pivot frame has one large fulcrum located close to the crank. In the past, single-pivots were plagued by "bio-pacing," an energy-zapping loosening and tightening of the chain, created when the rear wheel moved through its arc of travel. They've found the sweet spot for the joint, however—in line with the middle chainring. Pedal feedback isn't entirely eliminated, but it might as well be.

Gdansk cheap hotelsOn the other hand, the idea behind the four-bar linkage (think of a parallelogram hinged at each angle) is to let the rear wheel travel in a straight line, keeping uniform tension on the chain. Unfortunately, bad design caused bio-pacing here too, and when all those pivots wore out, the back end of the bike got sloppy. Again, these problems have been solved beyond your ability to notice.

The result? Aside from letting you ride farther with less fatigue, the latestdual-suspension bikes simply outperform hardtails: They climb and brake better because the rear wheel stays on the dirt, giving you better traction; they corner better because the bike flexes into turns, balancing the weight on both wheels; and on sketchy downhills you can point and shoot with the front wheel because you can trust that the back won't buck like a rodeo bull.

ERROR MSGWe took 14 dual-suspension bikes, from the modest to the decadent, to the rolling singletrack and steep slickrock of Sedona, Arizona, where with the help of the talented mechanics and baristas at The Bike and Bean, (check them out if you're planning a trip to Red Rock Country at www.bike-bean.com), we put them to the test. As our ratings reflect (see "The Numbers," page 126), all of these bikes work extremely well—the trick is finding one that matches your build, budget, and riding style. Our intention is to help you narrow your search. There is, of course, no substitute for a test drive.