Why Choose a Short-Travel 29er

Why Choose a Short-Travel 29er?

By Rob Savin

When we head out to the trails, we often take the Cortex. So the question is, with all this choice, why choose a short-travel 29er?

The combination of big wheels, 120mm rear travel and dialled geometry mean that it's possible to pedal all day on an XC loop or go and session your favourite descents.

Short-travel 29ers are really playful and agile for how capable they are. Keeping the travel at the rear-end at 120mm means that the character of the bike isn't lost somewhere in huge amounts of travel. And the truth is, not many of us mere mortals would ever come close to reaching the capabilities of some big enduro bikes.

With the right geometry, short-travel 29ers are really capable when trails go downhill steeply. Longer wheelbases and slack headtubes angles mean that you can still take on drops with confidence and an ability that you didn't quite know you had! And that's one of the reasons we love them so much. We've got a few trail demons here, but we're not all like that. And it's brilliant for those of us who haven't been as confident on some trail features to know that they're now within our reach.

Short-travel 29ers go uphill well too. Set up the suspension right and we find ourselves really enjoying the climbs. The suspension helping the traction over roots, rocks and rough surfaces without the morale-crushing feeling of soaking up all our effort!

Mainly, though, short-travel 29ers are an absolute blast! We ride them all day. They're great for drops and hucks. They're great for going uphill and the best fun in the world for flying back down them.

If you ask many of which one bike we'd choose to take with us for a year out on the trails, you'd hear a lot of us choosing our short-travel 29er Cortex.

Fancy trying one out? View the full Cortex range.

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