Newsflash! Cane Creek Launches Enduro Fork – The Helm

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Quietly launching on to the scene, with the minimum of fanfare (at the moment anyway) it seems that Cane Creek has decided to head into the world of suspension forks with this new flagship model, called the Helm. According to the trademark filing, it was filed in May last year, so it’s something Cane Creek has been working on for a while.

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The new Helm from Cane Creek
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Chunky and black. You like?
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Very stealth
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A new 15mm QR system that presumably avoids everyone else’s patents

A little history – Cane Creek was actually involved in the very first RockShox forks, building the original RS-1s when RockShox outgrew Paul Turner’s garage. In more recent years, Cane Creek developed the very popular Double Barrel, or DB shocks with suspension pioneers Ohlins, but given that Ohlins has now set off with its own range of suspension forks and shocks, it made sense for Cane Creek to do a fork of its own – and it has chosen to leap into the competitive world of the 140-170mm hard charging trail, or enduro race, fork.

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Did we mention that we love the name – Helm. Very Viking!

There are two versions being launched, both 27.5in only (though 29in will probably follow…) – there’s the ‘Launch Edition’ which comes in a natty mid-blue. https://www.canecreek.com/products/suspension/helm/launch-edition and there’s a more sober Factory Black version. There are seven fork adjustments, plus an internal volume adjustment to control the fork ramping character.

  • High speed compression
  • Low speed compression
  • Low speed rebound
  • Air volume adjust (8-position Internal indexed system)
  • Independent positive air spring
  • Independent negative air spring
  • Indexed travel adjust system

And while the fork is optimised for 140-170mm travel, it is adjustable in 10mm increments from 170 down to 100mm. It’ll come from the factory at 160mm, but the internal spacers look easy enough to swap. 35mm stanchions take care of keeping things pointing the right way and the weight is said to be a little over 2kg.

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35mm stanchions and slick black coatings.
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Our spy camera was unable to flip open the pages
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This is the air-volume adjuster. Undo the wing-nut and move the piston to a different slot
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Here’s what the launch edition looks like
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Those red decals make it look very superhero

We’ve nagged Cane Creek for more details and we’ll get back to you when we know more. US Price is listed as $1100 for either the blue Launch edition or the Factory.

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 22 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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