Looking at upgrading my whyte t129 works to an orange alpine 6. I’m struggling though to commit to a long travel bike over a shorter travel 29er for all round lakes riding. Any opinions welcome?

Depends how and what you ride, seen people clean up on 100mm ht’s and romp around on long travel all day. Biketreks usually have orange demo days so worth a look and try.
Took my blur ltc back there, loved it but that could just be me having fun.

Doesn’t really matter, we had a short travel full bounce 26er out today, a steel 29er and a couple of spesh 29er full bouncers. We all had fun

Yeah I’m gonna sign up to demo the alpine and 5 with bike treks soon. Love the idea of single pivot from a maintenence point of view. Agreed u can have fun on any bike in the lakes. There is too much choice these days! Demoed the new cotic flare max at whinlatter recently and was blown away by the grip and fun factor of the 3 inch tyres but not sure how they’d cope on something like garb urn pass

Love the idea of single pivot from a maintenence point of view

A well designed multi pivot bike will be as simple to maintain, I’ve been through 2 bearings in over 3 years on my vpp bike, occasionally grease the pivots using the grease gun and port on the linkage. Stripped the other one down and it was clean inside behind the seals and still well greased.

Been wondering the same….keep coming back to the smuggler!

What’s the smuggler?

Just Google it. I’m Urs sing it’s the transition smuggler. Looks good

Definitely do the biketreks demo day.
Great store/staff and ‘proper’ riding on 2-3hr demo loops.
Amazing what you learn when you try a bike out too. Something that looks perfect may not be, and something else you hadnt considered may be brilliant.
If you’ve got the fitness definitely sign up to ride different bikes in morning/afternoon.

Alpine 6 or new Five will both be great in the Lakes – perfect bikes really. Alpine if you want to make the hardest lines a bit easier/safer. Five if you want a bit less effort climbing/carrying and a slightly more ‘involved’ kind of fun on the descents.

Lakes riding always involves a fair amount of hike-a-bike, so id be looking for something as light as poss, and comfortable to carry too! i realise that sounds a bit pissy but my mate has a wreckoning and he can’t carry it properly because the linkage digs into his back!

was out in the lakes all weekend with riding pals.

1 x yt capra
1 x zesty
10 x orange fives/alpines/giro

Yep oranges are common….

Yep oranges are for common sheep….

😆

See Shoulder Carry at 1:35 for alternative (often overlooked) way to shoulder a bike balancing it on the down tube. Five is ace for the Lakes.

Get a spare mech hanger.

Have you seen the forthcoming longer-travel Orange 29ers?

135mm and 150mm rear travel IIRC. Either would be tremendous Lakes bikes, I’m sure.

mid travel full susser, wnats to pedal well as much as go down quick, lot of the techy stuff is slow nadgecore type riding so big bikes can be a bit much to manoeuvre about (cue video clip from Ramapge) – chunky tyres a must. Think my grapil was about perfect, until it fell in half.