Hey everyone. I’m currently in the day dreaming stages of planning a trip to the Dolomites to ride the LUT route featured in MBUK several months back. The bike recommendations in the article were for large volume tyres and at least 120mm travel. Ideally I’d like a bike I can sit on comfortably (I’m 6″2) and pedal up the (very big) climbs but I’d also like a bike which will help keep me out of trouble on the descents.

My questions are therefore two-fold: firstly, can anyone recommend a better bike than the Jekyll for what I want to do? Secondly has anyone been to the Dolomites with their bike and is there anything I should know before I go?

Many thanks in advance

Unless you’re squarely against Kona, like most people have become, I’d suggest looking at an Abra Cadabra. 160mm travel both ends, but the suspension goes into a sort of “limbo” state when you start going up. Also means you can run a remote seatpost on the bars without them looking like a melee of wires! Jekyll did get surprising poor reviews in both MBR and MBUK, both saying it failed to beat Scott(Genius etc.) at its own game. Maybe Scott are worth a look to

Scott,

I ride a Kona and I love it and so do all the other people that have seen it and ridden it. From your comments on Kona being out of favour,What have I missed?

Regards.

There’s a fair bit of very rocky technical stuff there, so 120mm is quite low. Our guides all rode Nukeproof Megas with 160mm forks when I was there last year.

I’d also make sure you’re running tubeless as well.

tk46hal,
Konas are great bikes, I had a 2+2 for a while and loved it, and they’ve been around since I can remember, but they have lost some of their reputation as they went into bikes like the Stinky and Coiler. Although they’re bringing it back with the magic link bikes, and the new operators, if you look at gravity classifieds, every other page will have at least one Kona on it for a dirt cheap price. Great bikes, reliable as hell, but became too common considering the outlay for a supposedly premium piece of kit.