So me and the boys are potentially heading over for this.

One of the lads is on an FSR comp, another on a Zesty 514… Me, i’ve got a Giant XTC29er.

So, how are the trails/terrain ? needing more than the XTC ?

Trails are varied: Fire road, dusty (or muddy) singletrack, roots, ski pistes strewn with rocks, optional DH track bits.

Dunno what a 29er XTC is like tbh, if it’s as racey as a normal XTC then some sections might be a bit awkward.

I’d pick a light 160mm bike with a 36/lyrik if doing it again.

Me and my friends did it last year – brilliant fun. We were on:
Rose Granite Chief (150mm)
Canyon Nerve AM (150mm)
Zesty 714 (140mm)
Orange ST4 (110mm I think)

On a 150mm bike I felt overbiked at times, underbiked at others…. but the reality is that you have to pick one bike to do the whole event on, and something fairly light with 150mm travel was the best compromise.

Its an absolute riot! Great fun. It found my Intense 5.5 was in its element. Anything All-Mountainy with about 140-150mm of travel will be ideal

One of my cycling group has done it on a Whyte 19 hardtail with 120m forks. Apparently he was a bit sore at the end of it but technically he was fine. Most of the rest of us have used bikes in the 120- 140mm FS range over the past four or five years

I done it 2 years ago on a entry level spec fsr with 100mm travel apart from brakes overheating on some parys of the black runs it done well bit more travel would have been better

FSR XC worked incredibly badly for one of my relatives. Patriot 66 with 36s worked incredibly well for me.

…What’s the trails comparable to ?…

if you follow the arrows:

you’ll be fine.

There’s loads of trails. Its a great place to play on a proper downhill bike. Its one place where they actually work very well though from your bike list it sounds like you are a bit more all mountain. There’s loads of that too. Its a bit like the Welsh trail centres, only much bigger and less riding up. Nice twisty singletrack, some roots, some rocks (not many), some mud, some fire road, some stupid steep bits.

Thanks all. 🙂

I’d pay more attention to the condition of your bike rather than worrying too much about what bike, mechanicals are more likely to spoil the day than regrets over the wrong bike- like bat fink says pretty much whatever you ride, at times you’ll be wishing you were on something else. 🙂

I did it last year on 120mm Trek EX8 and was fine, would possibly have liked a bit more travel but mate did it on 100mm hardtail.
I think that is more important to prepare bike right. I’d make sure brakes are 100%, possibly run bigger rotors, take plenty of spare brake pads. Run slightly larger wider tyres than you possibly you normally would.

Dropper seatpost is worth it’s weight in gold also. If you’ve got space to take plenty of spares as they expensive out there and I am 99% you won’t get any 29er spares out there.

Most important though is that you enjoy it! You’ll get round fine on your bike

All brakes/bikes are either pretty new or very well maintained. We do plenty of enduro long events in UK, so we are OK with spannering etc.

Spares, yup, no problem, we’ll cover all realistic possibilities.

Are you intending on using the lifts up and ride down or riding the XC routes?
I went for the first time this year and mainly did the downhill runs on my Hustler with 140 pikes and I was blasting through the travel very quickly!! It was much better on a mates Yeti with 160 up front!
I will be buying a cheap 2nd hand DH bike for next year, even for the XCish daytrip we went on to Switzerland.