Salsa Cycles 2015: Lots of carbon, lots of adventure.

Salsa Cycles has just released details of its 2015 range to its dealers and we’ve stuck our noses in to find out what’s new. Quite a lot it appears.

There are carbon bikes all over the place for a start. The hugely popular Salsa Spearfish that we looked at last year has been brought up to epic racing state of the art with a full carbon frame to compliment its Split Pivot suspension. The top end Spearfish RS1 gets RockShox’ new  RS1 fork in a colour coded 100mm guise. The travel stays at a race-specific 80mm at the back to keep it the endurance racer’s lust-machine. The RS1 model also gets full SRAM XX, Salsa carbon bars and some Stan’s Crest wheels with SRAM predictive steering hubs.

 

The range then goes to the Spearfish Carbon 1, which features an XT/SRAM build and a Fox F29 fork. And comes in natty orange.

The Horsethief also gets touched by the magic carbon fibre unicorn horn. Still with 120mm travel front and rear and for beefier missions into the countryside than the already capable Spearfish. Going by similar frames we’ve seen get the carbon touch, you can expect to lose a pound off the bike weight with this new frame. This Horsethief 1 comes with SRAM XO1 and SRAM Roam 40 wheels.

 

 

And now… for something completely different. The Salsa Mukluk, the fat bike that took Surly’s original Pugsley concept and ran (well, rode) with it gets a titanium frame option too. The alloy frame still remains. Not sure if it’s just us, but that bare titanium looks like it’ll be cold to the touch in the snow and ice. No licking it, you lot!

 

 

We showed you a sneak of the Salsa Bucksaw in our Sea Otter coverage. To say that it’s a monster-truck of a bike would be, well, it would be accurate. It’s Salsa’s ‘ride anywhere for fun’ kind of a bike. It still uses the Dave Weagle Split Pivot suspension design as seen on the Spearfish and Horsethief. It even comes with the RockShox Bluto 100mm fatbike fork and 4in Surly Nate tyres.

 

 

black borrow

Sounding a little like the CIA outfit that Jason Bourne works for, the Salsa Blackborow is an ‘adventure fat bike’. You can’t just use one of Salsa’s other fat bikes, you need one of these if you’re to have any adventure at all. This one comes with a ‘Dingle Speed’ set up, that allows two different gear ratios via a twin chainring and twin sprocket. It has all sorts of new fatbike ‘standards’ like 150mm Bearpaw thru-axle tapered fork and Salsa’s Alternator 197mm dropouts. There’s a 136mm bottom bracket in there too for ‘proper chain line with gears’.

 

 

 

And finally, the Beargrease, Salsa’s ‘race’ fat bike carries on, but also gains an aluminium stablemate (and a $1000 saving over the carbon frame).  The carbon bike maintains its stealth internal cable routing and no-frills approach, though that’s not followed on the ally version, which gets full external outer cables instead.

 

 

 

 

---