Marin’s Hawk Hill UPDATED – Now with geometry

The Hawk Hill is Marin’s new 120mm trail bike, which has been designed with input from Mountain Bike Legend Eric Carter (look out for a video interview on singletrackworld.com soon) – it retails in the UK at £1100, but it’s been carefully designed to be a solid bike in its own right as well as a platform which is readily upgradeable.

So what do you get? A ‘series 3’ 6061 aluminium frame, 120mm of travel in 27.5in wheels and 135mm QR dropouts which can convert to run 142x12mm thruaxle should you so desire. Bounce is handled by X-Fusion. Barney took a look at the new bike at the 417 Project Bike Park in Gloucestershire earlier this week:

Drivetrain is a 42-11T 10 speed cassette, Deore mech, Shimano hydraulic brakes – it’s all budget stuff, but it’s good solid kit. A RockShox Recon fork up front also provides 120mm of travel. There’s no dropper, but there’s internal routing for if you want to put one in there.

Geometry-wise it follows the modern maxim of ‘longer, lower, slacker’ – here’s a geometry chart (click to embiggen):

The folks at Marin are rather chuffed that they’ve got Schwalbe Hans Dampf tyres on 27mm internal width rims at this price point, too.

Earlier this week, I chatted to Matt Cipes about the bike:

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Paligap’s Jamie Edwards was at the launch, and caught this snap of Eric Carter (EC to – well, pretty much everyone) railing the black run at the 417 bike park:

Tidy. We’ll be getting one in to test, so watch this space.

More details about Marin bikes (but not the Hawk Hill *just* yet, it seems) can be found here.

Barney Marsh

Barney Marsh takes the word ‘career’ literally, veering wildly across the road of his life, as thoroughly in control as a goldfish on the dashboard of a motorhome. He’s been, with varying degrees of success, a scientist, teacher, shop assistant, binman and, for one memorable day, a hospital laundry worker. These days, he’s a dad, husband, guitarist, and writer, also with varying degrees of success. He sometimes takes photographs. Some of them are acceptable. Occasionally he rides bikes to cast the rest of his life into sharp relief. Or just to ride through puddles. Sometimes he writes about them. Bikes, not puddles. He is a writer of rongs, a stealer of souls and a polisher of turds. He isn’t nearly as clever or as funny as he thinks he is.

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