What design features inspire confidence on steep descents

Sweet 🙂

Now, you might laugh, but probably my most confidence inspiring bike on steep, slow, nadgery stuff is my Singular Hummingbird. Rigid forks, so no brake dive, 29″ front wheel, forks with a fair bit of offset.
Add a dropper post and it’s just the job.

On faster stuff my Alpitude with 170mm Marzocchi 55RC3 Ti Evo 2 is as good as I can handle.

I’ve noticed that 29 is far less OTBey than 26. However the lack of suspension on mine does seems to erase that advantage 🙂

Most useful thing to have for descending steeps? A complete lack of imagination……..

(closely followed by comprehensive Medical Insurance and a Helivac waiting in the wings) 😉

More seriously, i think the modern trend for short chain stays, the rear wheel tucked tight to the seat post, and a low bottom bracket make huge difference in feel when going down things. Look at pics of a modern full susser with someone hanging off the back, and the sag in the rear suspension (cause all their weight is on the back) means the BB is really very low indeed, compared to HTs of just a few years ago.

low saddle. if i know its really steep i might even drop my dropper even lower.

same for jumping. or any fun messing about in the woods.

Imagine a line coming up vertically from the bottom bracket and try to keep your body mass in that line. This will distract you from the horrendously steep rutted descent criss crossed with polished slippery roots in front of you.

However, I’ve never seen or heard of a coaching day actually taking place on properly steep terrain, as it just isn’t practical to trying a section stuff you can barely walk up or stop on when coming the other way.

Jedi has some stuff around the old quarry at Hertshore which is pretty steep.

Thanks for the comments folks; very interesting.

I was just struck by the way that magazine reviews often praise a bike for being stable at speed (so we now have bikes that are stable at speeds I’ll never reach). They’ll also sometimes claim that a new bike allowed them to clear a tricky climb that they’d never managed before. But I’ve never heard any reviewer say that a new bike gave them the confidence to ride down something they didn’t have the nerve to tackle before, which is strange as I thought that would be a good selling point for mere mortals.

Maybe the design of the bike has no bearing on the issue (although the responses so far would suggest that isn’t the case). Maybe the reviewers just don’t want to admit that they didn’t have the nerve to ride down something. Although that would be strange as we all have stuff we wouldn’t ride down and they seem quite happy to admit to not being able to get up stuff.

You simply need to learn how to filter out the dross. Both here and in your magazines.

The shortest steepest adult bikes you’ll find are BMX’s (Which also have relatively high BBs) and they’re designed for dropping into vert ramps. once you’ve dropped into a few properly tall vert ramps you won’t be phased by sledging down steep chutes on your mountainbike.
Steep only becomes difficult when you add in corners and cambers and it’s the terrain that dictates what bike/tyres will ride it those best not the gradient.

they’re designed for dropping into vert ramps

Yes but a vert ramp is absolutely nothing like a steep MTB descent!

Get hold of Pulp Traction and marvel at Brett Tippee and Richey Schley Decsending real steep stuff on ancient Stumpjumpers and cantilever brakes.
Your modern will ride a million times better than those ‘classics’ and your local trail won’t be anywhere near as steep.

a steep chute on a trail can be exactly the same molgrips.

Slack HA, reverb, grippy pedals and decent brakes.

a steep chute on a trail can be exactly the same molgrips

Can be, but usually isn’t 🙂

For me, it’s wider rims. I was out on Saturday with a couple of handy mates on their Enduro style (you know what I mean!) bikes while I was riding on my rigid fat bike. It was steep and sloppy but the fat tyres with their huge amounts of traction meant that I had the confidence to ride over off camber roots and down some genuinely steep trails where they were struggling to stop their front wheels from breaking out and depositing into the nearest tree. I guess for me, the ultimate dh bike has to be a fat bike taking this to a logical conclusion…….once I have one to play with, I’ll be putting the theory into practice. 😀