The Carbon Enduro Chronicles: Left Hand Canyon

Yesterday I took the Mighty Carbon Enduro to my favorite OHV area. Findings:

Terrain
Steep, rocky and loose

Route
Up, up, up, down

Up
Again, this bike climbs very well. With the pedaling platform on, it rips up the mellow hardpack. With the platform off, it finds great traction on the rough and loose.

In the steep/treacherous sections I could really feel the front end’s slackness. The only things that kept me rolling up the ultra-steeps were: 1) Pulling myself way forward on the saddle. 2) Pinning it.

Yesterday I rocked a heavy pack, and that slacked the bike out even more, which I did not like.

Down
Our favorite new singletrack is closed! The sign says something like “Trail closed until the shooting issue can be resolved.” I would ordinarily go for it, but — blam! blam! blam! — people were shooting at the bottom of the trail.

Dang. A bunch of people built this sweet trail, and now it’s closed because a bunch of meatballs can’t follow the NRA handbook?

But! Another new trail starts at the same place. This trail shall be forever called World Cup. It is super narrow, very raw, ridiculously steep and pretty darn turny. It would be tricky on my 450. Probably fun on a trials moto. A handful.

I would have felt a bit undergunned on my Stumpy. The Enduro, with 50mm stem, 8-inch rotors and big tires, felt perfect. I didn’t attack this brand-new route, but the Enduro’s bigness and slackness let me explore it with confident control.

The rest of the descent — planing over jumbly rocks, pumping waterbars, railing sweepers — was fun as expected. Maybe because of the bigness and slackness, maybe because of the sticky Chunders, I felt like I wasn’t riding fast enough. That’s easily fixed.

One thing I noticed: The Enduro feels very balanced when jumping. My Stumpy feels out of whack front-to-rear (could it be the different generation fork and shock?), but the Enduro is dialed. On the final dirt-road descent I was manualing and doubling like a fool.

Braaap!

The wringing out continues.

— Lee

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