Hey riders! I am getting semi obsessed with bikepacking – I treated myself to a cutthroat and biked the high mountains in Peru and some of the divide here in the US. I’m now looking for a hard tail, I really do well with a lighter bike, I was checking out the Trek Chameleon and the Salsa Timberjack but was curious if anyone had a carbon rig they liked for bikepacking? Also the canyons are looking like good deals too. Going it Italy/Slovenia in Sept this year to do some rougher trails and I wanna go hard tail. Thank you!
PS for all those who came to say, steel bikes are better — that’s not what I asked about 🙂
by sara_hikes
7 Comments
I don’t have a recommendation per se, but have you thought about swapping out the rigid front fork on your cutthroat with a suspension fork? I have a cutthroat and have been thinking about doing the same
On what kind of terrain are you planning to use the hardtail ?
I enjoy my Santa Cruz Highball. It’s a light cross country hard tail, so I find it to be fast enough on gravel, plush enough on rough stuff, and just good enough on singletrack.
If you don’t need rack mounts (which are a must for me on my hardtail, a drybag on top is the best bikepacking bag out there imho). I suggest you to take a look at radon bikes here in europe, you can get away with some spicy deals
If you like the C-throat slap a nice light 32mm suspender fork on it. Then you’ll have a spare rigid fork for when the suspender is being serviced.
A lot of people are using 100mm suspension forks for bikepacking so maybe a carbon hardtail with that. Cannondale scalpel hard tail comes to mind. Also the new Salsa Stormchaser has a 40mm front suspension fork. Personally I ride a Ibis Dv9 with a ENVE fixed fork and I love it. It does come with a suspension fork if you buy the complete bike.
I love my Ibis DV9.