It was just pointed out to me that this review is going to be less about this particular bike and more about 29ers in general, which is probably true. I’ve ridden a few 29ers but the Evolve is the only one I have spent significant time on, so comparisons aren’t reasonable, but I’ll do my best. I also don’t like hardtail bikes much so I’ve not much to say on how the full suspension 29er performs next to a hardtail 29er – that will be up to you to determine.

When I told the Ellsworth crew I wanted an Evolve to test, they hesitated to even build it, citing concern about me being too small for a 29er. I get tired of that sentiment, in large part because I’m in major denial about being small (I’m AVERAGE!), but I understand it coming from the bike manufacturer, who naturally does not want to send an unsuitable demo to a media type person. I had had a taste of the 29er ethos during my trip to Kokanee Crankworx last year when I demo’ed a Specialized 29er, and I knew I wanted to give the Evolve a shot so I dug in my heels and convinced Ellsworth to build the bike for me.

I got the bike while I was living in the Northwest, where trails are muddy and steep, and roots and obstacles are slippery and challenging. I had enjoyed the taste of 29er stability at Crankworx and suspected that I’d gain confidence and have an easier time with obstacles on a big-wheeled bike. Whether it’s a confidence thing or a geometry thing, I’ve found my theory to be 100% true. I’m not a racer type but I decided to participate in a bike race the day after I put the Evolve together. The race was on an unfamiliar course so I went out on the Evolve the night before to pre-ride the route, and was really stoked at how easy it was to roll the steep, technical descents that had worried me in the race description. I also had a much easier time with my nemesis, the tight switchback. I was pretty well sold on the bike from the word go.

I had a great time in the actual race, zipping by people who had stopped at the top of the descents to assess their ability to roll them on their 26ers, and if I’d been on my 26er I’d have done the same; some of the huge roots were really intimidating. The Evolve made them feel like almost nothing, though – I just held on and rolled right down. Getting the big front wheel up and over roots and rocks while climbing was also a breeze; it made technical climbing so much easier.

Ten months later I find that I’ve moved all of my favorite components to the Evolve. One of my 26ers is still packed away in a box where I put it 6 months ago, and the other is sitting unridden in my living room because I so much prefer to ride the 29er. When I do get the bug to take out my 26ers, I get frustrated because the ride is so much harsher and the front end is so much twitchier and harder to handle than the trustworthy, stable 29er.

Here in Durango, I get nonstop criticism for riding a 29er. People dismiss the idea that they’re fun to ride, saying that they don’t maneuver as well, and….well that’s pretty much what they say. One guy told me that 29ers make him crash. Er, OK. I don’t much think that it’s the bike making him fall down, but whatevs. I don’t have any trouble maneuvering the bike, going fast on descents, or handling anything the local trails put in front of me (partly because they are pretty easy trails, but I would say the same for the tougher NW trails on this bike – they were easier for me on the 29er). I even have a way easier time with tight turns on the 29er, though one of my 29er riding girlfriends says she has a harder time than on her 26er, so this might be an individual thing, or it might be that the Ells geometry is better at that sort of thing than the 29er she rides.

Which brings me to the specifics of the Ellsworth Evolve. Most of the time my Ells bikes are admired by people I encounter on trails, but in Durango people have some sort of weird superiority issue that they express by trashing bike brands that don’t happen to be endorsed by one of the ex-pro athletes that live here, or something. I’ve no idea why people here find it necessary to do this; what’s wrong with letting people have their preferences? I’ll go ahead and tell the elitists to suck it, because I like the Ellsworth bikes and the Evolve in particular. I prefer a stable, balanced, forgiving bike which is what the Ells geometry is all about in my opinion. The Evolve is not designed to be a super snappy XC race machine so why would one criticize it for not being just that? I don’t like bikes that are squirrely; I just don’t ride that way. I like the fact that if I hesitate while making a tight maneuver, the Evolve will stay stable until I can apply power – and when I do, the front end stays straight and balanced and I can just power on out of the sticky situation. As a 29er, it rolls over just about anything and with the Ellsworth Instant Center Tracking design (ask Tony E., he’ll tell you; I won’t bother trying to get all techy), it climbs really well. The front end stays down – never, ever pops up while climbing steep stuff – and I never spin out on gravel or loose rock even when I stand up to climb. I love the way the Evolve handles switchbacks and descents – frankly, I just enjoy the way the bike handles, even more than other 29ers I’ve ridden. To be fair, the Evolve was outfitted just for me with components that I prefer; for instance it’s got a really wide bar which helps with the stability, but I can’t say anything negative about the frame and the way it rides. I have said it before in my Ellsworth reviews – Ells bikes are designed to be stable and to take care of their riders. On an Ellsworth, and especially on the Evolve, I’ve learned that I can take on scarier obstacles and I’ll still be OK because the bike isn’t going to do anything weird. So I like both the 29er feel in general and the Ellsworth design works for me. Plus the anodized pink color of my bike is just super sexy, flashy, and perfect for me – and every time you buy a pink bike from Ellsworth, they donate $50 to benefit breast cancer research.

I’d like to advocate for all riders to at least try the 29er. People my size (I’m 5’5″) are generally discouraged from riding and even trying out 29ers and I think that’s a major bummer, because I think a lot of people would like them. I think women, especially, would like 29ers because of the stability and the ease of rolling over obstacles. When your body weight is in your hips, down towards the bike frame, it’s more difficult to get a twitchy front wheel over obstacles and the 29er helps balance that equation. I personally got a surge of confidence from riding a 29er and think that other women would, too. I don’t find any of the criticism of 29ers to be warranted and sometimes I think that people who spray on about how terrible they are might – just might – not have a clue what they are talking about. And how does a 6′ tall dude have any clue what a 5’4″ woman might like to ride, anyway? He’s no idea what it feels like for her. Take my word for it, height has nothing to do with whether or not you’ll like the big wheels. I know a sub 5′ woman who rides a 29er and kicks everyone’s ass on it, too. I’m at least as fast at climbing and descending as most of my friends (at least the ones who aren’t professionals) so the idea that a 29er can’t keep up with 26ers is really stupid, especially when you see pros like Rebecca Rusch out there winning on 29ers.

This “you’re too small to ride a 29er” thing is such bunk. If you’re familiar with fat tire bikes, ones with wheels as wide as 4″, you’ll know that women and shorter men ride them all the time with no issues. And you know what? Though those bikes use 26″ wheels, the size of the tires effectively turns them into 29ers when all is said and done, and no one’s running around loftily proclaiming that smaller people can’t ride fat tire bikes. It’s so ridiculous.

So if you haven’t tried a 29er, you really should, and the Evolve is a great one to try. You’ll encounter people who tell you that full-suspension 29ers don’t work, but your trusty Head Geargal assures you that they do indeed. You might love riding a 29er or you might decide that you prefer the 26ers, but you don’t know until you try. My advice is to ignore the I-know-everything loudmouths, and try both kids of bikes and then – radical concept, here – pick the one YOU like the best.

Today was another chilly day here in Durango, Colorado, but like anyone who has spent time in the Pacific NW, I was lulled by the sun and set out for a bike ride on my trusty Ellsworth Moment, my 2010 demo bike that became mine at the end of the season when I found I couldn’t part with it, and purchased it. Seeing it in the demo tent as a show bike at Crankworx made me nearly hysterical with the need to make it my own; I couldn’t stomach the idea of anyone else on this bike that had been manufactured, anodized, and assembled with Loaded accents just for me. For some reason buying it made me feel like I didn’t have to do a review on it, or something, because I neglected my duty and never wrote about it. That means that just about every time I ride it, I feel guilty, so I’m going to tackle my nagging conscience head-on and get this done.

But the real reason why I haven’t yet completed my review is that I was trying hard to characterize this bike, and to hit upon just the right experience that would sum up this bike if shared with readers. I never found that experience and that is because every single ride on the Moment is just perfect.

I had originally wanted to test a Truth this year(errrr…last year?), or perhaps an Evolve. The Ellsworth crew talked me into a Moment, though, because I was in Canada and they thought the 6” travel Moment would fit the North Shore style riding better. I balked, because I’m not a freeride kind of person, and I didn’t want to be stuck with some clunky, heavy, unwieldy FR/DH bike that would be essentially useless to my XC ethos. “Come on,” said Donald, my Ellsworth contact, “the Moment is what I’d get.”

That was good enough for me.

One of my issues with the whole gear review thing is that so many manufacturers turn me loose with their catalogs and ask me to pick stuff. This leads to lots and lots of agonizing and emotional turmoil. This is probably a nice problem to have, but I do spend too much time trying to pick just the right thing, and the fact that I’ve had excellent luck with the stuff some clients just randomly pick should tell me that I should stop working so hard to choose exactly the right thing – and just let it come to me. With the Moment, that’s what I did (after weeks of agonizing over the bike options, of course) – and it really was just the right thing.

I chose a lightish build (OK fine, they chose it for me) on my Moment; an air shock (Fox Float RP23) in back but a Talas fork in front. Excellent decision, if I do say so myself, as the air shock gives me the light and quick XC feel but the Talas adjustable fork lends not only the extra travel when needed, but also the ability to feel like a totally badass Autobot when, at the top of a gnarly downhill, I just need to pause for a moment (in front of all my companions, ideally) and transform the Talas fork from a 4” travel quickie to a 6” travel monster to soak up all the bumps. A coil shock in front would arguably lend a better ride but it would a) be heavier and b) most likely not be dialed for my light-ass chick body weight, thanks so very much Fox for taking that into consideration, NOT. Seriously, one thing I’ve learned is that nearly all bicycle shocks are created with an ideal weight of 180lbs in mind. Well, I’m over 50 lbs lighter than that, and I’m not even caught by the bottom edge of that ideal-weight curve. The new Specialized women’s design bikes have an optimized suspension for women’s body weight and it really does make all the difference. Unfortunately I haven’t convinced Tony E. to make a demo bike just for me with a tuned spring curve suspension adjusted to my body weight, so I have to go with the standard Fox stuff here. I’m not super wild about Fox shocks because they’re usually just so hard for me to activate, being a bit smaller than many people, and thinking about what I could do on my Ellsworth bikes with a suspension made just for me makes me…well, it makes me really want a suspension made just for me.

I don’t get to have that…YET. However, the Ellsworth design does a very credible job of making up for it. The thing is about riding an Ellsworth is that it just makes me feel more confident. The Moment tracks perfectly and is super stable, getting me out of many a jam whether it’s an overshot sharp turn, a rocky and steep downhill, or a trip across one of those goddamned ladders they love so much in the Northwest. The Moment is so easy to handle that my first time out, I was making short work of obstacles that had troubled me for months on other bikes.

I got into mountain biking in Alaska, where trails can be rocky and steep but rarely technical in a true MTB way. It’s going to be hard to explain what I mean by this, so bear with me. When I started mountain biking, there were no trails at all in Alaska specifically designed for biking, so we were all riding mountain bikes on hiking trails. The most technical sections were demanding, with HUGE climbs and rocky, loose terrain, but there was nothing in the way of anything tight or twisting or fraught with obstacles. I enjoyed riding the trails in the back part of Bicentennial Park that were nothing but masses of roots everywhere, but to get through trails like that you really only need power, not bike handling skills. Power I had, handling skills….eh…who needs them anyway, I’ve got an Ellsworth now!

When I bought my first high end bike years ago I rode a few of them, including an Ellsworth Truth. The Truth was the only bike EVER that has given me that “in the bike” feeling, but I didn’t buy it because of the price tag and I have regretted it ever since. That demo ride, way back when, is the reason I sought out Ellsworth as a Geargals client. So being back on Ellsworth bikes has been a long time coming for me and it makes me really happy. The Moment could make you happy, too, if you like an extremely stable, versatile bike that is truly suitable to all conditions. I had a longtime dream of a full stable of Ellsworth bikes but once I got the Moment, I really didn’t need much else. The Talas fork goes from 4” travel to 6” travel, and if I really wanted to do freeride stuff I could slap on a coil shock and I’d be good to go. I did get myself an Evolve, eventually, because the Moment does not transform into a 29er, but it does everything else so well that there’s really no reason to have another bike, other than to have another bike.

Reading back over what I wrote, I can see that this review is reading more like a memoir than a bike review so perhaps I’d better refocus. Remember when I said I didn’t need bike handling skills because I have an Ellsworth? Well, that’s almost true. On sketchy descents I’ve taken to reminding myself inwardly “You’re on an Ellsworth, you’ll be fine. Just hang on” because I know the bike will take care of me most of the time, soaking up the bumps and forgiving my mistakes. I’m a much more relaxed rider now, knowing that I can jack things up and the Moment will absorb my errors as well as it does the obstacles instead of just dropping me on the ground and looking at me in disgust. 95% of other situations I can get out of just by applying power – the Moment just needs a little gas in the spark plugs and it stabilizes immediately. And as far as that hackneyed bike-review question, “does it climb like a hardtail?” How the hell would I know? I’d never ride a hardtail, I like my seat bones intact. But it does climb really, really well, and it’s very tough to get the back wheel to spin out even on loose gravel. It might slip a little if you stand up to crank, but it will grip again in a flash – I don’t know how the bike does that.

I wish more women would ride really high end bikes like this. It’s done wonders for my confidence (and my cred – hearing “whoa, a chick on an Ellsworth!” is not uncommon, nor is “a pink Ellsworth – awesome!” which makes me feel good about my not-so-ordinary bike) and it really does help improve your riding. I admit that the super bike-dude vibe the company gives off can be intimidating, but I’ve spent a bit of time with those guys and I can say that they are a bunch of super sweet people. It’s tough for women to see past the bike industry swagger, and by the way, dear friends at Ellsworth, it doesn’t help when there are half-naked models preening about in front of the demo booth. I wish you wouldn’t do that, it’s alienating to the women riders you are trying so hard to attract. I wish you’d just be yourselves and not lean on hackneyed gimmicks, like bare asses for example, to attract customers. The bikes are good enough, you just have to get people on them and they’re not going to get on them if they’re a) freaked out by the strippers or b) staring at the strippers.

So my Ellsworth bikes, including the Moment, are not “official” women’s design. They’re just regular design, going by the good-for-the-gander, good-for-the-goose theory. For the most part, they have it right. I’ve spent some time trying to sort out whether or not women need a different bike frame design, and I’ll go out on a limb now by saying “not necessarily.” What works for each person is different, and if an Ells doesn’t work for you then I’m sorry, because it’s a sweet ride that you’re missing.

The Specialized Safire

The Background

I was lucky, I guess. My first “serious” bike shop – the one I bought my first high-end, full suspension MTB from – was a good one. I didn’t even really know that there was much of an issue with women and bike shops. After all, I had bought my bike from a shop that had always seemed to treat me fairly, kindly, and with respect. They had never talked down to me or ignored me or any of those things bike shops are known for. If I were not in possession of the direct-sales industry connections that I now benefit from, I would buy another bike from that shop and go well out of my way to do it. So I had a great experience and a good few years of happy go lucky cluelessness about the bike industry.

Since then I’ve learned that bike shops aren’t woman-friendly places for the most part. They don’t stock women’s gear, they don’t stock any women’s saddles but for the ubiquitous Terry butterfly, and if you’re female they will usually at best condescend to you, at worst ignore you, and usually try to rip you off for the cost of parts. I know what brake pads cost, bike shops, and it is NOT $60. So this unpleasant realization about bike shops kind of happened to coincide with the growth of Geargals, which meant that I was always swimming in demo gear and didn’t have to shop for stuff anyway. I also gained a bike wrench boyfriend, which solved the parts/labor overcharging problem (or did it? Hmmm). So, freed from the tedium of shopping, I stopped going to bike shops because I didn’t have to. I didn’t even think much about the whole thing except for once or twice when I had to shop for shorts.

Then one day I saw this article on bikehugger about women and bike shops, and its follow up articles. The accompanying comments made me, well, pissed off. A bunch of dudes basically saying there’s no problem and that if there is one it’s basically women’s fault. That type of thing makes me angry. You know, “Argh! Head Geargal Smash!” kind of angry. The dismissive “most bike shops can fit a small person” comment was the final straw. WOMEN ARE NOT JUST SMALL MEN. We ride differently, we have different centers of gravity, and different pressure point issues. Our hips are different, our legs are different, WE ARE DIFFERENT. Why didn’t anyone get it? Most men have no idea what it’s like to try to excel at a sport with equipment made just perfectly exactly not for their bodies. In bikes, women of my size aren’t even “caught” by the body weight curve that most shocks are optimized for. How can that not make a difference?

The crew over at Specialized were also affronted, and took the time to write a reply. For some reason, that reply didn’t garner nearly as much – or any, really – controversy. Like, zero comments after DOZENS of comments on the original article. Weird. But I was still interested that they were interested, and I proposed a special kind of bike test. Specialized has developed a “ground up” line of women’s bikes and I wanted to find out if it made that much of a difference. I proposed to ride the women’s bikes and then ride the comparable men’s model, and report on the difference. My idea was met with enthusiasm and I was invited to join the Specialized crew in Whistler for Crankworx, where I could try the bikes to my heart’s content.

The Test

Within ½ hour of my arrival in Whistler, I was met by Rachael Lambert from Specialized and checked into a hotel, my personal bike was stored, my car whisked away to a valet, and I was in my bike gear and ready to ride. I love these sorts of events because putting faces to the company image never fails to be an eye opener. All of a sudden the big corporate logo is a person or a group of people, smiling at me, talking to me, and going out for a beer with me, and Crankworx was no different. All of a sudden that big stylized “S” was a human, and she was ready to ride with me.

I was presented with a Specialized Safire bike, told we were headed off to ride with about five others: Rachael and Amy from Specialized, Tyler Maine and his wife Sara from pinkbike.com, and, confusingly enough, Rachael’s boyfriend Tyler. What are the odds of that? I don’t know about you, but meeting two people of the same name is more confusing to me than meeting two people of different names. If they have the same name I always think I’m forgetting something. But here I was, riding with two Tylers, feeling the pressure of remembering they were both named Tyler. I know, I have weird problems. The gist is, I was plonked onto the bike that had been quickly and efficiently fitted to me, and led down a path in the gorgeous Whistler weather.

Confession time: occasionally I have no idea what is going on around me. Sometimes I just don’t bother to get all the pertinent information and I just go with the flow, especially when traveling and, shamefully, even more especially when traveling for Geargals when others are making all the arrangements for me. As the boss lady of two companies I’m usually calling the shots; having someone else do it is the best vacation ever. So when Rachael said to Tyler “Do you want to go to cut your bars first?” I figured we had to go make some adjustments to Tyler’s bike and didn’t think much of it. It seemed like a weird and time consuming thing to have to do just after everyone had gotten ready to ride, but I was in travel mode and ready to accept whatever came my way. So off we went down a paved bike path, me imagining that we were going to stop at a bike shop to cut Tyler’s bars so that he would be better fitted to his bike. Then we swerved off onto rocky, rooty, technical singletrack. Strange, I thought to myself, to take this route to a bike shop, but flow-going as I was, just kept pedaling and enjoying the experience. After about 20 minutes we all stopped at an intersection to regroup and I saw the trail name on a placard: “Cut Yer Bars.” Oh.

You see, I wasn’t thinking much about what the plan was; for once others were at the helm so I could just think about the bike. I was riding a medium frame Safire, Specialized’s new five inch travel XC bike. It’s been a while (well, a few months at least; an ETERNITY for a gear tester) since I rode a new bike and I was very keen to finally feel the difference in a frame designed for women. Specialized has spent considerable engineering resources on developing and marketing a “ground-up” women’s bike; one that isn’t just a modified version of a men’s bike. This is the Safire, and there’s no “equivalent” men’s bike in the lineup. The Safire is the Safire and it stands on its own. Cool.

The first thing I noticed, and I mean the VERY FIRST thing, was that the suspension was quite frankly awesome. I really have a hard time tuning my suspension juuuuust right so I was elated to be bunny hopping around the parking lot with everything feeling perfect right out of the gate. chatted with Rachael about it, and she revealed that the shocks had been specially designed and tuned for the female rider. How is this different from the male rider, you might ask? Well, the average male rider is 180 lbs. All shocks have to perform with that weight as the most optimal; the middle of the bell curve so to speak. Well, I am 130 lbs. I am not even caught by the low end of the curve for a normal shock. I feel this, I really do. Suspensions are fussy for a rider without the oomph to compress them; they feel rigid and stiff, noncompliant and headstrong. I’m always fiddling with something, even on my personal bike which I consider to be one of the best on the market (which, full disclosure now, is not a Specialized. I had never ridden Specialized bikes until this trip). The Safire had a very welcoming suspension, one that worked the way it is supposed to. And I never really knew how it was supposed to work until riding the Safire. It really was just mind blowing.

With mind sufficiently blown, and bike budget also already blown for the year, I asked Rachael hopefully if I would be able to fit my personal bike with this miracle front fork and rear shock. Sadly, no; they were part of the Safire design and wouldn’t work with just any bike. Lesson one: ground-up really means ground-up. We set about touring around the Whistler singletrack. And this is when things started to get…less straightforward. The suspension kept performing perfectly. The rest of the bike was hit and miss. I didn’t fall in love immediately like so many others seem to have; that was apparent pretty quickly. My task, then, was to figure out why not.

As we made our way around Cut Yer Bars, I noticed that I couldn’t find a comfortable gear and I felt that my cadence was either way too high or I was pushing way too low of a gear; no middle ground. My legs felt like a hamster on a wheel. Finally a light went on and I figured out that the Safire was equipped with short 170cm cranks rather than the standard 175 cm cranks. Rachael told me that every component of the Safire is sized according to the frame size, so a size medium Safire (which is like a Small in a men’s frame) comes standard with 170cm cranks. Maybe many people wouldn’t have noticed, but I noticed. Why? Because I am pretty strong and use a lot of power and leverage as opposed to finesse. Now, I might get used to the smaller cranks if I use them for a while; they make sense. Or do they? What is so different about a 5’5” woman vs. a 5’5” man when it comes to cranks? Don’t women typically have longer legs and justify longer cranks? I mused whether it might not be a good idea for the bikes to be spec’ed according to the purchaser’s request. Would the average rider know the difference between cranks, or would he or she even know his or her preference? Would tons of dudes riding small frame bikes suddenly find epiphanic nirvana by trying smaller, more proportional cranks? No clue. I do have a clue, though, that if a bike manufacturer were to try it on dudes, the idea would be roundly rejected because dudes don’t like to face up to the fact that they are not all 6’2”. So, they tried it on the women’s line, instead. Perhaps women will be more open to that change. But it didn’t work for me; I like my longer cranks; but possibly only because I’m so used to them now.

So that’s one thing. On decently smooth singletrack and straightforward obstacles, the Safire was a star and I liked it. I couldn’t find anything I didn’t like about it until we rode a trail that seemed to mostly consist of rocks and ladders thrown together in a haphazard way (that’s Whistler XC for you). I could suddenly hardly ride anything. The front end of the Safire felt squirrely and rebellious, difficult to control and unpredictable. I started to struggle and wound up doing more walking than riding. After inexplicably stuffing the front wheel on nothing and performing a low-speed endo, I took the bailout route and headed back to the village, feeling dazed and wondering what had happened in the few short hours between leaving the parking lot on a tuned-suspension high and slinking home on a paved road on a bike that suddenly felt too small and toy-like. I longed for my beefy all-mountain rig, if only to save face and show my new companions that I wasn’t completely hopeless.

Thinking about it and still wincing from the ego blow, admittedly grasping for an excuse for my struggles, I noted the down-turned stem setup on the Safire and asked about it. My wounded pride was clamoring for attention so I don’t quite remember the answer about why it was set up that way, but I agreed to ride the bike again the next day with the stem reversed per my preference. I hoped for a different experience but didn’t feel hopeful that I would love the Safire any more, or any differently, than I already had experienced. The next day would tell.

In the meantime, I was lost in thought. What had I expected out of that first ride on the Safire? It’s hard to say. I live in a dream world of sports-related problems easily solvable by the best and newest gear solutions, so it’s tough for me to get out of that mindset when I dabble in the bike industry. Can a bike solve all my problems? When I was a beginner, yes, it could. Stepping up to a high end bike four years ago ramped up my riding like nothing else could. But now that I’ve been on a selection of high end bikes for a few years, the curve is much shallower. It’s down to personal preference and personal riding style, now, and I can’t expect a bike – any bike – to make a huge difference in my riding. It’s up to me to figure out what a bike is meant to do and evaluate how well it does it.

I retired to the social scene of Crankworx to visit with clients and to ruminate on the ride. I ended up spending the evening riding around aimlessly, jokingly, with a couple of long distance friends – rowdy, highly skilled freeriders. We rallied around the village, trying random stunts and goofing off, which, though fun, still had me mostly sulking to the side even on my dependable 6X6, too intimidated to ride even the skills park and too embarrassed to take a trip around the baby pump track. Maybe it was the difference in uniform: spandex-clad, clipped-in, cross-country me riding alongside armor-wearing, 9 inch travel bike riding, flat pedaled, full-face-helmeted them. Perhaps it had something to do with the constant cries of pain and emanating from my companions along with the accompanying broken bones (really!) and torn skin as they slid, fell, and scraped along the ladders and ramps, but nonetheless – I felt cowed after the ride on the Safire.

Was it the bike? Was it me? Was the women’s design not what I hoped? I’d no idea. All I could do was turn up the next day and ride bikes. So ride I did. Rachael had somehow found the time to swap the stem and have the bike ready and waiting the next morning, and off we went, just the two of us. A ways into the ride I confided that I was having trouble controlling the front end. It just would not stay grounded; it was maddening. I don’t mind a light front end but I couldn’t keep the wheel straight, either. Rachael immediately suggested dialing down the travel, which did help some. My all-or-nothing nature held me back from trusting the bike, though. On descents I squeaked in terror and unclipped when confronted by a ladder or switchback. I let Rachael drift ahead so she wouldn’t hear the telltale clip clop of my bike shoes on wood planks.

We chatted a bit about the bike setup and my thoughts about it. The bar was much, much skinnier than the one on my personal bike – I think probably six inches skinnier. That’s a big difference. Since I opt for speed and power as my weapons of choice while on a bike, it makes sense that I like the stability and more forgiving nature of a wider bar. It also stands to reason that after a season with a big bar, I wasn’t as tuned to the small controlled movements necessary to successfully run a narrower bar. Moving from a skinny bar to a wider bar is easy; going back is hard. No wonder I was afraid to try the ladders and skinnies; I couldn’t steer!

I had come to love and trust that dialed-for-me suspension, though, so I got cheap thrills out of drops and steep rolls. As long as it wasn’t life-threatening I could do it and did do it, all the while hoping that someone would see me unhesitatingly taking on steep inclines and rolling drops. The suspension never once let me down and I still think often about how specifically right it felt.

Next up I took out the closest comparable bike in the men’s/unisex lineup; the Camber. I am shamed to say that almost immediately I liked it better than the Safire. It felt taller, more stable, trustworthy, and repsonsive to pedal power. When in doubt, apply power and you will be saved: that is my motto. The Camber served me fairly well. No squirrelly diving around on this bike; I just felt better. It might really be because of the extra leverage afforded by the crank size I’m used to. It might have been the size of the frame fitting me a tad better, or the comforting wide bar on the Camber. It might have been just my confidence level – after taking a few hits on the Safire it was hard to trust it again, and easier to give a different bike a chance. Still, the suspension was a difference. It was good, on the Camber, but not as good as the Safire.

There’s nothing like riding a bike to assist with musing about bikes, so I jumped on an Era Comp Carbon and then an S-Works Epic 29er just to try that whole 29er thing. I rode the same trails I had ridden on the Safire and the Camber – but suddenly I was grinning ear to ear, zipping over obstacles without a second thought, and rolling over almost everything in my path. I admit I didn’t do the more ladder-intensive trails; I’ve had a few bad ladder experiences and when my confidence is shaken, I just avoid them. Off the ground = too high-consequence for someone whose mid-thirties body doesn’t rebound as well as it once did. Without the ladders in the picture, the Epic 29er was so much fun that I went around again, giggling the entire time. I rode the trail twice and reluctantly headed back only when I thought I’d stretched the allowable time limits for bike demos (which is something that, again, my first bike shop taught me gently: two weeks is a tad too long to keep a demo bike. Sorry about that, guys). I was pretty sold on the Epic, immediately, which brought me back to thinking about the Safire. Why wasn’t I as sold on it right away? Or rather, why did my feelings about it erode as the ride went on? Usually one gets to know a bike and becomes more confident as time goes on, but I found the opposite.

On the other hand, when I took the Specialized Ruby Expert – the women’s specific road bike in the line – out for a spin, I liked it immediately, much more than my own road bike. The Ruby seemed to fit me much better and I wasn’t as uncomfortable and squirmy as I am on my own road bike. I am pretty much saving up for a Ruby right now. Why did the Ruby work for me when the Safire didn’t?

I could ride those bikes for weeks, trying to work all this out. I did my best with the time I had at Crankworx – one of my friends commented that he thought no one else at Crankworx rode as much as I did in those two days – but I still wasn’t fully satisfied with the results of my test rides. There are just too many factors at play to draw any definitive conclusions. After two days on the Safire and some great moments and some awful moments, I think that there was a fundamental mismatch on some components of the bike in regards to my strengths, weaknesses, and riding style. And I wasn’t the only one with this general feeling about the Safire, either. I approached another woman at the demo who was just returning the bike, and she confided that she had the same issue with controlling the front end. “It just felt like it was going everywhere,” she said, clearly frustrated. “I couldn’t steer it and it felt too small.” Comforted somewhat that it wasn’t just my skill level at play, I thought long about my rides on the Safire. There’s no question that it’s a great bike in many respects. It’s fast, has a great suspension, is light and quick, and has a very comfortable standover (this last was not really illustrated to me until later on the first evening when I got back on my personal bike and promptly whacked my crotch on the top tube). On certain trails and under certain conditions, it would probably have been much more to my liking, which made me think: perhaps the trails I tried it on were just not suited to the bike? On an XC race-style trail, I might be singing a different tune. I can imagine that on buttery, smooth, fast singletrack, the Safire would be mighty quick and REALLY fun to ride. Switchbacks are pretty easy on it and it is a very responsive bike and very stable at speed. It’s the low speed obstacles that were tricky, at least under my taurine hands. I would love to see how it handles on true XC trails rather than the chutes-and-ladders nightmare of Whistler’s trails. I might never really know, because Whistler is just not the place to test an XC bike.

While I would jump at the chance to ride the Safire on my smoother XC trails at home, I need to finish this article someday so I’ve got to draw conclusions based on what I experienced on the Safire already. If I were shopping for an XC race bike, or one do-it-all or at least do-most-of-it bike, I would put the Safire on the list for consideration solely based on its incredible, made-for-me suspension. But the bigger question – was this bike a good WOMAN’S bike – was unanswered. For help, I turned to the internet, where surely scads of women have reviewed this bike. The first in-depth review I read was BY A DUDE who had bought the Safire for his girlfriend. She’s 5’2”, he’s 6’2”, so he never actually rode the bike, but he qualified himself to do the review by saying he has a perfectly good idea of how the bike rides because he’s ridden the Stumpjumper, “the same bike in gent’s form.” NO. No! This is the entire point of the Safire. There is no other bike in the Specialized line that is a “version” of the Safire. It’s its own bike, built and designed from the ground up. This reviewer took his girlfriend’s raves and applied them to the review – but also revealed that it was her first time on a full-suspension bike. This review had so many holes, I just couldn’t go with it. Seriously, sorry man, nothing personal, but you really have to RIDE a bike to review it.

Moving on, I stopped by MTBR to find a small handful of short reviews, all of them very good but none of them providing much detail. A few other stops revealed rudimentary reviews with no details about the riders themselves. The most valid review came straight from the mouth of the Queen of Pain herself, Rebecca Rusch, who told me that she thought the Safire was “a great bike.” In hindsight I wish I’d been able to discuss it more with her, but I wasn’t interviewing her about the Safire itself so I gave it a miss. But it’s pretty clear that she loves this bike and was stoked for me to have been able to test it so extensively. A video review on Girl Meets Bike professed love for the Safire, after an initial getting-to-know-you period on which the tester had to “learn to ride the bike in a way that pleased it and me.” What she meant by that, I don’t know, but perhaps she went through the same thing that I did, and had to find the right conditions under which the bike would perform as it was intended. I’ll give her a heads up on this article and maybe she’ll comment. Until then, I just have to guess – like I have to guess about every bike review I read. Is the reviewer experienced with other comparable bikes? Is it her first time on a full suspension bike or her first time on trails? What is she used to riding? How is the bike set up? Are there negatives to the bike that she didn’t comment on?

This last is a difficult one. When someone hands you a nice bike that they are clearly proud of and want to hear what you have to say, it’s quite difficult to be up front about any less-than-ideal experiences. This article has been quite tough to write because I can’t unequivocally say that the Safire is the best option out there for women. I can’t say that women’s geometry is necessarily any better for me than “regular” bike geometry. Bike geometry is so varied and individual preference so nuanced that it seems next to impossible to come up with a one-geometry-fits-all solution for ANY gender. I can unequivocally say that if other bike frames were fitted with the same optimized-for-women technology, most female riders would notice a huge difference right from the get-go. I am so used to constantly fiddling with rebound, air pressure, slow speed compression, blow-off compression, etc etc and still not having things dialed, that I was really astonished to be able to set the air pressure according to my weight and just ride away without having to think of it again. There is really something to women’s specific suspension, as well as the Brain technology. The other (non-women’s) Specialized bikes I tried had great suspension as well, though not as completely dialed-from-the-start as the Safire.

I can also say that women in general benefit greatly from Specialized’s efforts. Just acknowledging that the average woman is different from the average male is a huge step. Seeing the big Specialized Women trailer at trade shows is gratifying. Finally a company that wants women to ride bikes. Is Specialized just chasing the women’s market and women’s money by trying to appeal to the female masses, John McCain-style? Or do they really care? I don’t know about Specialized The Company. It’s a big company, what can I say? I’m sure there are people there who DON’T care. However, I CAN say for sure that the brains behind the women’s bikes really do care. They’ve had to compete strenuously for engineering and marketing resources within the company. And they have indeed come up with an engineering marvel. Added to a marketing scheme that tells women in no uncertain terms that they are important, it’s all quite genius. And being thought of as important – that is something that women who ride have long been looking for.

The Epiphany, as far as I can tell, is a sort of crossover, something-for-everyone, divine creation. Even after talking to Tony Ellsworth himself in depth about bike design, I scoff at the idea that a mere mortal designed this otherworldly frame. It climbs well, it descends well, it soaks up the bumps…this is THE go-to bike for a one-bike quiver (one bike? What madness is this of which I speak?) and for those planning trips with a little bit of everything.

Speaking of Tony, he had a lot to say about frame design, materials, the development of his patented Instant Center Tracking system, and the quality of bike manufacturing, and I particularly enjoyed his “Conversation with Carbon Fiber” bit which I like to think he did just for me. The guy is clearly brilliant and a perfectionist, which he freely admitted (though he had no choice but to admit it, since I overheard him explaining to a contractor that he would only permit round holes for his HVAC systems – oval just would not do. Since I’ve spent the last year renovating my house, I can fully appreciate this level of attention to detail). And perfectionism is what you want when you’re dropping more money on your bike than you do on your car. Seriously – once I had two Ellsworth bikes on the bike rack on my old GMC Jimmy, and I realized that the combined net worth of the bikes could buy four Jimmys. Not worth the risk of having them on a rather aged hitch rack. I then took the bikes off the hitch rack and carefully stowed them in the Jimmy for safety. Good old Jimmy, plenty of room for two Ellsworths. What more could one want from an SUV? Anyway….

After a few local test-rides, I was presented with the opportunity to tag along on a 50-mile mountain race with one of the other Geargals. Get this – she was RUNNING fifty miles. Because of the isolation of the race and the potential for bear encounters, she asked me to tag along on a bike for safety. The route would involve steep and sustained ascents and descents, technical terrain, variable weather, and probably quite a bit of mud, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to see what the Epiphany could do. I also wanted to use a bike with a comfortable riding position and enough technical capabilities and substance to handle the terrain. Like any Geargal worth her salt, I wanted it ALL! With a 120-mm fork and five inches of rear travel, I figured the Epiphany was the right bike for this type of trip – and, for those of you who don’t like suspense – I was right!

I’m not a very finessed rider, and tend to just bully in hail-mary style through rocky sections. Therefore I was beyond thankful for the travel on this bike. Every time I smacked my pedals on a rock was a bad fall avoided – on a bike with less travel, I probably would have been crashing to the ground. The suspension ate up the terrain like it was made of gummy bears and other soft squishy things. Forgive the TMI, but I had been too lazy to swap the stock saddle out to my women-specific saddle, putting my faith in Ellsworth’s legendary cush-factor technology. The Epiphany’s suspension was so plush that it almost didn’t matter that I was riding on an inappropriate saddle. I say “almost” because I was suffering during the last 12 “junk miles” which were road miles and therefore required seat-firmly-in-saddle style riding – ouch. Even the Epiphany couldn’t do much about that.

The ICT suspension really does work. Very heavy riders might have trouble with full suspension bikes, but I noticed absolutely no difference in efficiency while climbing. As a matter of fact, for a biker at my level, this bike offers the same efficiency as a hardtail and perhaps even more, since the mere pain factor of climbing rough terrain on a hardtail tends to slow me down. I am much quicker at climbing with the Epiphany, because I don’t pre-wince when big obstacles arise. I know the ICT will just soak up the bumps while keeping the back wheel firmly in contact with the ground. I noticed that it was even a little more difficult to bunny hop the Epiphany, because it really does want to keep its rear wheel on the ground. This bike cares about you, you see, and it hates to see you turning the cranks for nothing. You pedal, you move forward; it’s a no-nonsense arrangement.

I did take a nasty tumble that I blame firmly on the Epiphany. After the steepest, most difficult climb of the ride, I was enjoying the more mellow incline of the trail and the scenery at the top of the pass, and the comfy Epiphany lulled me into not watching where I was going. Front wheel off the trail – Head Geargal goes boom. Ow. So, note to self: Epiphany is not equipped with autopilot.

That’s about the only complaint I can come up with, really – that the bike doesn’t steer itself. This bike is incredible and I am beyond impressed with Tony Ellsworth’s talent and dedication to creating unmatchable mountain bikes. Since I’ve progressed to riding high-end bikes, I’ve become more attuned to the nuances of frame design, personal preferences, and fit. Those who believe that riders can’t discern differences in frame design are just flat wrong. Positioning, balance, and technique are all affected by frame design, and each rider is going to have her own preferences. Thus, it’s very difficult to review bikes without resorting to comparing them to other bikes, and the Epiphany puts its rider in a slightly less aggressive stance than either my regular bike or the Ellsworth Truth (which I’ve also spent some pedal time on). I prefer a more stretched-out and aggro position, but to be fair I didn’t have a professional fitting done for me with this bike. Whatever issues I had (which were so minor I really can’t even justify mentioning them) could probably have been addressed with a proper fitting. Even so, most people prefer a less aggressive position than I do, so I think for the majority of riders, the Epiphany’s rider positioning is just about perfect.

Because of its “crossover” (XC + downhill) type of design, the one thing this bike doesn’t do as well as some others is tight cornering. It’s just more substantial than some XC race-style bikes, and isn’t as flickable as others I’ve ridden. This doesn’t mean it can’t do it, it just means that it requires a different style of riding than I’m used to. This won’t be an issue for good riders, and beginner riders will appreciate the stability and forgiveness of the Epiphany. Everyone will have a different opinion regarding the highlight of the Epiphany, but for me it’s the bike’s performance on sustained downhills. During the 20 miles of sustained descent on my 50 mile ride, I found the Epiphany so comfortable I hardly even had to think about it.

Now the bad news. If you want this bike, it’s not gonna come cheap. Even after a gracious discount offer from Ellsworth, I still couldn’t afford to keep the Epiphany this year (I probably couldn’t afford to maintain its lifestyle in a way to which it is accustomed, anyway) due to my compulsive bike-buying spree earlier in the spring. If you, like others who aren’t members of the Gates family, can only afford one high-end bike, you cannot possibly go wrong with the Epiphany. There is absolutely nothing that it can’t do to the very highest standard. Be warned, though – you’ll be so spoiled by all that rear travel that riding other bikes will become much more difficult. It will puzzle you why some obstacles that the Epiphany ate for breakfast aren’t quite as easy for other bikes. Poor other bikes – this is the Angelina Jolie, and they are the Jennifer Aniston. I think Jennifer Aniston is totally rad herself; I just think Angie is more likely to eat things that get in her way for breakfast.

Muchas gracias to Ellsworth for lending us the bike, and to Tony for taking the time to chat!

I was never a great mountain biker, no matter how much I liked biking. I would watch with envy at my bike-savvy friends as they bunny-hopped over rocks, powered up steep inclines, and zipped over roots with ease. Usually I’d be watching from the ground, where I’d been unceremoniously flung for the umpteenth time that day, my bike dumping me like a Shetland pony ditching its rider to gallop away for its grain fix back at the barn. The good thing about Shetland ponies is that they don’t have clipless pedals, so you’re not likely to end up in a tangle on the ground with your pony like I was so often with my bike. The bad thing about Shetland ponies is that, unlike bikes, they gallop on back to the barn without you when you fall off. Anyway, no matter how much I biked, I just could not master the technical aspects of the sport. I kept on riding, sticking to the easier trails and just trying to accept that I’d never be a great biker. Still, toying with the idea of upgrading my Mesolithic-era hardtail, I innocently agreed to demo a Racer X. Little did I know that that one simple act would change my biking, my life, and my finances.

The first thing I did with the Racer X was almost crash it into a tree. You see, there was a turn coming up, and in preparing for the turn (heck, just by thinking about the turn), I somehow telegraphed to the Racer X that it was to execute a sharp left turn and it sure did. Immediately. And I mean immediately. Almost right into the tree – but because it was a Racer X, I didn’t hit the tree – I was able to recover and pedal on, awestruck at the handling of this ride. That was my first clue that this bike was something special.

I became bolder and more confident about the lines I chose by the end of that first ride. As the week wore on, I was clearing trails that I never would have even tried on my hardtail. The Racer X goes exactly where you tell it to go. It is snappy, energetic, and so responsive that there’s almost not a word for it. Balanced to perfection, it handles obstacles, long climbs, rough descents, and twisty singletrack with ease. It got me out of trouble so many times I stopped being scared of falling, because falling just seemed like an impossibility on the Racer X. By the end of my “one day” (read: a week and a half) demo, I was probably 50 times the rider I used to be, and that is no joke. Lulled into a complacent cockiness, I (sadly) returned the demo and convinced myself that I didn’t really need such a high end bike.

The next day I hopped on my beater hardtail, convinced that although those technical singletracks would be rougher without the Racer X between me and them, I was a better rider than I used to be and I would be able to handle it. Oh, how wrong I was. A few hours, several saucer-sized bruises (one especially deep to my ego), and endless embarrassments later, I was forced to admit that I was not a better rider. The Racer X was just a better bike and it makes an immense difference. So now I put a Racer X between me and the trail. I know still the same rider I was on my Shetland pony hardtail, and I’m really not the badass technical rider I now pretend to be on my Racer X. It’s really the Racer X making me look good, but you know what? No one can tell the difference.

So, my advice? Don’t even think about demoing this bike unless you’re ready to buy it. You won’t be able to go back, so don’t even try. For those of you who are concerned about fit, Titus makes fully custom bikes and also makes the Racer X in a women’s version, with several sizes available. I went with the regular (unisex – bleah! But this one time, it’s OK.) frame, knowing that since I prefer a more stretched-out feeling on a bike, I wouldn’t like the shorter top tube of a women’s-specific frame, and I’m perfectly happy with the fit of the bike.

A few wee complaints: the cables are held to the bottom of the top tube with two pieces of panduit. Civilians call these “zip ties” but I find that it’s much cooler to call them “panduit” because it sounds techy. Anyway, the panduit is trimmed to fit the top tube, but sticks out just enough to stab you in the thigh if you’re standing over your bike (say, looking at a trail map, thinking “wow, when they say ‘swamp area’ they really mean it”), and have done some damage to my favorite non-cheap bike shorts. This irks me not because of the fact that my shorts got ripped, but because it would have been so easily avoidable had Titus just trimed the panduit so that the sharp ends are down instead of to the side. I know my bike shop can take care of it, but it’s annoying just the same.

My other complaint about the bike, which, if you’ll note, has nothing to do with performance, is that on rough descents the chain rattles on the rear triangle so noisily that it drives me to distraction. Again, an easy fix would be to install a thin neoprene sleeve or other pad that muffles the chain noise. That’s exactly what I’m going to do, but it would have been even nicer had Titus already done it for me. This was a problem with the demo bike and with my personal bike, so it seems that it’s a Titus hallmark. Just put a little neoprene pad on there, Titus, and all will be well. Okay?

One other piece of advice: if you’re going to make this kind of investment in your health and riding ability, also make an investment in a quality bike shop that knows you and how you ride. You can put all the Benjamins you want into a bike, but if your bike shop doesn’t fit you right, you won’t be all the rider you can be. Unless you are an expert and can dial in the fit yourself, get a professional fitting at a shop that knows what it’s doing, and be loyal. A good bike shop is as good as a trustworthy mechanic, and they should be willing to work with you to fit your bike to you properly. The bike shop is also usually your contact to the bike manufacturer, and if you’re a good customer you won’t have any problems with warranty and/or repair issues.

Not that you’re likely to have those with the Racer X; this is one solid machine, with quality welds and engineering that makes me actually thankful that there are engineers in the world (most of the time this is not the case – see Dilbert for examples). Believe the hype about this bike, and get ready to upgrade your skills beyond what you ever thought you were capable of.