Just back from another weekend bridleway bash. The trails have dried up nicely now and it's pretty much perfect riding weather too
Today's ride didn't have anything particular technical or challenging (other than some bloomin' steep climbs) - it's one of the few local routes I'm able to limp around on a rigid SS.
The Mount Vision is arguably over-biked for this sort of route, or at least it certainly reduces the amount of skill required on the ups and downs. Lowering the handlebars has made the ride feel a bit more engaging for general XC routes. For this particular route the bike would probably feel awesome with drop bars!
I'm usually a bit of a fiddler with my bikes, and like to tweak seat height, stem length etc. I fully expected to be doing that on this bike over the last few months, but since swapping out the risers for flat bars, everything is pretty much spot on (or at least a spot on compromise) for the riding I do.
Only change has been to swap the cheaper Wellgo V8 copies with integrated pins, which had become rather worn, for the ones off another bike with replaceable pins. This vastly improved the grippiness on rocky downhills, and I feel a bit more confident now after having lost my footing twice on the same section of trail with the previous pedals.
It wasn't even too much of a pig to pedal on the roads. If I had to go down to a single MTB, this would be it
Having said that I have some shiny new bits to swap onto my 2010 GT Avalanche this weekend... which is definitely a better bike for bombing downhill like a lunatic >