Rocky Mountain Altitude 29er- 2010 – Review

Review, photos and videos by Lee Lau

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FIRST LOOKS AND COMPONENTS

Rocky’s Altitude 29er builds on its Altitude platform, incorporating many innovations such as the ET-S suspension and the Smoothlink geometry (more about that in tedious detail in this article). RMB refined the Altitude from the 26″ wheel size keeping the same all-mountain pedigree with the bias towards cross-country. I’ve already reviewed the Altitude 29er’s specifications and geometry in a MTBR “First Looks” article. Rather than repeat what I’ve previously canvassed I’d like to move on to ride and other impressions.

SUMMARY

This is a bike that’s very biased to the more cross-country side of “all-mountain”. It has minimal free-ride or downhill pretensions without some serious tweaks to components. For use in Sea-to-Sky country (ie North Vancouver, Squamish, Whistler) it is more of a niche offering. For the vast majority of other places in the world where terrain is not quite as hyper-technical, the Altitude would be a wonderful all-mountain offering and would be able to better show its uphill/downhill class.

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Pipeline – North Vancouver

D’arcy on Ladies Only – North Vancouver

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