Originally Posted by
canyoneagle
With your size, go 29er.
The problem with most of today's frames (even the steel ones) is that they are generally designed for suspension forks, and tend to have much steeper angles than the bikes of yore.
That said, the Surly Karate Monkey and Ogre, Salsa El Mariachi, among others are quite nice, but are "suspension-corrected". The Fargo is non-suspension corrected, but is designed as an offroad drop-bar (woodchipper) design. That is not to say a flat bar could not be used, but it is optimized for the woodchipper.
You've got it backwards. Modern frames designed for suspension have slacker head angles than older nonsuspension bikes. The longer the travel of the fork that the bike is designed for, the slacker the head angle. This makes sense since the head angle changes as the fork compresses. Bikes from around 1990 had head angles of 71 to 73 degrees (depending on brand) while most modern suspension frames have head angles around 70 degrees. A rigid mountain bike with a 71 degree head angle is a handful to ride off-road. A steep angle puts you over the bars on downhills...scary...and but it centers you over the bike on climbs making them very a little easier. It takes a lot of finesse to ride a steep angled bike
The first generation mountain bikes (about 1983) had 69 degree head angles but you don't want to ride one of them. They are superbly stable on downhills but they are terrible to climb on.
"Suspension corrected" is usually used to refer to a rigid fork. The blades are a little longer so that the head angle isn't too steep when installed.