Originally Posted by
letrebici
SierraRider, yeah I was just about to comment the same points as you; overforking is adding about 30mm to the stock fork max
major alteration of bike geometry. I see in your photos that you ride the chunk in Nor Cal, so you could utilize that amount of travel. My riding is much more sedate, but love the 160mm when I need it in the rock gardens at Annadel blues and any of Skeggs blues! that is about as extreme as I get.
Yeah, I'm basically SW of Tahoe, so ride lots of the high-country black diamond or double black diamond stuff on the Hightower. IMO, my current set up is just right for those kinda rides. I even occasionally hit some of the technical stuff on my XC bike, but obviously it's quite under-biked for that.
I've ridden at Annadel a few times. Once on my old enduro bike, the rest on a couple of different XC bikes. My current XC bike(SC Blur) worked fine at Annadel, but I definitely was getting beat up in the rocks. I think the sweet spot for there is a shorter travel trail bike.