Originally Posted by
Tom Bombadil
I'm kinda surprised that GT is offering such a bike. You can't find this type of bike from Trek, Specialized, Giant, Cannondale, Marin, Jamis, Gary Fisher, or Fuji (to name a few popular brands).
Kona, Raleigh and Redline (to name a few) offer similar bikes. Most of the brands you mention and many others have hard tail aluminum 29ers. The early development of 29er MTBs was mostly done by small builders and leaned heavily toward steel frames, hard tail designs and often rigid forks. A great many of the most popular 29ers from the small builders are still steel, rigid and single speed.
29ers and the people who ride them were a little different from the start.