Ibis Ripmo GX Eagle Complete Mountain Bike

Once only thought of as a serious contender for cross-country mountain bike racing, wagon wheels have come of age and are starting to become the wheel size of choice in enduro and downhill racing as well. The engineers at Ibis have been hard at work crafting up a 29er enduro slayer with just the right suspension travel, kinematics, and geometry to devour some of the toughest courses on earth and the end result is the Ripmo GX Eagle Complete Mountain Bike. Perhaps what's almost as incredible as its ability to plow over chunky rock gardens at speed and soak up huge hits is its ability to climb and cover terrain during all-day epics with a neutral, efficient ride. As you probably guessed from its name, the Ripmo is the mashup of the hard-charging Mojo HD4 and the lively handling Ripley. As such, the Ripmo retains the larger 29-inch wheels of the Ripley, but falls more towards the longer, slacked-out end of the spectrum inhabited by the Mojo HD4. Delving into geometry specifics, you'll find the Ripmo has a quite slack 65. 9-degree head tube angle paired with a 44-millimeter fork offset that makes it inherently more stable at high speeds. Ibis chose this custom fork offset to increase the bike's trail, which makes it a bit slower to respond to steering inputs, subsequently making it more stable at the higher speeds you'll experience while enduro racing and aggressively pummeling down steep trails. This way, Ibis was able to design the Ripmo with the stability of a bike with an even slacker head tube angle (they claim it's as stable as bikes with head tubes in the mid 64-degree arena), but without requiring a drastic increase in wheelbase figures, which would compromise its ability to get around hairpin corners and tighter sections of trail. Another trick that Ibis employs is a steeper seat tube angle of 76 degrees, which shifts your weight forward. This way, you won't feel like the bike's front end inhabits an entirely different zip code while you're climbing and c...