Juliana Furtado 27.5 R Mountain Bike - Women's

Enduro bikes may be all the rage these days, and we get it. Buzz words are pretty catchy, but when we think about the bulk of the riding we do on any given day, trail is where our heart truly lies. We pedal hard, we earn our descents, and we love the flexibility that trail bikes offer, with the ability to soar over ribbons of smooth singletrack, or thread the needle through techy rock gardens. And so we need a bike that's as flexible as we are, like the Juliana Furtado 27. 5 R Complete Mountain Bike. The Furtado marks one of our favorite go-to, all-around bikes that's lively and playful on the trail, ripping lines with confidence on the descents thanks to its slack head tube, while snappy short chainstays make pedaling back up to the top a breeze. Last year we saw a frame redesign, which is carried through on this generation, but with a spiffy new paint job that stands out against the trail. The new redesign shifted the shock position, and followed the trend of longer-slacker, while still keeping a steep seat tube for a perfect perch when it's time to pedal. It offers 130mm, or just over 5-inches, of VPP suspension to soak up rough trails, and smooth out square-edge bumps along the way. The Furtado retains the high degree of pedaling efficiency and bottom-out resistance of the previous version, but has a slightly revised suspension curve that is basically flat for the first 30% of the travel and progressive for the last 70% of the travel. This improves small bump sensitivity while making the mid-stroke more supportive compared to the falling rate of the previous version. The new upper and lower links improve frame stiffness, and while other DH-oriented frames in the Juliana line have moved to a lower-link mounted shock, the Furtado retains its upper link-mounted shock as to not lose the pedaling efficiency and bottom out resistance needed for the reduction in travel. The Fox Float Performance DPS shock is tuned by Juliana specifically for lighter, female riders,...