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Yeti ASR-C Review
By 
partickbateman | February 15, 2008
I’ll start this review by saying that this isn’t the Yeti I came to test. No, that honour goes to the 575. But due to a cock up (i.e. me not realising I needed my own pedals, and it being lent to someone else by the time I got them) I was offered the chance to test the new prototype of the ASR-C - the only one in Europe no less. Fully carbon and built with the finest bits of kit around, I was told it weighed in at just 23lb. Yep, that’s 23lb for a full suspension mountain bike.
Now, as I said in the previous post, I ride a big heavy Coiler, and generally get excited by burly long travel gravity machines. So, I approached this with a little trepidation, as did the Yeti rep me when he saw my full face helmet (”please be careful!”).
But what a revelation.
As soon as I started riding it it took my breath away - never have I ridden a full susser so quick. Two stomps on the pedals and I was off - this thing accelerates like nothing I’ve ever ridden; it felt like a stripped down road bike. I even smoked Dave to the top of a climb for the first time ever, a rare occurrence given the only things I usually smoke are roll-ups. Approaching the descent I was nervous; not only was this a rare (and very expensive) creature I was riding, it just didn’t seem like it would be able to cope. But no, it flew down the hill too. True enough, it required a completely different riding style - no careening into every rock in your path - but this made it all the better. It’s so agile you can zap it through lines in a heartbeat, and any speed you may lose from being less direct is quickly regained with a tiny burst on the pedals. Put simply, it reminded me of the riding I used to love back in the 90’s, and I didn’t realise how much I’d missed it.
The only thing I wasn’t comfortable with was the reach, with the geometry putting me too far over the bars for comfort. But mentioning this afterwards, the Yeti rep told me he rides the aluminium equivalent with riser bars and slightly longer forks giving it a more playful feeling.
I’d have no hesitation recommending this; if money were no object and I didn’t need to worry about breakages this would be my all round bike no questions asked. An utter joy.
Topics: glentress demo day, mountain biking |
