Gary Fisher Cobia 29er First Impression

Woke up this morning at 6:00 am in the morning. The thermometer outside read 29 degrees. Wait, this is Southern California, right? We were supposed to meet at the trail at 7:00am, the sun started to shine, I went back to read the thermometer: 31 degrees. Still, I’ve been anxious to ride the Gary Fisher Cobia. We loaded the truck with the K2 and the Cobia and took off to the trailhead.

How obvious are the differences? Check out the physical differences:

The K2 has Manitou Super with 5 inches of suspension, the Cobia has a RockShox Tora with 3+ inches of suspension. Notice on the picture that the fork crowns are almost at the same height.

On the rear, the difference is much obvious.

So what’s the difference riding a 26″ and a 29″?

Since I ride a 5″ suspension bike, the height was not noticeable to me, RL noticed it right away. We arrive at the first downhill, RL told me, ‘Dude, with those tires, you can roll thru anything’. OK, I let it loose… The bike felt like it had 5″ in the front!

Here comes the climbing part… Mmm, I notice the heft of the bike. Being a hardtail, I was able to climb well with it, but I was not impressed. RL wanted to try to climb with the Cobia, he noticed that the front wheel didn’t lift as much. Good point.

There’s a section of the trail with big jumps and tight turns. Perfect place to test the cornering of the Cobia. We didn’t notice a difference on the tight turns, you’d think that it would be combersome to turn with the big wheels.

Where the Cobia shined was on a section with loose rocks. If you approach the section on a weird angle, the bike can go underneath you. (Ask Priscilla). I rode thru the rocky section like nothing.

We had to shorten the trip due to the cold. Our hands, toes and ears were really hurting.
Still, the Cobia left a very good first impression. I need to make some fine tune adjustments and we should be able to ride on Friday night.