Guerrilla Gravity Megatrail Test

Guerrilla Gravity is a small mountain bike company located in Denver Colorado. They were sick of frame prices shooting through the roof while production moved overseas with little, if any, performance increase from year to year. All this while many bike companies grew in size and became more distant from their customers and what they really wanted in geometry and suspension designs. Who wants to buy a frame for $3500 and have part of it go to subsidize some road racers salary anyhow?

"The MEGATRAIL is leading the revolution in trail bike freedom.

As a highly refined and extremely versatile trail bike, the MEGATRAIL is built for everything from conquering high-alpine adventures to getting after it at your local enduro race,or just slaying your after-work rides. And when it’s time to turn the Rad up to 11, Gravity Mode™ provides a 30-second, one-bolt geometry toggle that transforms the bike into a downhill dominator."

Guerrilla Gravity Megatrail Questions

 

1. So how did Guerrilla Gravity begin?

It began with the idea to create a different type of mountain bike manufacturing company, one that is driven by the community, and at the end of the day serves to make mountain biking more awesome.

2. Did you guys have a lot of experience in the bike industry before you starting making GG Bikes?  

Very little. We’ve all been avid riders for most of our lives, but I was the only one (of the three founders) that had experience, and that is from just one summer spent working in a bike shop.

3. Break down your team for us and what they do?  

Matt Giaraffa, founder & chief engineer: Mechanical engineer with experience in auto racing, aerospace, and consumer product testing. He’s headed up bike design, as well as manufacturing design—from jigs and tooling to our processes… Kristy Anderson, founder & chief BAMF: Kristy has a career in medical sales and helps with events, marketing, and getting the word out… Theron Tate, shop manager and chief bike builder… Sutherland Detweiler, pre-weld fabricator… Shaun Braap, post-weld fabricator… Kevin Witte, badass welder… Myself (Will Montague), founder and chief bike slinger: I’ve always played in the startup world, doing sales and marketing for four startups. I handle most of the business management components—sales, marketing, strategy, etc.

4. How did the idea for the Megatrail begin?  

On a ride at White Ranch where we thought “these bikes should climb better” on the way up and “these bikes should descend more like a downhill bike” on the way down. There was no bike out there that truly offered a versatile package.

5. What where some of the main features you guys wanted in the Megatrail when you were laying it out on paper (computer)?

We believe in making our bikes as versatile as possible. The idea was to create a bike riders can take with them anywhere they may find themselves riding, from high alpine epic rides to the bike park to their favorite after-work trail. So we put our heads down and (Matt) spent weeks in Linkage and Solid Works getting everything we wanted out of suspension characteristics. Once we had the suspension platform laid out to our liking, we set to work refining the frame, painstakingly eliminating as much complication as possible, creating a robust frame that’s easy to maintain, doesn’t have extra parts to maintain or break, and is affordable to manufacture (and therefore as affordable as possible for the riders).

6. How was reception been on the Megatrail so far?

We’re extremely pleased with how the Megatrail turned out. All of the feedback and reviews also echoes that our design goals were achieved.

 

7. Do you weep when you see guys that are 6' 4” and above on a “XL” bike and they look like Spud Webb on a 16” BMX bike?  

It’s certainly a little painful to see, haha.

8. It sounds like you guys are going to be doing an XL frame soon. Tell us a bit about the new frame size?  

There seemed to be a void in the market of proper aggressive mountain bikes for tall riders. Since we manufacture in-house it’s relatively simple for us to create frame sizes for the smaller- and taller-than-average riders. With our XS and XL were able to provide riders 4’10” to 6’8” with a badass mountain bike.

On top of that, we can do semi-custom sizing for riders who may be proportioned slightly different (e.g. long legs, shorter torse).

9. Any updates you guys are looking to do to the Megatrail in the near future?  

For 2015 we took a bit of weight out of the frame, maybe a few parts of it more svelte. The “big” update is a grooved guide that makes swapping between Trail Mode and Gravity Mode even easier. We’re considering some new acronyms to attach to our marketing collateral for 2016 that will render the previous models obsolete 

10. Care to elaborate on Geometry used on the Megatrail?

Sometimes the “internet riders” seem to think our cockpit geometry is way too long, but literally every rider to throw a leg over a Megatrail feels comfortable instantly. By utilizing a roomier cockpit with a shorter stem you have a better, more stable center of balance and room to freely use body English. It’s also preferable for getting rowdy on the downhills, as your weight is more centered and not as far forward, over the bars.

11. Rocks or jumps? How about jumps in rocks?

My favorite type of riding is what I call “flow tech,” which is when you can find flow in a semi-technical mid-speed trail, trails where you can make your own natural doubles out of rocks and roots. Schleyer and Fatrobat in Whistler are great examples of my favorite type of trail (minus the long skinny at the end of Fatrobat).

12. Who is the best Mountain Biker ever?

Any of your riding buddies. Mountain bike rides with your amigos are what mountain biking the best “sport” ever. There’s no such thing as rock stars.

13. What do you think about all the new standards that have popped up in the last 3 years?  

I think they’re unfortunate for the riders. Mountain biking has a lot of barriers to entry (namely cost) and little has been done to do anything about this. New standards prevent manufacturers from accessing economies of scale, which would bring down the cost of bikes. Is there some merit behind each new standard? Sure, a little. Do they make mountain biking better as whole better? No… but they do help companies sell more shit. The marketing machines at the big companies are impressive.

14. What would make the bike industry better?  

More mountain bikers, more places to mountain bike. We get more mountain bikers into the sport by doing what we can to lower the cost of entry, creating bikes that are straight forward to use (and understand)--obviously our bikes are still expensive, but working on reducing the cost is a key goal of ours. Building the community also helps get new riders into the sport. Riders are more likely to ride when they have friends to ride with. And focusing on creating and supporting the organizations that build and maintain our trails is vital to the long-term health of the sport. Without trails the sport is nothing but fancy roof ornaments.

15. Anything else you want to get across to the readers?

Let’s go ride.
 G/G Megatrail Review