Gravel Bike Suspension, Drop Bar MTB's at Sea Otter Classic 2025

Love or hate it, suspension has been creeping onto new gravel bikes, or as an after market sales accessory. In this video, I strolled about Sea Otter 2025 capturing the suspension options that stood out, along with some wild and crazy drop bar MTB's. Are these bikes the future?

Chapters:
0:00 Sage Titanium
4:52 Lee Cougan Innova Rampage
8:26 Sanitas Cycles
9:17 Cane Creek Invert Fork
10:21 Fox Racing
11:31 KS Suspension
12:28 SR Suntour

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[saysthetedd]

I am so ready for this genre of bike. The Lee Cougan looks amazing. Did a gravel route yesterday and was wishing I had this exact type of bike - so much getting thrashed around, but not enough to justify riding my XC bike

[torstenfrank]

Love the enthusiasm of the Sage owner(?). He describes exactly how I feel and are excited about about my own DropbarMTB / Supergravel. And when I compare his geo notes and the fit he describes - yeah, that's exactly how mine is set up. :) So I would totally als enjoy this Droptimator. Has good looks, too. :)

[steveokohler]

I love that companies are exploring the the super-gravel/dropbar MTB niche.

[lazlo]

The Lee machine is actually another “super gravel” machine blurring the lines between Gravel & MTB, according to the CEO. 👍🏻

[Boss-drzk]

To everyone excited: do you know for how long the Salsa Fargo and Cutthroat have been existing? And there have been several smaller brands making drop bar bikes with great tire clearance since the early 2020s, so it's nothing really new. But I agree that it's nice to see that some larger companies are seeing the potential in this category, potentially lowering prices for us

[marksandoval]

Gravel suspension forks with 40-50mm of undamped travel don't make much sense to me. I want to see Gravel forks with 100mm of well damped travel. I also want 80-100mm of rear travel. A full-sus XC bike like the Epic World Cup or the SuperCaliber with a very fast rolling set of Gravel tires and dropbars would be very good. If I was going to ride a full-rigid Gravel bike, I would want something like the new Allied Able which has clearance for 57mm/2.25in wide tires and I would also use wide i28-32mm rims at very low tire pressures. The technology to build a full-sus 80/100mm travel Gravel specific bike with tire clearance for 58mm/2.3in tires is readily available. Some bike company just needs to take the leap. I think many riders would get a lot out of having a full suspension Gravel bike. Or at least having a "hardtail" Gravel bike with a 100mm fork.

[andrewholybee]

loving this and have been experimenting myself so many people say "just buy a gravel bike" they never talk about fit or people like me that have nerve issues and can't run a flatbar without having electrical pain after.

[SamHoliday-ie]

Is the Sage gravel bike Boost (12x148) or Regular (12x142)?

[tmayberry]

You could have use a suspension fork when you were going over those bloody rocks in Arizona

[bengt_axle]

Is Lauf there and do they have any new suspension fork?

[alexjohnson]

Really like the one-off Sage as a titanium fan, but that Lee Cougan might be even slightly more capable with its 30mm rear suspension.

If I am not mistaken, it uses some kind of dual piston system as opposed to elastomers like the BMC URS.

Not sure why people are still down on these kind of bikes, saying they only have a super narrow niche use. The same exact argument could be made about all the super race geometry bikes the market is flooded with. Really wish people would be more open mided and realize that the bike that works on terrain by them is not necessarily the bike to use in other locations with much different terrain.

[defiancecycling]

Ride the bike for terrain you ride 90% of the time. For most, that means 40 - 45 mm tires. Keegan ran the new Maxxis 45mm tire at Sea Otter 😂

[Rafe-sk]

endgame is lightweight full xc with dropbars

[CB-ldno]

Looks more Mtn. Prefer faster rolling for service roads and fireroads. Mt. Tamalpias, Mt. Diablo, Santa Cruz range, SFBay Area islands, SAC Delta levees.

[MrRemota]

Casualmente, estou montando uuma monster gravel a partir de uma MTB Scott Scale com garfo rígido.

[davehause]

These gravel bikes are more complex than my Epic HT mountain bike.

[rogerd]

Gravel bikes are such bullshit. From the bikes to the courses, every innovation or iteration to gravel is just making it more like mountainbiking. Gravel is virtually turn of the century mountainbiking. It's just stubborn roadies that want to play in the dirt but feel like mountainbiking is beneath them. Stop being so hard-headed and just get an XC mountainbike. It's all been figured out years ago.

[markrosenberg]

Apparently Lauf didn't go to the Sea Otter. IMO the only true gravel fork. All of these are traditional mountain bike forks.

[robertmillar]

We don’t want nor need suspension on gravel bikes.