Although we showed you tons of new Trek stuff earlier this year at their Garda Festival debut apparently that wasn’t everything. Here are some more choice cuts from the ‘Trek mit Speck’ launch camp at Garmisch Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps.

The headline news from Gary Fisher is a greater spread of his big wheeled ’29er’ bikes. All top end hardtails down to the X-Caliber will now be big wheeled wonders, while there will be two 29er Sugar full suspension bikes as well. Fisher’s engineers also came out with a whole lot of algebra to try and convince us how well they ride, but even they admitted that though they’re perfect for high speed trails “they aren’t ideal for tight technical singletrack” . A wider selection of tyre choices is also promised for next year, although it’s still an all-Marzocchi show on the fork front.

Fox shocks also feature heavily on Gary Fisher’s Sugar line-up which should make things run significantly smoother than the previous air-damped Cane Creek cans. A couple of the bikes were also running a ‘Sturmey Archer alike’ remote fork lock out lever on the handlebars. Otherwise Sugar’s Sybil 2.8″ / 4.1″ travel linkage and other hardware remains the same.

We already told you about the new long travel “All Mountain” version of the Fuel Liquid and nothing has changed much since then. The examples we rode in Bavaria were pretty much production spec. but still didn’t have all the final cast logo details. In short, the bike climbs and accelerates with minimal slop and wallow but still lays down an impressively plush carpet over the nasty pointy, rooty stuff on the way down. Adjustable travel and geometry is taken care of a with a single flick switch on the Fox Talas rear shock, and either Rock Shox or Fox forks up front depending on the model.

The new Diesel Freeride bike was also up and running but with limited time we didn’t get enough time to haul it up a big enough hill and drop it back down again. We’re probably best leaving the testing of that sort of long drop monster to Danny anyway. We’ve already talked about the new OCLV Fuel, and apart from that the mountain bike line is largely unchanged apart from equipment and colours.

Another bike we rode – and absolutely loved – in Garda was the Klein Palamino, with its Maverick licensed Monolink suspension design, so we were eager to see it in production format. However as if to prove even the big guys get it wrong sometimes, we could see something was very wrong before we even rode them. With seat angles so slack they put the saddle as near the rear axle as the bottom bracket, even Gary Klein himself could be seen riding round the paddock in full Superman stretch, giggling “Oh my gawd, what have we done to this bike?”

They tried sitting us on various sizes to see if anything fitted properly, without success. They murmured things about 120mm seat post extension and shorter stems, but as the front wheel only touched the ground occasionally, we politely suggested something more fundamental was needed. Klein’s ambassador Harry was soon on the phone to HQ and could be seen chewing ears in Wisconsin almost constantly for the next two days. We’ve since been told that the seat angle had somehow been changed from 60 degrees on the Garda prototypes to 53 degrees on the Garmish bikes, but everything will be back in order by the time production comes around.

As for the rest of the detailing, the rear shock is confirmed as a coil and oil shock with supplementary air spring and wide range damping spread (compared to the Maverick) to deliver 100mm of plush but pedalling ignorant travel. The Monolink has also been changed from magnesium to hard anodised aluminium, with Trek’s proven DU bushings rather than sealed cartridge bearings. We should be bringing you a full test of the production bike as soon as they arrive early this autumn.

For those of a road going nature, Klein are planning a compact geometry version of their Quantum Carbon bike, while all of Trek’s tarmac fleet switch to a straight blade OCLV carbon fork for next year. The German and Austrian roads are so smooth it’s hard to tell how well damped the forks are, but steering and braking precision were certainly excellent.

On a completely non-bike note this is the third time, Trek have taken us away to their Alpine hideaway at the Hotel Eibsee in Garmisch Partenkirchen, and we have to say it’s great. There a big rocky mountain (Zugspitze) with cable cars and everything, a crystal clear freshwater lake you can swim in straight from the sauna, road and mountain biking is excellent and there’s more meat on offer on local menu’s than you could possible imagine! Maybe not a pure MTB spot in Chamonix/Pyrenees style but a very civilised place to go if you need somewhere to park family / kids for a week without worrying.