Kriega

Kriega packs were originally designed for the motorbike market, but there’s some obvious crossover potential with mountain biking especially with its latest hydration pack. There’s an innovative harness system to keep the straps out of the way of your arms and you get a 3l reservoir and rugged construction. The best bit, though, is the optional fully-waterproof piggyback pack, which is a neat way around our usual problem of having a small pack for short rides, a big one for long rides and swapping bits and bobs between the two – put the essentials in the main pack, the big ride extras in the piggyback pack and you’re good to go. Also from Kriega is this, um, interesting neoprene helmet bag. Bring out the gimp…

Marzocchi

We’ve seen some Marzocchi stuff already, but the 80mm Marathon Race fork caught our eyes. As you’d expect from the travel (and the name) it’s a high-end XC race fork. The new lower casting now takes post-mount brakes and there’s a remote lockout lever hooked up to the TST multi-position compression damping doofer. You can preset the TST dial and that’s the setting you’ll get when you’re not locked out. Neat.

Also now available is the Roco RC rear shock. It’s aimed at freeride and DH use and has a number of user-friendly features. For a start, it’s hardware-compatible with Fox shocks, so you won’t need a new spring or mounting hardware to fit it. Another plus is that it’s user-serviceable, so if you’re so inclined you can fettle it up yourself.

Manitou

Some Manitou forks. The 2006 Nixon gets a new long-travel specific damper – it’s described as a cartridge, but it’s essentially a sleeve inside the damping leg to reduce the oil volume and generally make everything a bit smaller, more manageable and light. The top Nixon Platinum has Infinite Travel adjust and no-platform Intrinsic damping. The Elite has adjustable coil-sprung travel and the Super is air-sprung. All can be had with standard quick release dropouts or the new No Tools Hex Lock through axle. Manitou’s metric-to-Imperial conversions are still a bit suspect, though – they describe this as a 6in travel fork, but 145mm is only five-and-three-quarter inches…

The Minute has been revamped with 32mm stanchions and various spring options. It only goes up to 130mm, though, so it’s now a kind of mini-Nixon but without the through-axle option. Then there’s the new R7 XC/marathon fork. 80 or 100mm travel, air springs, various damping options, some with remote lockout. The top Platinum model has Snap Valve SPV damping, which is a variant on standard SPV with a more solid platform. Weights are between 2.9 and 3.1lb depending on model.

At the other end of the beef scale is the new Travis. 34mm stanchions, through-axle and the unique option of a 203mm 6.5lb single-crown fork. You’ll need a 1.5in-ready frame for that one, though. We suspect that there’ll be a bigger market for the Travis Single 150. There’s also two versions of the Travis Triple Intrinsic, one with a steel coil spring and one with a Ti spring that shaves 0.3lb from the weight.

CyclOps has a new lightweight version of its Powertap rear hub that lets you measure your power output as you ride. If you’re serious about your training then it’s a pretty useful thing, although we suspect that most of them are owned by coaches and lent to riders. The SL is slimmed down and has a hollowed-out shell with carbon fibre covers to save some weight. Sit down if you’re interested in buying one – it’s £850.

Also in the expensive and complicated hub category is Rohloff’s increasingly-popular 14-speed hub gear. There’s nothing new about it for 2006, but our attention was grabbed by this cutaway hub. There’s a lot going on in there… We’re told that Rohloff recently saw one of its hubs that had done 120,000km without any servicing. They opened it up, but it turned out that they didn’t need to. Freerider Tyler Klassen’s been using one for a fair while, too, and he’s not bust it yet.

Ritchey

A selection of new parts from Ritchey, a brand that has some really nice stuff but somehow doesn’t seem to get seen all that much. The Pro V4 pedal is super-minimal (although not quite as minimal as the Pro Micro, which is the same but with a retention system on one side only). They’re 275g/pr, which is pretty good for a £55 pedal.

Ritchey does a very lovely WCS carbon seatpost, but it’s £130. This, though, is the new Pro Carbon post, which has a carbon shaft with a bonded-in alloy head rather than the one-piece carbon construction of the WCS. That makes it somewhat heavier (235g against a reasonably impressive 166g) but a lot cheaper at £60.

There’s now two versions of the WCS stem. This is the new 4Axis model, with a forged and contoured faceplate that’s designed specifically to minimise stress on carbon bars. Which is reassuring.

SDG‘s classic Bel Air saddle has been tweaked a bit, with a grooved top and modified profile. Plus interesting cover options including cow and tiger. You’ll be able to get conventionally-railed and I-Beam variants, and there’ll be new I-Beam developments soon – revised designs and new seatposts from various manufacturers.

You can’t actually buy a Rocky Mountain Slayer exactly like this. This is Silverfish top bod Darren’s own bike, and he’s really gone to town on it. How good do Fox 36s look in white? Damn good.

Salsa

A flat bar is a flat bar is a flat bar, right? Not necessarily. Salsa‘s latest offering is 26in wide with an 11° sweep, so it’s just like a riser bar without the rise. And it’s carbon fibre. Should be pretty comfy, and with forks getting ever longer and front ends ever higher, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a flat bar renaissance pretty soon.

If you don’t want to be ahead of the curve, there’s also a new Salsa oversized carbon riser. Moving away from handlebars, Salsa has a range of clothing items including lots of socks and jerseys, including various women’s designs.

This neat Axiom shock pump comes with two gauges so you can use it with low or high-pressure suspension systems with equal accuracy, rather than trying to set up 10psi of air preload on a fork and 185psi of air spring in a shock with the same pump. Which is pretty unlikely to prove satisfactory.

The splendidly bonkers Evil Sovereign hardtail uses 853 tubing and a unique asymmetric monostay rear end that gives you a 15.5in chainstay length with clearance for a 2.3in tyre. Or if you need bigger treads, adjust the dropouts backwards a bit and you can have up to a 16.75in chainstay and clearance for 3in tyres. Run up to a 6in travel fork, choose from regular or long versions and four colours.

The Maverick Speedball seatpost is now available, incorporating a gas-lift system that lets you easily drop your seat without stopping and then pop it back to pedalling height. It’s like a Hite-Rite for the 21st Century. Downsides? It’s only available in 30.9 or 31.6mm sizes (smaller diameters would mean the top bit being about the size of a drinking straw) and it’s £150. But then, you can pay nearly that for seatposts that don’t do clever up-and-downy tricks.

Tioga‘s latest saddle does away with old-fashioned things like padding. Instead the Spyder has a perforated top that’s designed to flex considerably more than a normal saddle, offering a claimed 78% more shock absorption. As a side benefit, it only weighs 140g.

Topeak

Finally, a couple of new bits from Topeak. At the top we have the new WhiteLight HP, a self-contained LED headlamp. The one in the picture is a 1W unit and there’s also a 3W model. They run on ordinary batteries inside, or if you want more oomph you can use the optional 4400mAh pack that the light’s sitting on. It’s got two sockets so you can attach two lights and rather cleverly clips on to a special stem top cap.

And of course you’re no-one in 2006 if you don’t have a carbon fibre pump. Here’s Topeak’s MTB offering, the Mt Rocket.