Devinci Marshall

YEP, THAT’S A FRAME BAG. BUT LET’S ignore it for a minute. First I want to cover the other freak flags my dream build is flying. Most notably, the 2.8-inch tires. When we decided this year to rely on our favorite trail to inspire our creations, I knew immediately that mine would run on plussize rubber.

- Travis Engel

First I want to cover the other freak flags my dream build is flying. Most notably, the 2.8-inch tires. When we decided this year to rely on our favorite trail to inspire our creations, I knew immediately that mine would run on plussize rubber.

Less than 20 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, standing 5,000 feet tall is Mount Lukens. Behind it, winding down 2,700 feet into Tujunga Canyon is an 8-mile hot mess called Stone Canyon Trail. It’s a loose, narrow, often exposed, rarely flowy greatest-hits album of every style of rock section you can imagine. It’s perfect for plus-size tires.

My canvas is the Devinci Marshall Carbon because of its 110-millimeters of rear travel and directly progressive leverage curve. The standard spec 130-millimeter fork got me thinking. Like nearly all plus-size bikes, the Marshall runs a 29-inch/27.5+ fork. The 2018 regular 27.5-inch RockShox Pike, however, fattened up enough to fit 2.8- inch tires while still stacking nearly 20 fewer millimeters of height from axle to crown compared to the equivalent 29-inch/27.5+ Pike. The devil on my shoulder pulled out his little red calculator and whispered in my ear, “You could run a 150-millimeter fork without changing the bike’s geometry.”

“That’d be sick!” Said the other devil on my other shoulder. “And at that length, RockShox makes a Dual-Position air fork. Think of how much easier the climb up Grizzly Flats would be with the fork dropped!” So I went for it. And while I was thinking about the climbs, I opted to swap the rear shock to one with a remote lock-out.