Long predicted and highly anticipated, for 2013 Giant has transformed their best-selling 120mm travel Trance X platform into a 29er. So confident are they in its performance that they’ve dropped the 26-inch wheeled Trance X completely; a brave move considering how many people have owned and loved the Trance X 26er. How entranced is the Aussie market? Well for our country only, there’s an extra model above the Trance X 0, aptly called the 00. In James Bond world that means it’s licensed to kill; singletrack we assume, rather than other riders or foreign intelligence agents.

There is no mistaking the this 29er hardtail as anything other than a KTM.

The Stereo is a longstanding model in the Cube range and its distinctive frame design has graced their line-up for around five years now. A click on the Cube website quickly reveals that a redesign is on the way, but we won’t be seeing the newer Stereo in Australia until mid 2013. For the next six months, the bike ridden here will remain the go-to model if you are fishing for a Cube in the 140mm travel trail bike category.

As a community of riders we can be a bit conservative; no-one wants to be the first to try a bike from a new brand just in case it turns out to be a waste of money. There’s a reasonable chance you may have never heard of Polygon bikes; they don’t feature in US mountain bike media, they haven’t had a world cup winner (yet), and until recently you couldn’t buy their bikes in Australia.

As a brand, Santa Cruz doesn’t seem to rush in and jump onto the latest bandwagon—whatever it may be. While they now offer eight different carbon mountain bikes (from a range of 19 models), it took them until 2008 to bring their first plastic-fantastic creation to the market. Likewise, their 100mm travel Tallboy dually may be a very popular 29er, but it was their first attempt at a big wheeled bike and it’s only been around for a handful of years. Meanwhile other manufacturers have been pumping out 29ers for the better part of a decade and carbon for far longer than that.

The Cannondale Scalpel is a long running model for the US based brand. Traditionally the Scalpel has been Cannondale’s go-to XC racing machine, a short travel thoroughbred designed to appease Cannondale’s World Cup level race teams. Previously is has used carbon flex stays to eliminate any pivots in the main swing arm and thus save weight. The current generation still carries some of the same DNA. While it now has a swing arm pivot down near the bottom bracket, the carbon version still relies on flex within the stays to eliminate the need for pivot at the rear.

These days there’s no shortage of 29er bikes on the market, however the majority of them are pegged at the cross-country crowd, with steep-ish geometry and travel that tops out around 100mm. That’s all starting to change however, with the brave few pushing big-wheeled bikes into the hands of more aggressive riders by offering slacker geometry and more travel than previously thought viable for a 29er.

The downtube on the Superfly reads ‘Trek’, but the Superfly is the child of mountain bike father figure Gary Fisher. Look further at the decals and you’ll find a ‘Gary Fisher Collection’ on there too. The free spirited Californian pioneer and the vanilla safe Wisconsin bike maker form a fearsome blend of innovation and experimentation combined with mass market R&D and purchasing budgets.

I really don’t like white mountain bikes; never have, and never will. There, I’ve said it; and the Norco Sight 2, well it’s a white mountain bike so it’s obvious from the outset that I’m not going to like it, either. There’s something about white bikes that challenges my old-fashioned sense of what’s masculine, what’s cool-looking and what’s appropriate for throwing around in the dirt and the mud, and I will not give up those long held beliefs no matter what.

Trek’s ‘technical trail’ (all-mountain by any other name) Remedy has been out for about four years now, and has undergone a gradual process of evolution over that time. For 2012 it sees probably the biggest change to date, with plenty of tweaks to the frame and geometry, as well as a new fork designed in collaboration with Fox. The previous Remedy garnered almost universal praise, so you’d expect Trek to be cautious about messing with such a proven recipe. No need to worry; whatever mountain biking illness afflicts you, the 2012 Remedy will almost certainly cure it!

Cue David Attenborough voice-over … Once a moment filled with excitement and wonder for the enthusiastic bike-watcher, now the spotting of a species from the 29er family in the wilderness is so common it barely warrants comment. The present-day bike-watcher has seen this family grow exponentially from a single awkward species of steel single speed, to a diverse genus that ranges from racing XC hardtails through to all-mountain dual suspension bikes. Recently there’s been a real population increase within the recreational hardtail subset of the 29er family. The species under the spotlight here is the Merida Big NineTFSXT-D.

Europe has lagged behind the USA and Australia in their appetite for 29 inch wheels, and until product season 2012 it has been clear that mainly non-European brands have made a commitment to 29 inch wheels.

It has taken a while but Felt has finally filled the gap between their hardtails and the marathon/trail oriented Virtue dually. Dubbed the Edict, the new platform has been in the works since 2010 and is now available in a full line of models for 2012.

In 2011 Australian/Kiwi brand Avanti Bikes ended a seven year drought and re-entered the market with not one, but two dual suspension mountain bikes, both of which garnered high praise from all those who had the pleasure of snagging a ride.

Every manufacturer likes to make a song and dance when they release a new bike, and they will all invariably claim that their newest creation is the absolute best bike in its category. For the release of the new Jekyll, Cannondale took it one step further by creating a whole new category dubbed ‘Over Mountain’; with the one and only such bike on the market they absolutely guaranteed theirs was the best!