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The new 2017 Rocky Mountain Suzi Q

Tackle the snow and ice on a more nimble fat bike

Photo: Margus Riga
Photo: Margus Riga

Fat bikes open up new trails to ride especially during the winter months when trails and paths are snow covered making them inaccessible on other bikes. The new Rocky Mountain Suzi Q is a lightweight fat bike designed to be more agile than most fat tired rides while still maintaining the stability and traction needed to ride uneven and low traction surfaces.

The Suzi Q features a carbon frame and narrow Q-factor to make the bike more efficient and comfortable. Whether to ride local singletrack or to participate in fat bike racing, the bike is a refined machine for performance and enjoyment. With short chainstays and an extended reach, the bike’s geometry is designed for stability and balance while still feeling agile.

Photo: Margus Riga
Photo: Margus Riga

“This is a seriously nimble whip—not what you’re used to from traditional fat bikes,” said professional Canadian mountain biker Andreas Hestler. “The narrow q-factor is a dream to pedal for big racing efforts, and its short chainstays and extended reach make for balanced, natural handling on singletrack.”

Photo: Margus Riga
Photo: Margus Riga

In order to refine the bikes steering dynamics, the engineers tinkered with a variety of geometry and offset combinations. The result is a bike that Rocky Mountain says has less autosteer which they say makes many fat bikes feel quite unstable.

Using a 27.5 x 3.8 tire and wheel system designed in collaboration with Maxxis, the bikes tires have a larger outer diameter for more traction without added weight or rolling resistance of 26×5 systems which feature on most other fat bikes.

Photo: Margus Riga
Photo: Margus Riga

Thanks to the narrower Q-factor, the bike is designed to be more comfortable regardless of how you decide to ride. Over the course of long races like the 1,000-mile Alaskan Iditarod Trail invitational or on your local single track the narrower Q-factor will result in less fatigue and knee strain Rocky Mountain says.

The Rocky Mountain Suzi Q is available in four models. The Suzi Q 30 has an aluminium frame and is equipped with  a 1x SRAM NX drivertrain MSRP $2500. The Suzi Q 50 has a Shimano 1x XT drivetrain on an aluminium frame and retails for $3200. The Suzi Q 70 RSL upgrades to carbon and retails for $4000 on 1x Shimano XT. Finally the top end Suzi Q RSL 90 retails for $5500 and features a carbon frame and 1x Shimano XTR.