Review: Gary Fisher 2010 Superfly 100

Editor's note: We recently reviewed the tough-as-nails Superfly. That bike is old hat compared to the improvements made on the newest model.

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First, a little history lesson. For hardcore cross-country mountain bike racers, the equipment of choice is a hardtail bike with 26-inch wheels. That's to say, there's a suspension fork on the front of the bike, but there's no suspension in back. Without a rear suspension — the theory goes — the bike is lighter, more efficient and just faster. The frame material has changed over the years, going from aluminum to carbon, but the hardtail is still the dominant choice for cross-country racers. This is the received wisdom.

And it is wrong.

How wrong? At this year's National Cross Country MTB championships, Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski and Heather Irmiger both won national titles, both of them riding the Superfly 100. (Incidentally, Horgan-Kobelski and Irmiger are married, making them possibly the fittest household in America right now.)

It's not surprising that Gary Fisher would be the guy to build the bike that finally overthrew the hegemony of the hardtail. Fisher's been on another quest for years: to convince riders that larger 29-inch wheels are not only acceptable for a mountain bike, but superior to the standard 26-inch size. Larger wheels, the theory goes, are able to more easily roll over rocks and roots, soaking up more of the trail.

In our testing, we became believers — although the Superfly 100 has 100mm of suspension travel on both the front and rear, we were able to ride trails that often call for 120mm of suspension on a 26-inch wheel bike. Simply put, it was more confident on the rough stuff.

Riders who eschew 29-inchers tend to talk about the difficulty of getting the larger wheels up to speed, and the fact that the big tires can make for slower steering and handling; the wheelbase has to account for the upsized hoops. But in our riding, on a combination of singletrack and fire roads, we never found ourselves thinking about the maneuvering or acceleration. Switchbacks were easy to negotiate and the bike is so light and quick feeling that we were handling them better than usual.

Part of the great handling of the bike could be credited to its low bottom bracket, which keeps you stable in turns. Unfortunately, that does mean that you'll bang your pedals more often on rocks than with many other bikes; we definitely noticed more collisions. The rock-solid feel of the carbon frame also helps the handling. One look at the gigantic down tube will tell you that Fisher (borrowing technology from its owner, Trek) is trying to build a super-stiff carbon bike, and they've succeeded. There's no feeling of flex in the front end even under extreme conditions, so you start to trust that the bike will just go where you point it.

The Superfly 100 tips the scales, with the stock parts, at a very, very competitive 24.3 pounds. This isn't the lightest race bike around — hardtail 26-inch bikes can get down under 20 pounds. But you can take some weight out of the Superfly 100 with components swaps; Horgan-Kobelski's bike apparently tips the scales at just over 20 pounds.

Shifting is handled by a combination of SRAM and Shimano parts, including some sexy red accents on the SRAM parts to go with the frame's paint job. We had to do a little tweaking on the setup of the shifters, but after that adjustment, everything worked without a hitch.

At the end of a trail, it's simply hard to find much to quibble with on the Superfly. If you're an XC racer looking for a bike that can handle any racecourse, and still keep you smiling on your weekend trail ride, you owe yourself a test ride. It's not cheap ($5,600), but gear this good rarely is.