Head For The Hills

25/3/11: Ridden and Rated - Rog's Trek Scratch

Having booked myself a two week holiday in Whistler, Canada for late summer last year, I decided I would also need a new bike for the trip. I didn’t spend a lot of time deciding the perfect bike for the trip would be a Trek Scratch 9.

I knew I would need a bike that would be comfortable to ride XC as well as being able to handle the big downhills of the Whistler Bike Park. The other obvious consideration was that the holiday was only two weeks of the year. I needed a bike that I could ride all year round on our Surrey Hills singletrack and mini DH runs.

The Scratch 9 supplies 170mm of rear wheel travel, handled superbly by Fox’s DHX-RC4 coil shock. Despite the coil springs front and rear, the bike is reasonably weighted at around 33lb. Although the intended purpose of the Scratch is gravity assisted riding, with a double and bash crankset from Race Face and a bit of grunt, the Scratch can be ridden as an all day XC bike.

One of the benefits when it comes to the downhill days is the adjustable head angle/ bottom bracket height. By flipping a chip in the seat stay, the head angle can be slackened by 0.6degree. It may not sound much but the difference when the trail points steeply down is amazing.

Having bought the bike in May, I spent what turned out to be our driest summer for many years riding the Scratch locally, with a couple of trips to Afan and Cwmcarn, both in South Wales. Afan allowed me to test my fitness on my new slack angled machine on a long technical climb, and surprisingly, I made it up the Skyline ascent in the same time as usual. The Scratch also proved fast and agile through the tight singletrack of Whites Level, but it was on the rocky descent of the first Skyline shortcut that the bike really opened up and showed it’s muscle. I found myself floating over some very large lumps with absolute control. I knew then that I was on the right bike for my needs.

A trip to Cwmcarn confirmed what I already knew. The Y Mynydd Mojo downhill is one of my favourite tracks to ride, and I like to think I’ve got my lines reasonably well dialled here. The Scratch tore the place to pieces. The top half is fast but tight and steep, with the bottom half opening up into a super quick motorway packed with jumps and huge berms. No matter how hard I pushed, the Scratch never wavered, leaving me with the feeling that the bikes limits are beyond my ability to reach.

The culmination of all this summer time riding was the trip to Whistler. A write up of the holiday may be a separate tale, but the Scratch was perfect for the job. The holiday was split evenly between the Bike Park and exploring Whistler’s back country XC/DH trails. Although a fair amount of hike-a-bike was involved on the ups, the terrain was so technical that I would have struggled to climb the trails on any bike. My riding limits were properly tested here, and improved immeasurably. Despite a few tumbles, the Scratch handled everything with supreme confidence.

Through our British winter, I’ve continued to ride the Scratch at every opportunity. 7" travel may be deemed excessive for Surrey, but I’ve also travelled back to Cwmcarn twice, and ridden the Scottish trail centres of Innerleithen and Laggan Wolftrax in the last few months. The intention is to carry on with the trips around the UK exploring new riding venues as well as my limits.

There have been a few alterations to the original bike, mainly due to a few hefty crashes. Front wheel, brake lever and saddle have all been written off. But the next big test is the imminent arrival of a fresh pair of 180mm travel Fox 36 Vanilla RC2 forks to replace the original 160mm versions. This will keep the bike in-line with the major change that Trek have made to the Scratch coil range for 2011.

A fresh review will come once I’ve had a chance to fully test the new forks.

Rog