Descending

There's plenty of pop for lofting off natural and manmade lips in search of some air time.

If the Mayhem has the soul of an XC racer on the climbs, on the descents it feels like a slalom bike - berm- and jump-filled trails were where it shone the brightest. On those flowier trails the Mayhem was smooth, silent, and stable, with plenty of support for really pushing hard into corners and maintaining good exit speed. There's a fun zippiness to its handling, and although the Mayhem's wheelbase is a little longer than some of its contemporaries due to the 440mm chainstay length, I never found it to be cumbersome or ungainly. It's easy to maneuver around, with a blend of stability and quickness that's very fitting for a modern trail bike.Slower speed technical maneuvers were no problem aboard the Mayhem either – it'll dissect tricky sections of trail with deft precision, slicing and dicing its way through whatever rocky puzzle is in its path. I could see some riders running a 140mm fork to add a little extra cushion up front, but the stock configuration felt appropriate given the bike's trail manners.It was on rougher, chunkier sections of trail where the Mayhem struggled a bit. It's possible that I was pushing it a little further than its intended purpose, but I still felt like the rear suspension wasn't as supple as I would have liked – it didn't have that grippy, glued to the ground feeling that inspires confidence in slippery conditions. There was plenty of stability on tap for those high speed straightaways, thanks to the relatively slack head angle and longer chainstays, but the Mayhem still always felt like it had exactly 130mm of rear travel and not a millimeter more.