I’m sat at the trailhead, prepping before I drop in and getting the dog ready to chase me; he rides up. On his all-mountain machine suspended at both ends, he gives my bike a glance and I watch him size me up. My bike has wagon wheels, the frame is steel and only features front suspension. His calculations conclude I’m going to be slow and he doesn’t want be stuck behind me, so he dives right in.

I admit that I’m a little taken aback. He barely even acknowledged me and barged to the front of the line. A touch of red mist descends and I decide to give chase. I know the trail fairly well and it isn’t long before the hound and I catch him. Hearing the dirt being torn up by my tires and the buzz of my freehub, he knows I am behind him. I breathe down his neck for a couple of turns until he asks if I want to pass and he pulls off to the side to let me make my move. “Whoa man, I’m sorry” he shouts, “I totally didn’t expect you to be as fast down this trail.” Point made.

There is a degree of smugness that comes with riding a hardtail on the North Shore. I started riding here on the fabled Cove Stiffee with a Marzocchi Z1 up front, wheelie dropping all over the place. I did my time and earned the right to descend trails like these with my ankles intact on a modern full suspension bike. So why am I choosing to ride a hardtail?

Wheel size. Larger diameters ( 29ers in particular) have saved the hardtail. There, I said it. It feels good to get that off of my chest. The size debate seems to have calmed but it still simmers and I have been reluctant to wake the hornets. But the idea has been rattling around my head and it was stimulated further by the lengthy hardtail thread on the gear forum.

The first person I tested my thesis on was Vin Canfield. His response of “totally dude!” surprised me. Vin’s not very tall but even he has felt the good vibes of a well-designed rigid-rear 29er. Ian Ritz may be biased but he agreed with me as well. Chromag sells more niners than anything and while 27.5 has been coming on, Ian is a believer in the big wheel.

I had a hardtail in my stable about 5 years ago and the bike rolled on 26” wheels with a 140mm travel fork. It was built for the local trails and although I enjoyed it, the performance drop from the duallie was too hard: hard on my body, hard to climb up knobbly sections of trail, hard to keep up with my buddy on his full squish machine. It just wasn’t as fun as my 5” travel full sus machine. Guilt eventually pushed me to sell it after leaving it idle in the garage for too long.

This past spring the tables turned when I added a Chromag Surface to my garage. Since then I’ve reached for it more than my Santa Cruz Tallboy LT. Do the larger wheels make it less fun? Not one bit. On certain trails that I ride a lot I don’t think that I am much faster on my Santa Cruz. I finish my rides whooped but with a massive grin on my face, feeling like I’ve cheated death.

The larger wheels make a huge difference when only one end is sprung. The ability to stay up on top of bumps rather than hooking into them preserves your momentum. In addition, and this is distinct to hardtails, without all the suspension gubbins to worry about the wheelbase on a 29” hardtail can be designed to be close to that of a 26” wheeled frame. Without the wheelbase pushed out to such extremes the handling can still feel close to a two six: nimble and fun.

Some may scoff that wagon and less wagony wheels have made hardtails less hardcore due to that easier rolling factor. That may be true but making the hardtail relevant to a wider audience of hard charging riders can’t be a bad thing.

So to those of us that have seen the light, may we continue to be judged at the trailhead and then breathe down the necks of those who underestimate us.

Did our purest mountain bike need saving?