Rat Snake

The Rat Snake is an all purpose bicycle for a rider who favors dirty places. It is not a big tire gravel bike. It’s not a mountain bike, although we’d forgive you for mistaking it for one. Perhaps it’s most similar to some makers’ bikepacking bikes, but it’s longer on both sides of the rider.

 

It’s designed to be thoroughly composed at speed down a steep gravel road, loaded down, seat dropped; to not mind longer, faster rides down smoother roads; and to be capable of plodding along through rutted out doubletrack all day. It’s also designed to be able to take a 120mm suspension fork and handle most kinds of trail mountain biking. 

 

In riding it, the real magic of the bike is the weight balance, and the key to the weight balance is the long rear-center. Using a longer real center makes the bike inherently more stable. This means we can sacrifice a bit of the stability that might otherwise come from using slack headtube angles (like modern hardtails). Both the long chainstays (~495 as pictured in the XL prototype) and the steeper headtube angle (68) put more weight on the front tire. The result is incredible grip without needing to climb all over the front end of the bike. This is a bike that loves being ridden in a neutral, relaxed position.

 

Compared to a proper hardtail or rigid mountain bike, it gives up some playfulness in exchange for luxury, balance, and front end grip. Compared to a “normal” modern bikepacking bike, our hot take so far is that it gives up nearly nothing. 

 

Outside of its riding qualities, it was important for the bike to lend itself to camping. To that end, we added some bends to the downtube to make a little more frame bag space, and designed a custom, minimal rear rack. It’s designed around 29” tires between 2.35-2.6, with plenty of mud clearance around either. 

 

Comes in one-color paint included in price or inquire for special custom colors/schemes.

Frame only starting at $1899 

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