Check out our full review here.
It’s nice to be able to get away with mistakes. You know, maybe give someone’s car a nudge on a tricky reverse park, but they don’t see and there’s no damage. Or looping out during a wheelie but getting your feet unclipped just in time to save your coccyx.
The Remedy 9 29 is a bike that let’s you get away with a lot mistakes. It’s big on bigness – big wheels, big travel (140mm at both ends), big tyres – and it uses all this traction and travel to full effect out on the trails.
For us, this is a very interesting bike to test. It wasn’t long ago that we reviewed the Remedy 9 27.5, which is nearly identical with the exception of having smaller wheels. You can read all our thoughts about the 27.5″ version here. We don’t want to spoil the party already, but there’s a lot more uniting these bikes than dividing them, so all our thoughts regarding frame construction and spec on the Remedy 27.5 can pretty much be extrapolated to the 29er. Same same, but different.
So far we’ve spent four days on the Remedy 9 29, riding in and around the Cairns region. After putting on a wider bar, it took us approximately seven seconds to feel comfortable on the Remedy. Partly this is due to our familiarity with the bike’s suspension design and components, but it’s also because you know that few trail obstacles are going to be a problem on board this beast – “Big rock up ahead. I’ll just run that over then, I guess.”
Now we’re back on home turf, we’re going to ditch the tubes and spend some more time getting the fork dialled as it’s riding a little harsh up front. We plan on taking this bike to the same trails where we did most of our riding on the Remedy 27.5, to really get a feel for how the two bikes compare.
Flow's First Bite: Trek Remedy 9 29
The not-so-minor details
Positives
Burly
Well-proven suspension and spec
Negatives
Requires a wider bar
Cables are a mess