Beggars Would Ride
Dinosaurs and Bigfoot
Forgive me for taking yet another detour through the sepia toned halls of my questionable memory. I’m moving house, and that means two things. One, the pair of Yetis that I am supposed to be reviewing have basically taken the month of September off; they’ve been lounging around on the back porch drinking fancy beers and laughing at me as I wrestle benchtop lathes and motorcycle carcasses into the van in a state of constant labor that at this point feels pretty damn Sisyphean. Two, I’m unearthing all kinds of throwback glory from the dark corners of my world. Case in point, this 1998 Yeti catalog and media kit. Hell, if I have to slow roll the Yeti review, I may as well review 1998, as anticipated by the fine folk at Yeti, when they were still in Durango, Colorado. Which was after they were in Agoura Hills, California, but nobody remembers back that far anymore.
I'm half tempted to call that fax number up just to see if there's still a fax machine at the other end of it. Just so I could hear the tone. Once upon a time, that fax tone sounded like The Future. (old man yells at clouds...)
First, note the fax number. And the total lack of a web address. I recall going to press camps around this time and getting CDs with images and info on them, but even though the internet was becoming a thing, we were still a few years before it became THE thing. And before thumb drives. So, in late 1997, if you wanted a Yeti to review, you filled out a form and faxed it on in to Chris Danforth.
Now let’s consider setting. Given what was going on behind the curtain in 1997/1998, it’s something of a miracle that there are any smiling faces in this catalog at all. Yeti had rolled big when relocating to Durango from California in 1991, and had garnered some incredible publicity. The brand cast a massive shadow, pushing racing first and foremost as brand ethos, and sponsoring a pile of notable talent from the beginning of the ‘90s: Tomac, Furtado, Myles Rockwell, Missy Giove, Jimmy Deaton, Elke Brutsaert, Kirt Voreis, April Lawyer, Colin Bailey…
But meanwhile, Yeti had been sold to the Scott Sport Group in 1995, at a time when Scott was also throwing a ton of resources at Schwinn, another brand it had acquired. Some pundits might contend that there wasn’t a deep and abiding love between Yeti and Schwinn. No matter, the design energy is hot, Mert Fucking Lawwill is designing amazing bikes for them, and this is Yeti, right? It’ll be fiiiine. Or not. On one hand, masterpieces like the Lawwill DH6/Straight 6 came to life during this brand mashup. On the other hand, so did the AS-3. By 1997, Scott wanted to take its brand and go home to Switzerland or Sun Valley, and put Schwinn and Yeti up for sale. John Parker gets fired, rumors swirl, and by 1999 Schwinn decides to close the Durango factory, relocating the brand to Boulder. Then Schwinn sells Yeti to Volant.
I wasn't even a downhiller, but boy did I swoon hard for this bike. Meanwhile, check out the photo: Mert laying down the knowledge on Monk (r.i.p), with probably Colin Bailey in the background. Peak Factory Box Van Era.
All this went down during what is widely thought of as mountain biking’s golden years. The sport had grown immensely, the money being thrown around on the race circuit in the mid ‘90s was flat out obscene, and when the wheels came off in 1999 for the entire global economy as the first tech boom went flat, they really came off the mountain bike money train. Yeti managed to get out from under the curse of Volant thanks to a former Scott/Schwinn operative; Chris Conroy. Conroy pulled Steve Hoogendoorn out of Volant, rounded up some investors, and purchased the brand back from them. The rest, as they say, is history.
But in 1997, leaning into 1998, things in Durango were probably getting pretty weird. Or maybe not. Maybe everyone was jamming out to The String Cheese Incident, drinking their fill of Ska beer, playing tons of hacky sack and living the Durango dream completely unaware of the hammer that was about to fall on them. Only Chris Danforth knows for sure.
Still, breathe in a deep whiff of 25 years ago. A time just before the freeride bomb went off on the Shore, a time before anyone south of the border had ever even heard of Kamloops; when ponytails proudly predated man buns, when Durango was still the ersatz center of the mountain biking universe, when tie-dye merch wasn’t ironic. Damn, I STILL want one of those DH6s. But then I look at the geometry, numbers that I considered kinda out there in 1998, and I can’t help but laugh at myself. Not in a “what were we thinking” way, but more a rueful chuckle remembering how set in stone some of my beliefs about handling and geometry were, and how evolution makes us all look kinda stupid and pedantic at some point or another.
"Reach? Stack? Where you from, son? Reach for the sky? Stack the bills high? What in tarnation are you talkin' about?"
Bring on that 43.5” wheelbase! A whopping inch and a half longer than the hardtail A.R.C XC racer. 69 degree head angle, hell yeah! I’ll try my best to shutter the part of my memory where anything with the word “Ringle” stamped on it resides. That is a dark place, filled with vile cursed things that no amount of blue or purple anodizing can charm their way around, and it is best not revisited. Maybe keep the tie-dye, too. Wasn’t really my thing back then, either.
Pairs perfectly with super hoppy IPA and String Cheese Incident tickets...
There are few brands that survive their founding legacy. What happened to Yeti – getting bought, shuffled around, gutted, sold – that happens to a lot of brands. And most of the time, the brand eventually withers away until it’s nothing but a nameplate with no real significance, no real connection to its roots. What happened to Yeti next, a resurrection that has been steaming along for over two decades now, well, that doesn’t occur very often. Chalk that up in big part to Conroy and Hoog, and their desire to flip the bird to corporate structure and build mountain bikes the way they wanted because that was what they loved more than anything.
Make all the dentist bike jokes you want. Talk loudly about how expensive they are, and how only rich dilettantes want in on that action. Judge. But hear this: There is some mystic juice coursing through the veins of that big hairy flattrack sliding abominable snowman. Some kind of shamanic superpower that deflects the bullets that took down GT, Schwinn, Mongoose and so many others. How that translates into the here and now, or whether it is a valid enough reason to want to own one now, I can’t answer until I get done packing these boxes into storage. Then I’ll get back to ripping my own legs off on those two steeds. And then I’ll get back to you about the value proposition of expensive teal mountain bikes.
Comments
[email protected]
7 months ago
I slept with what was probably the 1994 or 1995 Yeti catalog under my pillow for years. The ARC was the target of my lust. I was still in college at the time, so graduating and keeping enough beans in the crock pot was a higher priority than the 3 kilo-buck dream machine I wished could replace my Bianchi Ibex. One day, I spontaneously made the 4 hour drive north to Durango. I booked the cheapest room I could find and called the Yeti factory. I blurted out my admiration for their company and product. To my total surprise, they invited me to take the last factory tour of the next day so we could go for a ride after they closed up. My memories of that experience are likely a bit clouded by the exposure to the only level of celebrity that meant anything to me at the time. I'm pretty sure I met, John Parker, and Frank the Welder, but I'm no longer certain. I think Claudia Schiffer was also there to give me a kiss on the cheek. What I am sure of (mostly) is that they offered to let me ride THE bike from the catalog I slept next to every night. I want to say we rode "Raider's Ridge" but I'm not sure if that's actually a thing. Whatever it was, it overlooked town, was rad beyond words, and the whole experience left me floating for months after.
I never got to pull the trigger on an ARC, but that bike is a huge part of my personal mountain biking history. It's a little sad to learn about how tumultuous things were behind the scenes of that halcyon memory. It is also a testament to the joy that underlies the business of these toys we love so. The two guys who took me out, were willing to put aside all the nightmarish horseshit they were dealing with and just show a kid from Albuquerque the time of his life. Maybe that's part of the secret juju that's kept Yeti out of history's dustbin all these years.
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Adrian Bostock
7 months, 1 week ago
It’s going to be real interesting to see which brands make it through the next few years.
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Shinook
7 months ago
The larger brands like Specialized, Trek, Santa Cruz, and Giant will survive and live on, they started preparing for a downturn years ago and are smart enough to not end up going out of business or they have enough diversity to sustain themselves.
Other brands with a legacy name will live on, even if it's under a different umbrella or parent company. They have name/reputation as a major value and selling point if they become unsustainable. They may not be the big 3 or 4, but brands like Kona, Yeti, Transition, Norco, DaVinci, and Rocky Mountain have enough brand recognition that they could be bought and live on in name, at least. (I recognize some of this list is already owned by larger companies, I just went based on name only.)
The brands I'd be concerned about are the mid-sized ones that have minimal brand recognition and took on unsustainable growth during the boom with new facilities, expanded bike lineups, hiring, etc. I don't think many really fall into that category, but there are a few that do and I think those are the ones most at risk.
I think the biggest impact we as consumers will see is a reduction or slowing in new designs from bigger brands with higher production costs in the coming 4-5 years. The used bike market is flooded with current models people are trying to offload and very little is selling, most people can't afford to sit on a $2500+ frame waiting for it to sell while they drop $3800+ on a new one, especially while the economy is struggling and brands can't afford to keep all that inventory laying around while developing next_model+2 at the same time. It is also likely IMO you'll see a reduction in lineups from some brands who have too much overlap, with more niche configurations/setups like 170mm mullet bikes going away to reduce costs. I guess it depends on how long the cooling off lasts, but I'd expect all of this to increase the time gap between new models and reduce lineups for some brands.
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fartymarty
7 months, 1 week ago
Can we point fingers? I know it's rude and all that but I'm pointing my finger right at the Pinkbike comments section. I'm betting this is where the "Dentist Bike / Yeti" association started.
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Bikeryder85
7 months, 1 week ago
I agree, it was funny 10yrs ago, not so much now....I always liked yeti, might not be in my price range, but rad bikes.
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roil
7 months, 1 week ago
"More a rueful chuckle remembering how set in stone some of my beliefs about handling and geometry were, and how evolution makes us all look kinda stupid and pedantic at some point or another."
This comment is gold. Very excited to see where bike design philosophy goes in the next 20 years.
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Shinook
7 months ago
I never understood why dentists got targeted by the bike community, I've met only a handful of dentists on bikes and none of them are riding Yetis or S-Works $12k bikes. Meanwhile, I meet plenty of software engineers who are riding bikes in that category.
Maybe we need to update it for the modern era.
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Velocipedestrian
7 months ago
I think it's to do with the over the counter cost when you're paying the dentist. Software engineers etc get payed in the background of our lives, but we're already feeling vulnerable when we pay a dentist.
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Kos
7 months ago
My wife is a dentist and rides a Liv.
I doubt she is aware of the Yeti brand.
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Fat_Tony_NJ
7 months, 1 week ago
" I’ll try my best to shutter the part of my memory where anything with the word “Ringle” stamped on it resides"
C'mon! The hubs were pretty good. :) I always wanted one of those stems with the internal bolt/expanding wedge that they made.....
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Mike Ferrentino
7 months, 1 week ago
I'm going to assume the "NJ" in your handle denotes New Jersey, so I will forgive you for your bias. Hometown pride and all...
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Velocipedestrian
7 months, 1 week ago
Those wedges are terrible. Nice on the knees, hard on the steerer.
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T0m
7 months, 1 week ago
Wow this fills in some blanks about the 90s Yeti saga, and I don’t even think they were blank from substance use. The original Ibis company had a smartass vibe I liked better, but man, Yeti just won the races.
I lusted for a loop stay ARC long after a guy riding one cleaned a local climb, rocketing past me with my pleb Ross Mt Hood. Young dumb guys like me thought part of it must be the bike, but even then Yeti had premium prices that I couldn’t consider. That was in the very late 80s… had Pixies’ Come On Pilgrim EP in my Walkman.
Ironically, before suspension the actual bike one rode had the least influence on speed in all of MTB history. All the major brands had minor differences in the same geometry and all tires and brakes sucked.
Big demerit though for making me think at all about the string cheese incident. Fuck jam bands.
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JT
7 months, 1 week ago
My SB66 was by far one of the easiest bikes to get along with. It pedaled damn well, descended the same. The first shock was getting it through a pal who works at a HS not profit bike shop for a killer price even if finding 26" rims and tires was a bit rough. The second shock was the cost of the replacement bearings for the eccentric pivot. Those buggers were not easy to find nor were they inexpensive. Ended up getting some US made industrial grade maritime bearings for $40US a pop. If they come out with alloy versions of their bikes, I would have no issue lining up and opening my wallet.
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mikesee
7 months, 1 week ago
Congrats on selling the PI farm.
Mystic juice?! That and $10k will get you a middle of the road Yeti…
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Mike Ferrentino
7 months, 1 week ago
Or a middle of the road Moots?
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mikesee
7 months, 1 week ago
I think $10k only gets you a Moots frameset these days.
And a gravel one at that...
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Pete Roggeman
7 months, 1 week ago
gravEl?
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the prophet
7 months, 1 week ago
Durango is still pretty much a center for bad asses in the cycling world.
There is a parade in a few weeks for Sepp Kuss for winning La Vuelta, Riley Amos is crushing on the U23 World Cup XC scene (and some U23 ladies are as well), Asa V is set to start his World Cup DH domination in Jrs next year, Christopher Blevins won the Cape Epic this year, Howard Grotts and Payson McElveen dominating endurance and gravel events, throw a rock and you'll hit a former Olympian or world champ, and the first trails for the new bike park set to be the "biggest in the country" just opened.
Three frame companies, a pedal company, King Cages, a suspension tuning/mfg company, and 4-5 bike shops all from a town with about 20,000 residents.
But don't move here, this place sucks.
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T0m
7 months ago
Personally i associate dentists and accountants with Harleys. Maybe it’s just around the Front Range, also maybe i assume too much
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Wapti
7 months, 1 week ago
Dinosaurs and Bigfoot, my two favourite things together at last.
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pbass
7 months, 1 week ago
There is a fabulous podcast about Yeti on BBC sounds.
Nothing to do with the bike brand but a good listen nonetheless
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taprider
7 months, 1 week ago
Where you moving too?
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Mike Ferrentino
7 months, 1 week ago
That is still to be determined. This winter, there's going to be a lot of commuting between Baja and Alta California and the PNW. I'm narrowing the list to few places with singletrack, relatively low population density, hopefully some amount of rainy weather.
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Mammal
7 months, 1 week ago
All that gravel work, and then you're out so soon. Your decision, or circumstantial move?
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Mike Ferrentino
7 months, 1 week ago
My decision. The gravel work was phase one of "get the place prettied up" when it first went on the market last July. I love winters here, but the summers beat the shit out of me. I am not cut out for heat, and as I age I am finding my already limited tolerance is shrinking even further, especially in terms of what my skin can handle. Add to that the annual "everything I own goes up in flames" lottery, and the fact that it's almost an hour drive to any riding that isn't the janky high maintenance shitfight I carved into the hills here, and I am looking forward to a change of scenery.
Gonna miss the neighbors, because they are awesome. Gonna miss the night sky, because it is awesome. Gonna miss the crickets and frogs. Won't miss the facebugs one bit.
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Mark
7 months, 1 week ago
There's this little up town up here with some ok riding that might be worth a look called Whistler. Maybe you've heard of it?
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Mike Ferrentino
7 months, 1 week ago
I'm open to suggestions, but also not sure I can afford the sea2sky lifestyle. I'm leaning more Port Angeles, if you get my drift. Looking for that balance of decent trails with a crust of redneck and tweaker to keep me on my toes.
Cam McRae
7 months, 1 week ago
Aside from singletrack, I don't think Whistler meets Mike's criteria. Think Fernie with warmer winters.
Perry Schebel
7 months, 1 week ago
i really like the idea of b'ham (if i had to choose a stateside locale). cute wee town with character (and breweries), and proximity to a great riding network AND mt baker (snow sliding is also essential). seems like a great scene / culture.
Mark
7 months, 1 week ago
The Kootenays sound like they could be a good fit.
Mark
7 months ago
Yeah Cam I kind of thought that, was being facetious with my Whis suggestion
Morgan Heater
7 months, 1 week ago
PA is actually pretty awesome these days. There is a ton of good riding, of pretty much every flavor. And a velosolutions pump track in the middle of town! Check out vulture ridge on Trailforks, super fun.
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Ryan Walters
7 months ago
While I'm sure the locals wouldn't want me to mention it, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Glacier WA. Besides the fact that you have world class ski and bike terrain in your backyard, the town has the best dirtbag/hippy/redneck vibe that most people would loathe. It's pretty much perfect.
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Kos
7 months, 1 week ago
The poison oak in the Columbia River Gorge would have you feeling right at home!
Pretty low pop dens, mostly undone by the cursed interstate freeway making for too easy access for Portlandia's billion people looking for a place to mtb.
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Andrew Collins
6 months, 4 weeks ago
Funnily enough there's this country that has great trails, cold weather, more sheep than people, and public health care. Have you heard of a place called New Zealand?
Even better, it's next to this other country that's much the same but a bit hotter and full of bad asses like Sam Hill, Jared Graves, Nathan Rennie, Troy Brosnan, Moi-Moi and this road riding weirdo called Lachlan Morton who just broke some stupid record in the US.
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Velocipedestrian
6 months, 4 weeks ago
Are you inviting Mike to move back here?
Think of the sunburn potential!
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Peter Appleton
7 months, 1 week ago
Moutain cycle, Ellsworth, Foes, Cheetah, Tomac, Iron Horse, Sunn, Karpiel , Turner, Balfa, etc etc etc most don't make it
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Velocipedestrian
7 months, 1 week ago
Turner is still making bikes, but I think their pivot to carbon when the boutique alu market collapsed killed their FS line. I'd have liked to see what a modern 5 Spot or RFX would look like if they'd stuck to their material.
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Mike Ferrentino
7 months ago
David Turner was faced with some tough choices there. His brand had weathered the "pay a bunch of money to keep using Horst Link" storm, phased into some solid single pivots and finally landed on DW-link suspension, and had managed to keep things being made in the US out of aluminum as long as possible. And he kept his brand integrity intact. The carbon fiber bomb was what it was. Everyone got hit with it, and it is easy now to look back and speculate that maybe they coulda stuck to their alloy guns and waited it out. But that would have been a tough gamble. However, for a small brand to scale up to the costs involved with getting unique carbon fiber bikes built in China, without resorting to catalog bikes, all while trying to maintain some credible level of design cohesion and quality control, that would be a daunting task.
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Velocipedestrian
7 months ago
Sounds right. I have a Horst 5 Spot frame (gotta get it gone, never going to ride it again), and fondly remember the build quality of the DW Link alu frames.
From my far distance, it looked like they leaned hard into carbon when that was the move, but couldn't afford the cost of updating their molds quickly enough to keep up with the geometry shifts that immediately followed.
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JT
7 months, 1 week ago
As expected, I had to read this again. Flashback to my shop days where when an ARC came in, details that sorta mattered, definitely mattered on this job. Elitist? Yep. And that's with working at a shop where every genre of bike was worked on equally. There were only a couple folx that were given these jobs, and I was one of the three. But I never knew the depth of the history on this brand til now. Thank. You. Makes our/my past/current reverence for them all that more justifiable. This story clicked like an XT shifter.
As for the Yeti=Dentist, I think that comes from the class of Folx Who Lusted After Yetis In Their Shop Days Who Made Good Decisions Through Those Shop Days. Once you know, you can't let it go.
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James Mehlos
7 months ago
**MARLA STREB!!!
The Goddess MARLA STREB!!!
HOW THE HECK DO YOU LIST PAST YETI RIDERS AND NOT INCLUDE MARLA STREB????
You are fired. And no longer allowed to ride mountain bikes.
You failed as a steward of single track.**
SHAME
SHAME
SHAME
SHAME
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Mike Ferrentino
7 months ago
I didn't mention Nathan Rennie or Jared Graves either. Marla and Nathan were signed after this catalog hit the mailbox. Just barely.
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couscousmoose
7 months ago
Those 98" Yeti banners are sick. What I'd do to get one, even in sticker form
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