Trek Session 9.9

Momentum

What makes it so special? Very simply is its speed across the ground, but not like some bikes that are great on steep, tight technical but lack pace when the grounds become more level. The Session is fast – everywhere. Offering an engaging ride with precise steering geometry the Session similar to the Specialized Demo seems to build in momentum but in quite a different way. The Session is livelier than the Demo, easier to move around and slightly easier to crank on flatter grounds, the kind frequently found in between rougher sections of track.

“What Trek have done marvelously well is improve the bike year on year. Its also the most incredibly well finished and presented bike”

That doesn’t mean the Trek is lousy in the tougher stuff, oh no, from average damping beginnings in 2008 Jose Gonzalez and his team have stepped up the rear damping on the Session to a place that many can only dream of. Fox suspension played their part too in this process and for 2016 the Session comes with the finest Fox 40 yet to come from the Californian brand.

There are still a couple of minor negative points, for starters the adjustable geometry is still a shade on the high side and we’d like to see the current ‘high’ setting become the standard setting with the addition of a ‘low’ position. The XL is a good size for 6’ riders but there’s still a place for an XXL in the future. And in terms of components whilst the Shimano Saint’s are reliable brakes the Guide Ultimate’s and Code’s offer smoother and more consistent braking through the range. The bar and stem combination takes getting used to – bar too narrow, stem to low.

Overall however if we were to choose a bike for racing on the varied terrain that racing often throws up, then the Session is one of the bikes we would always reach out to. Its pedigree is impressive. A bike that Aaron Gwin steered to nine world cup wins in two seasons and that culminated in two World Cup series wins making it one of the most successful race bikes of all time.

YOU DIDN’T KNOW THIS BUT…

Trek Session 9.9

Dylan Howes, Trek R&D

When we were developing the 27.5 bike, we actually made a full-on carbon prototype with prototype molds that we knew we wouldn’t go to production with. The geometry, suspension kinematics and tube shapes matched the 26” Session exactly with the only changes being wheel size, BB drop (same BB height) and fork offset to maintain the same trail number. We wanted to be able to feel what the wheel size difference felt like before we made any other changes to geometry and suspension kinematics.

Those changes were things like overall bike geometry (top tube length) and suspension improvements that we were planning on regardless of wheel size. On those protos, we also built a full carbon chainstay, which we hadn’t done on a downhill bike before. Even in prototype form, it cut a huge amount of weight from the aluminum (fine, aluminium!) stay and was really robust.

“The chainstay became one of the hardest parts to mold and took months of iterations on layups to get it to pass”

But, we felt we could do it even better and make assembly easier by changing exactly how we molded the parts for production. And then the problems really started! The chainstay became one of the hardest parts to mold and took months of iterations on layups to get it to pass. It became the longest development time of any carbon chainstay we had done, and led to the team, and your test bike, having aluminum chainstays to start the season.

We did solve the molding problem, created a lighter and stronger chainstay than we had in aluminum, and learned some good molding lessons. Future versions would be made like the proto’s. Sometimes you get it right the first time….