It’s a name that carries good vintage and ridden by some mighty fine riders including Thomas Vanderham and Carson Storch, but a brand that has been a suspicious stranger on the uk shores for many years.

We rode the Rocky Mountain Maiden in Whistler last year and loved every minute and look forward to the day we can do a comparative test with other downhill bikes. This, the Altitude is a trail bike. In fact, Rocky themselves say this while the Slayer is Enduro. We say ride both to see which one you fancy because there’s probably not much in it. This is certainly something we’ll be doing.

Sizing on these bikes is up to date. For example the reach on the extra large 165/170mm Slayer is 482-470 while the Altitude at 150/160mm travel is 479mm. Head angle on the bike is around 65 degrees depending on where you place the chips (those fiddly things that get lost in the mud and are pretty much redundant as soon as you’ve slotting them into the lowest and slackest) which change the geometry. In fact there’s nine configurations and guess what its called Ride-9, with a trademark naturally. Anyhow the head angle on Altitude is about the same as the Slayer. In other words it’s a mini-Slayer.

The bike comes in alloy or carbon versions. Rocky say they have “the worlds most sophisticated carbon processes to deliver industry leading stiffness-to-weight, ride quality and durability.” This comes across as certainly being a little less than shy and pretty handy at marketing.

We rode the industry leading Altitude 50 which drops in at a penny short of four grand featuring the carbon front end and alloy rear end.