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Ventana El Saltamontes is indisputably their signature frame. It translates to "the mountain jumper", a name befitting a bike that can just as easily serve as a competitive XC race bike, or as an all-purpose, all-terrain warrior. El Salt employs a low 2:1 compression ratio design to offer 4 inches of plush, bob-free rear travel in a non-Horst linkage, non-VPP suspension design obsessively crafted by Ventana to provide an inspiring ride.
The priority of El Salt is to provide you with a stable pedaling platform. In other words, it’s designed to maximize lateral stiffness so you can hold higher, tighter lines on off-camber terrain, and jump and slide more predictably by keeping your rear wheel in the same plane as your front triangle instead of flexing outward and giving the tire enough outward bite to throw you out of your groove. Ventana’s four-bar linkage uses the shortest rocker possible to provide such incredible stiffness. The shortened rocker creates a more triangulated rear triangle design than the parallelogram-like design of many Horst link designs. This compactness of the rear triangle minimizes lateral flex and the detrimental effects such flex has onto the rear suspension. And if you’re a glutton for stiffness, you can upgrade your El Salt to quad bearings to further reinforce the pedaling platform, making the frame track like a hardtail, but deliver 4” of glorious travel.
Like all Ventana frames, El Salt is built with proprietary butted and ovalized 6061-T6 aluminum tubing. As hefty as it looks, you can still muscle up steep hills thanks to the fact that it isn't onerously heavy. And Ventana doesn't sacrifice the least bit of toughness in El Salt: Its internally butted BB, one piece, CNC machined bottom bracket shell and main pivot, and internally butted headtube with wrap-around gusseting are designed specifically to provide stiffness and durability for the long haul. The frame’s robust yet lightweight construction and spacious clearance for 2.4” tires make it extremely versatile.
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