Yeti Cycles

SB4.5 Carbon XTR Complete Mountain Bike - 2016

When he's not officially making the rounds on the domestic enduro circuit, Yeti Cycles' resident journeyman — affectionately dubbed Old Man West by fellow Tribe members — spends his free time on the SB4.5c. While we can't speak for his preferred build kit, we can only imagine that such an accomplished rider wouldn't settle for anything less than the ENVE wheels and enviable one-by drivetrain on the tastefully appointed SB4.5 Carbon XTR Complete Mountain Bike.

Components aside, we can understand the SB4.5's appeal to a guy like West. He's been around the block, so he's comfortable leaving the 6in behemoths to the kids while he rides off into his own sunset on the SB4.5's 114mm of Switch Infinity travel. Yeti classifies this as a trail bike, but the real story is a bit more complex. Features like a 67.4-degree head tube situates it closer to the enduro realm while descending, but the hungry attack angle of the 29in wheels means it handles climbs and accelerations with XC aplomb. The Boost axles and ENVE M60 Forty High Volume wheels pull double duty, keeping the front end stiff for on-point tracking and the rear end stiff for sasquatch-like power while punching over rocky cruxes.

The Switch Infinity suspension is equally confidence-inspiring. Its linear travel hits the sweet spot of anti-squat to keep pedaling sharp across rocky climbs, and it also erases the momentary harshness that its predecessor, the Switch Link design, would display when pushed to the absolute limit. Of course, most riders will never experience that dead spot on the Switch Link, but the SB4.5 isn't for most riders. It's for the discerning mash artist who demands a machine that flattens big hits with the same aggression that it cleans long climbs — a rare breed in the enduro scene as a whole, but common enough in Yeti's Tribe.