RELEASE + FIRST RIDE

THE NEW ARI SUPERIOR PEAK

UNLEASH YOUR GRAVITY

Ari Bikes officially unveils Superior Peak, a downhill bike engineered for riders who want performance and adaptability without being pigeon-holed into one style of gravity riding. Downhill, Freeride, Bike Park Laps: Superior Peak does it all.

DEVELOPEMENT
The Superior Peak started as a passion and learning project for the in-house design team. It also filled the need created by the Ari Factory Racing gravity team and Ari’s freeride athletes, Kurtis Downs and Kyle Strait. Over the last year, Ari athletes and racers have helped refine the Superior Peak to what it is now. Those refinements have paid off with freeride event wins at Proving Grounds, overall series win at the Big Mountain Downhill, Dark Fest Best Trick, and will be ridden by Kyle Strait at the 2024 Red Bull Rampage in Ari’s home state of Utah. With this rider feedback, development, and winning results helping to prove the design and capability of the Superior Peak, it’s a serious contender for those looking for a fun, balanced, and durable downhill bike for bike park laps, racing, or desert freeride trips.

Superior Peak’s Growing Award List:

• 1st Place at Proving Grounds 2023
• 1st Place 2024 Overall Big Mountain DH Series
• 1st Place ‘Best Trick’ at Dark Fest

FIRST RIDE REVIEW

ARI SUPERIOR PEAK ELITE

First Ride by Drew Rohde

We first got on the Ari Superior Peak during Crankworx Whistler. We rode the Superior Peak Elite build for a couple of days in the park to get our first impressions. We have since received our long term test bike, which features the OChain upgrade. We prefer it this way, but more on that later.

Over the week in Whistler, we spent countless hours riding a variety of downhill bikes in the park. The Superior Peak was one of the bikes we were most excited about trying out. With Ari sponsored riders like Kurtis Downs and Kyle Strait showing how capable the bike was hitting the biggest jumps in the world, I looked forward to see how an over-the-hill downhiller (me) would get along with the bike. In typical fashion, we took the bike straight to the top of Garbanzo for a “break-in” ride down some of Whistler’s best and most famous trails.

Dropping into Loamonade, I was able to finish bedding in the brakes and quickly see how the bike performs on raw, fresh cut trails with impeccably placed catch berms and big compressions. Here the Ari Superior Peak performed very well. It was fast, fun and rode very light. It held a line, transferred to new lines easily and rewarded a hoppy riding style, which I tend to enjoy. Pumping and maximizing transitions was a breeze.

Next we made our way over to Patrol Rocks and In Deep for some raw BC chunk and rock. It was here that I began to think that my suspension setup was still a ways off from being perfect. We’ve gotten pretty good at setting up suspension on test bikes, but not perfect! Typically a few days – or at least a few runs – are needed to really get things dialed in. So I began turning knobs to try and improve matters. That said, I was a bit timid about going too deep into the tuning, as the temperatures at the top of the mountain were downright chilly that day and no doubt had an affect on my riding, body and the dampers.

As we continued riding, we made our way to another fresh cut trail and then wrapped up with Too Tight. I was once again really enjoying the playful feel of the Superior Peak in the more natural and tighter stuff. It rode more like an extremely confident “super enduro” bike than a sluggish DH race machine. The bike popped out of corners and allowed me to ride through tighter terrain faster than some of the other more race focused DH bikes I’d been on during the week.

Of course, with that light, playful feel, came the downside of feeling a bit timid or unsettled on the roughest DH tracks. During our ride and talking with Ari’s Tyler Cloward and Joey Foresta (former World Cup DH racer), we agreed that more time was needed tuning suspension and that the OChain upgrade would be a welcome addition for my riding preferences. I have a tendency to like a softer initial suspension feel and seek out rougher, rockier trails compared to most new-school riders who live for jump lines and flow trails. Granted I’m old, slow and have seen a huge evolution of DH bikes from being purely race machines built for charging the most challenging terrain to bikes built for the new generation of bike park riders who want to hit big jumps, berms and go big.

It’s nice to see that Ari have built the Superior Peak DH bike to be a versatile big travel bike that can go either way. If you look up to Kyle Strait and Kurtis Downs, and want to work on general freeride antics from whips to hitting big jumps and drops, the Superior Peak seems to be a good option out of the box. If you’re like me and want to ride DH tracks; work on improving your times; find faster lines and keep the bike a bit more supple and planted beneath you, we’d suggest selecting the OChain option at checkout.

We’ve received our long term test bike and it has the OChain installed. In our intial laps, we’ve been beyond stoked with how big of a difference it has made on the rough stuff. The feedback through the pedals is reduced; the suspension moves much more freely, and the increased speed we’re able to carry over chunky terrain is notable. Our crew is just about to start our DH Bike Group Test and will be putting the Ari Superior Peak up against several other very capable downhill bikes, so stay tuned for that and see how this bike gets along as we put more miles and time aboard it.

Visit Aribikes.com to order yours.