Plus, the lightweight alloy wheels add to the bike’s speed and agility. The matte black finish with neon accents is sure to turn heads on any trail. The Venerable Croix de Fer frameset has been a mainstay of the Genesis range since 2009.
None of these things alone would be an issue but add them up and they mean you have to push hard to get the bike really moving. You get out what you put in though and once up to speed the bike is a different animal. The adjustable Revelation forks up front give you the option to wind down the travel to sharpen up the handling through singletrack and help you up the steep genesis mountain bike stuff, turning the Alpitude into a true all mountain steed. Steep technical drops are taken in its stride and on fast smooth downs the Alpitude feels stable so long as you stay out of the saddle. Genesis give their geometry figures with the bike at 25% sag, so you can take just over a degree off the stated numbers to give you the figures of the bike unweighted.
The Alpitude needs to be ridden hard to get the best from the frame, if you hit rough sections too slow then the bike can stall and you have to work to get back up to speed. The Revelation fork is simple to set up but it is worth remembering to go back and reset them after a couple of rides as they begin to sink into their travel once bedded in. Specialized also launched a Peter Sagan collection with a largely gold frameset genesis bike a few years ago. We’ve got to say, though, that we’ve never seen anything like the head tube on Adam Blythe’s bike. But more than that, there’s front and rear dynamo lights, so you never need worry about forgetting/neglecting to charge your lights. An internally geared hub goes a long way to weather proofing the drivetrain, as do the full housed gear cables that help stop dirt degrading your shifting performance.
The cockpit felt a little cramped and we found that our knees clashed with the bars round tight hairpins. Grip out back is reliable rather than amazing and a determined effort will see you up pretty much any hill. The rear triangle is a beefed up to deal with the hammering that this bike is intended for and the seat tube is shortened so that the lower top tube gives bags of standover room.
The Croix de Fer comes in three steel options (10, 20 and 30) as well as a titanium model. The angles are steep, the front end is low and there aren’t mudguard or pannier mounts. 33c tyres are specced (the maximum genesis mountain bike permitted in UCI sanctioned cyclocross races), while the maximum tyre size recommend is 35c. There aren’t mounting points for front or rear pannier racks; strap on bike-packing bags are the weapon of choice here.