Teton Tested: Evil’s The Following Short-Travel 29’er

When Evil’s The Following first came out, it was the first truly heavy metal short-travel 29’er. While common perception and most experience suggested that mountain biking’s biggest wheelset only helped make bikes that were tall, boringly slow to maneuver, and really beneficial only for heartrate-checking cross-country weenies (albeit with great rollover through technical junk and a great ability to carry speed), The Following, first proposed by suspension design’s Gandalf, Dave Weagle, managed to kick the nerds out of the kitchen and cook up a bike that ravaged descents, lived for the rowdy, and partied harder than any bike with such little suspension ever had before.

 The Following descends way, way too confidently for a bike with just 120 mm of travel in the rear and 130 up front, and does so with a mix of confidence-inspiring plushness and trail-pumping springiness that is extremely rare.

Pumped out of a new factory, The Following helped calm many of the woes that had set back the cult Washington brand in the past – ya know, broken frames – and brought the brand serious hype, which has no doubt helped sales of Evil’s latest two bikes, the 27.5”-wheeled, 160 mm-travel Insurgent (another bike I’m obsessed with, read first impressions here), and the Wreckoning, a 29’er with 160 mm of travel that is more or less a downhill bike you can too easily pedal uphill. That team rider and internet mountain biking muse Luke Strobel has been racing that bike downhill with a dual-crown fork should give you an idea of how differently Evil tackles the world’s biggest wheels.

Still in its growth spurt, Evil doesn’t yet have the capacity for a demo fleet, so the highlighter-orange Following we brought up for our Big Sky Bike Test was a coveted steed indeed.

The Following's D.E.L.T.A. Design

Dave Weagle's single-pivot D.E.L.T.A. makes incredible use of The Following's 120 mm of rear travel while keeping weight low in the bike. Ryan Dunfee photo.

The Following is easy to pick out of a crowd, as Evil’s signature D.E.L.T.A. rear linkage (short for Dave [Weagle]’s Extra Legitimate Travel Apparatus) sports a single-pivot design with a massive, thick rear end with the shock sitting just above the cranks buried between a bunch of yokes and links. While the single-pivot design is usually simple, the linkages around the shock are visibly and theoretically complex. 

The D.E.L.T.A. system uses a dual progressive leverage rate curve originally designed for coil shocks in the downhill world, and “ultimately,” according to Evil’s site, “the design achieves a high degree of suppleness early in the travel with a predictable high-traction stage through the middle and a bottomless ramp at the end of the travel.”

The design also put most of the weight of the system down low, right above the bottom bracket, which gave the bike a nice, planted feel on the downs and in corners and – gasp! – actually left plenty of room for a water bottle cage in the middle of the frame. Hark!

A Flip Chip, hidden behind the lower three bolts in the photo, allows you to slacken the bike out to 66.8° and put it in full party mode. Ryan Dunfee photo.

All Evil’s bikes, which all use the D.E.L.T.A. design, incorporate a Flip Chip that in 10 minutes of allen wrench time allow you to change the head angle (in The Following’s case, from 67.4° in High to 66.8° in Low) and bottom bracket height (13.3” in High to 13.0” in Low), while turning the bottom cup of the custom-for-Evil FSA headset 180° allows you to steepen or slacken the bike by an additional degree.

For our riding out here in the Rockies and in Big Sky – where it’s a mix of technical and smooth, but always fast and pretty loose – we were happiest with the bike in Low and didn’t feel the need to go any slacker with the headset adjustment, as we don’t have the vertical chute steeps of the Pacific Northwest. 

And while smacking pedals with the ground-hugging 13.0” bottom bracket height in the Low setting may be a concern for those in that corner of the world, out here, we had none of those issues.

Fit and Geometry

The Following is a little shorter out front than some other bikes meant for this riding, but that kept it feeling nimble. Ryan Dunfee photo.

The Following is somewhat shorter in reach than the super-long enduro bikes du jour, but being that most of our testers were around 5’10” without extra long limbs, the 419 mm reach of our size medium frame felt fine, and the more middle-of-the-road reach meant we could make the most of the bike’s desire to pump the land like a BMX bike. 

The wheelbase sits right around 45”, varying a tiny bit depending on if you’re in High or Low, and the rear chainstays manage to sneak in under 17” or right on it depending on where your Flip Chip is positioned. That is really short for wheels that big.

The seat tube angle is a bit slack at 74.3° (we’ll get more into that later), and The Following has a super low standover height, which made it exceedingly easy to move it around underneath us. You can see the full specs here if you need a deeper dive. 

Setup and Components

No matter what build you buy, Evil will always ship a top-level Pike fork, Monarch shock, and Reverb dropper post. ENVEs are extra, unfortunately. Ryan Dunfee photo.

The Following comes as frame-only with a Rock Shox Monarch rear shock for $2,600, and while Evil’s longer-travel options offer a wide range of compatible rear shocks, even up to coil options, The Following’s tight shock mount area means you’re limited to swapping in a Fox Float CTD or, according to Evil, “most standard sized, non-external reservoir shocks.” But no Cane Creek. We liked the Monarch plenty, though, once we added a few of Rock Shox’s red rubber bands to reduce the volume in the shock and increase the poppiness and the bottom-out resistance.

The $5,000 SRAM X1 build of Evil's The Following, which parties so hard you'd think it was on bath salts. Note the Easton Heist 30 rims and WTB Vigilante tires, which we would swap out in the course of our test. Ryan Dunfee.

The $5,000 mid-range SRAM X1 build we tested has a great mix of components, and Evil doesn’t change the shock, fork, or dropper post no matter what build you get, which is awesome. A 120 mm Rock Shox Monarch Plus does the suspending in the rear while a blacked-out 130 mm Pike RCT 3 with three tokens pre-instealled does the duty in the front, with a 150 mm Reverb dropper giving you that nice bit of extra butt clearance on the downhills.

Given Evil's downhill history, we'd have expected a super wide bar we could then cut down. We swapped the uncomfortable house grips for cushy ESI's, although apparently if you roll the EVIL logo forward, they're plenty comfy. Whoops... Ryan Dunfee photo.

SRAM’s Guide R brakes with somewhat diminutive 160 mm rotors provided plenty of stopping power, and rounding out the cockpit is a 760 mm Race Face bar and 40 mm stem that we ultimately swapped out for a longer stem and wider bar, which made the cockpit just a wee less cramped and felt more comfortable.

Space for a bottle cage in the frame and low, low standover height gives room for long-travel dropper posts. Ryan Dunfee photo

A SRAM X1 11-speed drivetrain mated with Race Face’s Turbine cranks is a popular choice for mid-tier bikes these days and perform totally fine, and while press-fit bottom brackets don’t have many lovers these days, since we greased it up on the first day, it’s done just fine.

Rounding out Evil’s mid-range build are a pair of WTB Vigilante tires, which were a fine if drifty tire, mated to a set of Easton’s value-focused Heist 30 wheels, which were plenty wide and tough for the riding and tires you’d be taking this bike to, but ultimately, this is where you’d want to splurge some extra bitcoins.

Being the biggest wheels out there, 29’ers accentuate the difference in stiffness between your average aluminum and carbon wheels the most, and the handling, acceleration, and trail fun definitely stepped up a few notches once we got some carbon test wheels on ‘er (yes, we’re spoiled, and no, you don't "need" them to have fun).

But at $5,000, you’re going to be pretty happy with what you’re getting. Except for the house grips, which are righteously uncomfortable. The EVIL crew maintains, however, that if you roll them so the logo is facing forward, they're plenty comfy. We didn't try that. Whoops.

On The Ups

The Following's bombproof frame weighs more than other bikes with similar travel, but those coming off 27.5" bikes will be pleased with the climbing ease of the bigger wheels. Ryan Dunfee photo.

Most of the people who haves topped and asked me about this bike are sitting on 160 mm, 27.5”-wheeled enduro bikes – as was I before The Following came into my garage – so if that’s your comparison, The Following climbs great. Namely, those 29” wheels simply carry more momentum than any smaller hoops, and they get caught up less as you fight your way through chunky, rocky climbs. There’s a noticeable increase in the ease and flow of the climb coming off a smaller-wheeled bike, and while many enduro bikes want you to sit and spin to earn your turns, The Following encourages you to get out of the saddle and stand on it with a reassuring lack of pedal bob. This is one area where having just 120 mm of rear travel makes a big difference, as much more of your energy seems to be translated into vertical feet. Being a serial sitter, the ease with which The Following climbs out of the saddle is refreshing, and my lower back is thankful.

Of course, there are many 29’ers with similar travel that will climb better. The Following packs a lot of carbon to make it as stiff as it is, and so adds a pound or two just in the frame compared to many other, most trail-oriented bikes in its travel class. However, this almost universally comes at the expense of descending prowess, which we’ll get into soon. Its seat tube angle is also pretty slack, and will be a bigger deal with those with long legs, as the seat gets pushed farther back over the rear tire. Mine are stumps, so I didn’t notice it as much.

For comparison’s sake, the Pivot Mach 429 Trail, a bike I really enjoyed at Interbike last fall, climbs like a road bike (at least compared to what I’m used to) and descends far better than you’d expect, but not at the level of a 160 mm enduro bike with a sub-66° head angle, which is what the Following does.

So, basically, mid-pack climbing for a 29’er, but as many of the people most interested in this bike will be coming from one with smaller wheels and more travel, it’ll feel like a real step up on the way up.

On The Downs

Branham Snyder needs no help getting down on a bike, but still enjoyed The Following tons. The big wheels mean anxiety-reducing boosts in traction on step sections like this one on Big Sky's awesome Nameless trail. Ryan Dunfee photo.

While The Following’s travel numbers make it completely amenable to rolly-polly cross-country rides (I even raced, and did terribly, in a local XC race on it), this bike is all about riding downhill at ludicrously high rates of speed with no regard for human life. It is incomprehensible that anything with this little travel should be able to ride like it does on the downs, but since the rear shock is buried between the massive rear stays at the multi-part linkage, it keeps you from thinking about it, and focused instead on going full send.

You can ride The Following on terrain you'd want a full face helmet for, and still never wish you were rocking more travel. Jon Grinney photo.

Off the bat, the 29’er wheels offer three distinct advantages. The jump up in grip – just thanks to how much more tire is on the ground at any one time – compared to a 27.5” bike is instantly noticeable. Cornering is way too calm and grippy at the speeds this bike wants to go, and whenever you roll up on a sketchy section you need to dump speed for, or a steep chute from hell, the front wheel calmly maintains its grip, keeping the bike in check without any sense of chaos. The bulldozer-like rollover capabilities of the big wheels also makes easier work of chunky trail, and I never once thought I was going to get tossed over the front no matter how nasty the approaching section, even in the bike park chasing guys on dual-crown downhill bikes. And the increase in momentum you enjoy on the climbs comes right back on the downhills – this thing just carries speed like nobody’s business, and the short travel means pumping the terrain translates into noticeable jumps in trail speed.

The Following loves flow trails, too, carrying loads of speed and getting loose throughout. Ryan Dunfee photo.

While the bike is extremely plush – especially once two Rock Shox volume reducer bands were added to the Monarch rear shock to make the shock more progressive, more resistant to bottom out while staying plush at the top of the travel, and infinitely more poppy – you will notice you are on shorter travel bike. You feel more feedback from the trail, but the result is that The Following encourages you to employ a BMX-level of body English as you work down the trail, pumping up and down every rock and roll you can find, dipping the bars hard in corners, and otherwise working the front of the bike to squeeze every inch of fun out of the trail the whole way down. 

While the Trek Fuel EX we reviewed earlier has a distinctly plush, chatter-eliminating Cadillac feel with similar travel, The Following keeps things active, and soon enough you’ll be taking yoga classes in order to stay loose enough to get the most out of this bike. It’ll handle a lazy rider just find, but really comes alive once you start trusting it and putting more energy into every move coming down the mountain, and lives to show you how calmly it disperses lines and late-turn corner hacks that look unsurvivable at first glance.

Going downhill, and using that body English, make the Evil come alive. Ryan Dunfee photo.

I can’t emphasize enough how much of a difference adding a few bands to the rear shock brought this bike into its element. It brought the balance in line in the rear into one that was plush but still firm enough at the end to make the most of pumping terrain, and just made it insanely easy to get the bike into the air. The Following loves, loves, loves to get off the ground, and sails smoothly and confidently every time. The big wheels have their drawbacks, of course, and here they make harder to chuck the bike around to do those fancy whips and stunts, and they can get sketchy in the air on a windy day, but for the most part you feel like you’re on a slopestyle bike, pumping the shit out of everything, turning the faintest rise in the trail into a monster boost skywards, and just damn throwing the thing as hard as humanly possible into corners, g-outs, and the like without a care in the world. It is damn, damn fun.

The Bottom Line

I was first attracted to what The Following offered on paper when it seemed to cut the middle between the two bikes I enjoyed the most at the Interbike demo - Evil’s longer-travel Insurgent, which absolutely mauled descents, and Santa Cruz’s 5010, which was a blast on every inch of trail up, down, or flat and which fought above its weight class on the descents. And beyond mostly achieving that, The Following is simply a bike that, once you get some time descending on it, just leaves you saying “holy shit!”, especially once you step off it and look down, realizing how little travel you’re working with.

There are, undoubtedly, a few marked drawbacks from the 27.5” bikes you’d be comparing this to, namely that laying the bike slideways in corners and in the air does not happen with the same effortless snap and requires a little more effort. Other bikes we tested, like Diamondback’s Release and the BMC Speedfox Trailcrew (reviews forthcoming), had a bit more of that trail fun magic in them.

And The Following probably has the heaviest frame of any carbon bike in its travel class, given how oriented it is towards descending. That was probably the most notable tester complaint. Mine was that the paint is somewhat lower quality than what you might see from a Santa Cruz or a Trek, and you’d be well-advised to cover up the sections likely to get nicked with 3M film.

The Following begs to be pushed hard, and you'll be hard-pressed to find its limits. Ryan Dunfee photo.

But at the end of the day, what you really need to take away is that Evil’s game-changing 29’er is a cot-damn party on wheels. It descends way, way too confidently for a bike with just 120 mm of travel in the rear and 130 up front, and does so with a mix of confidence-inspiring plushness and trail-pumping springiness that is extremely rare and which will have you getting rid of both your short-travel trail bike and longer-travel enduro bike, if that’s something you’re fortunate enough to afford. It is as much of a riot in terrifying tech as it is on a butter-smooth flow trail, can absolutely handle days in the bike park, and if you can stay flexible enough to get as loose as it dares you to, you will feel like that Luke Strobel internet hero you’ve always wanted to be.

At $2,600 for the frame and $5,000 for our mid-level X1 build, is also a pretty strong value when you consider the other options. While the stupid-fun short-travel 29’er market has grown quite a bit in the past year, The Following is still the original, and it’s hard to imagine another coming this close to a downhill bike with this little travel.

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stash member Ryan Dunfee

Former Managing Editor at Teton Gravity Research, current Senior Contributor, current professional hippy at the Sierra Club, and avid weekend recreationalist.