The Salsa Cassidy; Ride like the Pinkertons are in Pursuit
Yawp Cyclery
Rear wheel reflectors can keep you safe from cars.
Hi. My name is Levi, and you may remember me from such bike reviews as, Why a Rigid Mountain Bike will Dislodge your Retinas and Why it’s Good for You and, Why Buy This Expensive Shock When I Can Tape $900 to my Steel Seat Tube Instead? Yes, I’ve ridden a lot of miles on steel hardtails, and it’s unusual for me to be aboard a bike like the Cassidy. In fact, I’ve never ridden a bike with this much travel, this slack a head tube, or this quick a draw. For me, reviewing this bike is being trapped on a rocky ledge, and not knowing whether I’ll go down fighting or whether I’ll jump into the river below even though I can’t swim. What do I mean by that? It doesn’t matter. The fall will probably kill ya.
The Salsa Cassidy is a long-travel (165/180mm) full suspension bike intended for the steepest, gnarliest descents out there. It’s built for gapping, shredding, trunking, bending, sending, receiving, pulping, quelping, and chumbling. I’m not much of a chumbler, but when I saw that Salsa had released the bike in this color, I simply had no choice, and when I saw those long fork stanchions I thought, I’ll bet I can scratch those.
As you may know, we have an annual Goal Program. The goal I’ve chosen for myself this year involves something I don’t like doing (training). Past Levi committed to this goal and then got to walk away from it while I do all the suffering. Anyway, because I’m looking for high-mileage training rides, I’ve pedaled this bike up a lot of fire roads and around more laps at Buff Creek than I can count. I expected to suffer on that kind of terrain with all of this travel, and was concerned that the Cassidy would feel sloppy and saggy, that it’d feel like I was riding around on a bike made of balloons and bungie cords. Much to my delight, it climbed much like Salsa’s Spearfish (an XC bike with 100/120mm of travel) even with the suspension fully open. After I toggled the compression threshold to firm up the rear shock, it climbed fire roads exactly to my tastes, which I didn’t think a full suspension bike could do. The bike climbs so well that I haven’t bothered to flip the Flip Chip on the shock to tighten up the angles and raise the bottom bracket height. That a long-travel bike can meet the preferences of a hardtail enthusiast is a, well, a shock. The Split Pivot suspension platform was designed by Dave Weagle, of DW-Link fame, and it delivers on its promises.
What do I mean when I say the bike rides well? It is the right amount of dynamite—it cracks the safe without blowing up the entire train. It’s predictable and does exactly what I want it to do. I don’t have to accommodate idiosyncrasies (that said, guiding a long wheelbase through switchbacks is a skill I’ve had to learn, but I’ve learned it and don’t really think much of it anymore). If you want to blow up the entire train, it can do that, too. The bike is pushing me to find new limits. Unsurprisingly, it handily absorbs high- and low-speed drops, is stable on the steepest descents, and keeps both tires firmly planted on weird chunk in order to remain fully supportive.
Because I’m used to descending on a 67.5 degree head angle, I was concerned that the Cassidy’s 63.8 head angle would put the front tire so far out ahead of me that I’d loose the front end on loose, sandy turns, but it never happened.
The Cassidy has a three-pack mount on the downtube, and will accommodate a 26oz bottle in the main triangle. You can see in the photos I’ve been experimenting with carrying more bottles in stem bags, which has worked surprisingly well (I protected the frame and fork with a lot of clear tape). Other times I succumbed to a hydration pack.
Part of what I dislike about training is that it can mean using yourself to ride more miles than you might want to, and it can turn riding into a chore. I never tired of riding this bike all over the place (I certainly got tired, but never bored). It made me feel like I could take on anything, including the entire Bolivian army, and it has impressed this humble chumbler.