First Laps: The New 2025 Marin Quake

If you’d told me that I’d get to ride two new, not-DH, not-Enduro long travel bikes from relatively mainstream brands at Crankworx 2024, I’d have been pretty shocked. Freeride is dead, right? We buried it alongside our 27.5” front wheels, flat pedals, and Rise Against CDs. The original Marin Quake came out in 2011, and since then the landscape has changed. The Santa Cruz Heckler and Bullit are e-bikes, we only build new blue flow trails, and there’s no point in putting together a banger edit when all the real pros are on TikTok now.

Nope! Freeride bikes are back baby! The new Marin Quake is a 180/200 mm machine that borrows a bunch of clever features from their excellent Alpine Trail, and puts them into a compelling and price-conscious package. It’s been making the rounds under Marin’s impressive roster of athletes for the last year, and will be available to the general public in March.

Marin Quake in a Nutshell

• Travel: 180 mm (rear) 200 mm (front)
• Wheel Size: 29”/27.5”
• Frame Material: Aluminum
• Size Tested: Large
• Reach: 478 mm
• Head Tube Angle: 62.3° (adjustable)
• MSRP: $4,699 (complete) or $1,899 (frame)

What does a freeride bike look like in 2024?

Who even knows? There are as many different permutations of freeride rigs as there are freeriders. But generally, they’re all durable, long-travel bikes, designed for going big, guinea pigging questionable features, and thrashing all season long.

Marin says that they didn’t want to make an all-out DH race bike, so the Quake is a slightly tweaked take on the genre. Stock, it pairs 180 mm of rear travel with a 200 mm dual crown fork. It uses Boost 148 rear wheel spacing, instead of a more typical DH-spec 150 mm wide rear hub, and it doesn’t have bosses for a water bottle or routing for a dropper post.

However, it does come with SRAM’s UDH, so hangers should be easy to find, and you could mount Transmission to it. It comes specced with DH casing tires front and rear, and has the same flip chips as the Alpine Trail that allow you to swap between 27.5” and 29” rear wheels, as well as between high and short, and long and slack geometry settings. Finally, it has a 56ZS headset, so you can play with reach and angle adjust headsets, and Marin will be selling fork crown spacers so that you can easily swap to a single crown fork, or 27.5” rear wheel.

Basically, this is a very versatile bike that can handle a broad spectrum of riding, as long as that spectrum ranges from big jumps to big rock rolls, steep techy trails to mega booters, and Hardline to Fest series. A versatile, pedalable enduro bike this is not.

The Quake will be available in any color you like, as long as you like purple splatter fade, with color-matched decals. I love this color, and got a lot of compliments in the lift line on it.

How does it ride?

I already gushed about the Alpine Trail’s ride quality at length, so the short version is: like that, but more. More travel, more confidence, more smash-ability. I spent an afternoon at the Whistler Bike Park on a mix of tech and jump trails, and the Quake ate it all up. It’s fun and predictable to jump, it’s stable and confident in the steeps, it does all the things you’d want it to do.

Last year I owned a full-on DH bike, and struggled a little bouncing back and forth from it to long-travel enduro bikes. It just felt a little weird, a little foreign, a little challenging to get used to. I felt none of that with the Quake. It was very intuitive swapping between it and my personal Trek Slash. No, it’s not quite as fast and plowy as a true DH bike, but it lets me get as close to that line as my skills allow just fine.

Like the Alpine Trail, it’s quiet and sturdy. No weird clanking, no scarry flexing, no sensation of “maybe smashing into rocks fast is a bad idea.”

It was fun riding it on the same trails I’d ridden my Slash, and then later the Specialized Status DH . The Status DH was a touch “more” than my Slash, and then the Quake was one more step past that. More confident, more stable, more downhill-hungry, but not quite as aggressive or demanding as the TR11 I owned last year.

Build

The Quake will be available as a frame only for a very appropriate $1,899, or as a complete build for $4,699. That gets you a BoXXer fork up front, Vivid Coil Ultimate in the rear, SRAM’s excellent Maven Bronze brakes, Marin house brand wheels, dual DH casing Maxxis Assagai tires, and a GX DH drivetrain. Like the Alpine Trail, this is a great bang for your buck.

I’m infatuated with the Maven Bronze brakes on budget gravity bikes, they feel so good, and deliver so much power, I’d happily run them on any bike. Similarly, the base level BoXXer is a great fork. I’ve been really impressed at how much of a beating Marin’s stock wheels took on the Alpine Trail, and wouldn’t hesitate to run them into the ground on the Quake.

For the price, the Quake is a great value. A similarly specced Transition TR11 would run you $5,299 at MSRP, while a Specialized Status DH costs $4,499.

Feature Set

I rode the Quake at an interesting time in my relationship with long-travel bikes. Last year, I tried to just own a full DH bike, and a 140 mm trail bike. It didn’t work out well. There were lots of times I wanted to be on my “biggest” bike, which required climbing without a chairlift or shuttle. So now I’ve resorted to an overbuilt Trek Slash. I love that bike, but riding the Quake was a great reminder that there’s no replacement for displacement. Dual crown forks are just plain fun, especially in a bike park setting.

So I’m at a bit of a crossroads. I think I want a long travel, dual crown bike that can climb, even if it’s not very good at it. That isn’t quite the Quake. I love that it takes a regular boost rear wheel. I love that it’s compatible with single or dual crown forks, and either wheel size. But it would be even cooler if I could stash a bottle on the frame for big bike park days, and if I could run a dropper for short climbs on gravel roads.

Of course, neither of those options is out of the question: It would be easy to strap a bottle into that front triangle, and I’m sure I could figure out an externally activated dropper like I installed on my dirt jumper . But out of the box, the Status DH does check both those boxes. Ultimately though, I think my use case is a limited subset of a limited subset, and it makes perfect sense that Marin isn’t quite catering to it.

For Now

It’s a great time to be in the market for a rugged park rig or freeride bike. I wouldn’t hesitate to build up a single speed Quake to smash at the bike park, or buy a complete build to shuttle and race DH on. It’s simple, modular, and really fun to ride. I really hope we continue to see more brands stepping into this space. Marin’s re-entry is long-awaited, and excellent.