Pro Mountain Biker Launches Bike Brand Unlike Any Other

Chris Canfield is set to release a bike unlike any other come November 2024. Canfield, one half of the industry-influencing Canfield Brothers Bikes, (now Canfield Bikes after Chris let go of his share of the business in 2019), sank his teeth into an idea a while ago, and the idea bit back. The result? His newest endeavor, Vampire Bikes.

I ran into Canfield at a local downhill race this summer and, to be embarrassingly honest, didn’t recognize him when he and his crew kindly invited me to share some shade under their pop-up tent on that hot July day. It wasn’t until I drafted my race report afterwards, with Canfield’s name in the results, that my editor clued me in: “Did you get a pic of the bike he was on by any chance? It’s a bike that doesn’t really exist yet.” I disappointed him by saying no, but, on a whim, followed up with Canfield to see if I couldn't get a bit more info to feed to my nerdy coworker as a consolation prize.

Turns out, when you ask a tinkerer to talk about tinkering, you get more than just “a bit” more info. Canfield was not only willing to chat, but shared details about what just might be his most ambitious project, out of a storied history of ambitious projects, yet: designing a bike with three main pivot locations for the chainstay, allowing a rider to go from high- to mid- to low-pivot with the simple pull of a bolt.

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Sound about as improbable as the mythical creature for which the brand is named? Canfield gets it, but is quick to address skepticism. “I’ve been testing this bike for three years,” he says, asserting that he is confident in his new brainchild, the CF3 suspension system (patent-pending) which allows the bike to go from 165 mm of travel in the lower hole, to 190 in the middle, to 220 in the upper. “You can basically select the mode of the bike that is best suited for the track. Any race course I go to, I can have the exact perfect setup for that course.”

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Canfield says that was one of his main goals with the bike: “to give people one frame that will do all the things they need.” Beyond struggling, himself, with the eternal question of which bike to choose to bring when traveling, especially for races, Canfield says he also knows there’s a lot of folks out there who, for example, want a downhill bike but can’t justify buying one given the limited amount of time they spend at a bike park. So why not give those folks one that serves all purposes?

Knowing I’m a Tetons-based rider, Canfield threw out our local legend of a steep and rocky trail, Lithium, as an example of where his bike shines: “Climbing up, you could easily be in your lower or mid hole; get to the top, know you’re about to do a gigantic downhill, and, while everybody else is snacking, just take a minute and a half to pull your pin, put it in DH mode, and be ready to go.”

Canfield also offers up the story of his National Championship experience at Winter Park as further proof of the bike’s prowess: “I had it in the middle hole the whole race, because it was three kind of mellow tracks, but then the last track was Trestle Downhill, which is super rough and really bumpy.” So when he got to the top, he had his buddy and fellow wild child rider, Ryan Rodriguez, hold his bike, so he could swap the suspension pin from middle to upper hole. “Within about a minute and a half, I changed the bike from 165 to 190. And Ryan looks at me and says, ‘What did you just do?’ I had him push on my seat and he goes ‘Holy crap, this is a downhill bike now. You’re going to kill it.’”

As a skier as well as a mountain biker, I’m more than familiar with the notion of a quiver-killer. And at least with skis, I've come to the conclusion that I'm better served with a dedicated backcountry setup and a dedicated resort setup; even if I found a ski and binding combo that could do what I want in both settings, I'd still be wearing a touring boot inbounds, for example, which just never rides the same as a true downhill boot. So I asked Canfield about how realistic it is to expect any one bike to do everything well, or if it’s more a question of it doing most things okay: “It’s freaking awesome,” Canfield overrides.

With changeable progression rates - about 15%, 20%, and 25% from lower- to mid- to upper-hole - Canfield says the bike handles just as well at all pivot points. “If you set up your bike in the middle hole it’ll be perfect, in the upper hole it’s a bit soft, and in the lower hole it’s a bit stiff; but as soon as you go downhill, the lower hole opens right up because it’s only 15% progression, and when you’re slow and climbing in the lower hole, it’s a little stiff, but that’s nice on a climb - it doesn’t wallow in your body bouncing around. It works out perfectly.”

“I designed mostly around the full gun downhill setup,” Canfield continues, “because that was my focus - to have three downhill setups in one for my own personal race needs - but the geometry doesn’t change when you change travels. You can run the same shock on all three travel settings, and I ran the same spring for the first year and a half, because that’s what the guy who doesn’t do anything to his bike and doesn’t know how to touch a knob or whatever will do, and it was totally rideable.”

Which, as any industry insider knows, is smart: start with the most basic of users and work up from there. Canfield, of course, knows that his limited run of first-round production frames will, however, likely go to folks looking to pay a bit more attention to dialing things in than the casual mountain biker, which is why he’s made sure his frames can perform even (and especially) under the demands of higher-level riders.

To start, his first Vampire frame, the Fastarossa, comes with a steel front triangle and aluminum rear triangle, Canfield says a more advanced rider will be able to notice a much smoother ride feel, thanks to that ineffable realness of steel, without sacrificing weight. “The frame is about 10 pounds without the shock, so it’s quite a bit lighter than all the aluminum downhill bikes I used to build,” he compares.

Canfield also cites mud-shedding as a reason to get a feel for steel. “Honestly, one of my biggest focuses in designing this bike was that it didn’t hold a lot of mud in a mud race." Tired of accumulating speed-killing pounds of splatter on his bike by the end of a course, especially when on a bike with a wide, square carbon fiber down tube, Canfield says he's already a big fan of how well the thinner, round surface of his new Vampire frame avoids that build-up.

Each Fastarossa frame can also take either single- or dual-crown forks, in a variety of sizes, meaning that a rider traveling with just a bike bag could, theoretically, bring the frame plus two forks on any given trip, allowing them to have an enduro-style stup for a race but the option to go into full downhill mode for a fun-day at a bike park. To that end, Canfield has his personal favorite suggested pairings: “The ideal setup is to have a downhill fork and a 170 fork. I run quite slack or aggressive head angles - that’s what I like to ride - and so when you drop the 170 in there, it lowers your bottom bracket and puts your head angle to where it needs to be. And then, if you get a downhill fork and a bolt-on stem, and you’ve got that full build too.”

As for shocks, Canfield is almost giddy: “All the new metric shocks come in all four stroke lengths, with the same eye to eye.” Add four travel settings to three pivot point holes and suddenly, he says, you’ve got endless options. “So no matter what discipline you’re going out to do, you’ve got the bike for it.”

At this point, Canfield takes a bit of a tangent. “You know what the craziest part is? In production, I built one link for the bike, but in prototyping, I built two different links.” Canfield says this is because as he was drawing things up, he realized there was only a 5 millimeter difference between an enduro shock that’s non-Trunnion mount and a downhill shock that is. “I was like, we could do a separate link that mounts the enduro shock and then it bumps all the numbers down to 140, 160 and 190. So I built two different links, and had a bike that basically had 12 settings on the one link and 12 settings on the other link, and the only reason I didn’t build it is that it’s about $8,000 more to do another link and I’m already broke. So I ended up doing just the one link for both travel settings and then adjusting the lower shock mount to make it work.”

An obsession with intricacies might be Canfield’s greatest strength, and the reason Vampire Bikes just might be able to get closest to a one-bike-to-rule-them-all frame of any company out there. (Speaking intricacies: the upper link on each Vampire Bike frame will be in the shape of a bat, because, well, duh.) “I had a guy on a prototype recently, and he’s like ‘It totally works,'" Canfield recalls. "He's like, 'You can actually change it, and pretty quick, and all three setups are awesome. It feels like three different bikes, not just, 'You added some travel.' It’s a whole different wheel path and a whole different feeling, but you have the same cockpit, same roll of your brakes, pedals are in the same spot... everything is the same, you just have a completely different bike all of a sudden.'"

I’ll be curious to see how the general public feels about the bike once it's available to the general public. I have no doubt the bike will ride like a dream, I'm just not sure a bike that requires tools and time, however minimal, to change from one setup to the next will be everyone's jam, especially if you want to take full advantage of its potential to go into full dowhill mode by swapping out forks, too. I see the Fastarossa being most suited to the rider who travels frequently, and knows they'll have the time between days of a trip to swap the bike over from one build to the other, and less likely to appeal to the rider who might want to pedal up a climb in one setting and the swap to a different setting for the downhill portion of that same ride. But I'm absolutely ready to be proven wrong.

Canfield says a full website with ordering information will be available soon; in the meantime, you can find the brand on Instagram . With just 200 frames planned for the initial production run (which Canfield says will run about $3,000, with a $4,000 titanium frame in the works for 2025) I’d keep a sharp eye on his feed if you’re at all interested in getting your hands on one - the odds are high they'll go spooky fast.