Kona just pulled the wraps off its new Hei Hei XC race bike, and you don’t have to be a rocket surgeon to deduce that the new whip is longer, lower, and slacker than before. It also has 120 millimeters of travel at each end, which in some cases would take a bike out of the XC realm and smudge it anywhere from Marathon Bike to Backcountry Lite to Smash Everything Short Travel Barge. In the case of the Hei Hei, no attempt has been made to redefine this as something else. It’s an XC bike, through and through. But it’s a Kona, and Kona does things its own damn way.
So, right before the whole state of California fell headlong into quarantine, I managed to get my grubby paws on a new Hei Hei CR/DL, which at $6,000 represents the swankiest version of the Hei Hei available. It features a carbon fiber frame, a blend of SRAM XX1 and X0 componentry, RockShox Deluxe and Pike Ultimate squishy bits, some nicely thought out RaceFace and WTB contact points, WTB rims with DT Swiss hubs and spokes and Maxxis Rekon tires. After a couple months aboard a similar travel but much more gravity-intentioned Marin Rift Zone, I was looking forward to stepping away from that 33-ish pound rig and spinning out some miles on this hair over 26-pound whip. The terrain we rode ranged from the tons of pedaling mellow flow of Fort Ord, where the Sea Otter would be kicking off, like, tomorrow, to the less civilized fun of Toro Park across highway 68 from Fort Ord, to the locked down confines of the steep, tight, poison-oak-infested jank on the trails here at Rancho Quarantino.
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