The days are getting shorter, I brought in firewood last night, and Manitou is ready with a limited snow camo edition of their Mastodon Pro LE fat bike fork. Pretty long travel in the fat bike world this lightweight fork offers 120mm of front suspension adjustable +/- 20mm) to tackle not only smooth ice road trucking, but also steep winter and year-round terrain.
Manitou Mastodon Pro LE 120mm snow camo fat bike fork
Designed from the ground up for fat bikes, the Manitou Mastodon has been one of the best options for getting rad on ultra-wide tires since its inception… delivering unparalleled stiffness, mega tire clearance, all-weather performance, and 80-150mm travel options. And when we reviewed the Mastodon Pro EXT that this limited edition is based on, we came away thinking this was the fat fork that would change people’s minds about suspension forks on fat bikes. It’s really good! And while it’s definitely not for weight weenies, it’s also much more than a winter-only fork.
And now once again, Manitou is ready for the onslaught of winter with a limited edition run of 120mm travel extended Mastodon Pro LE fat bike forks, this time in snow camo with blaze orange logos.
Tech details
The tapered steerer, 34mm stanchion reverse arch Manitou Mastodon Pro LE is the longer axle-crown EXT version of the Mastodon, designed to bump up tire clearance to a huge 26×5.15″ or 27.5×4.5″.
It gets 7000 series butted aluminum lowers with 51mm offset and comes preset at 120mm of travel, but is easily internally adjustable in 10mm increments from 100-140mm (a simple adjustment developed so amateur mechanics can do it at home). The EXT fork has a claimed weight of 2172g (down about 60g through some optimization since we reviewed it a few seasons back).
Inside a Dorado Air spring gives adjustability with Incremental Volume Adjust (IVA) for easy air spring volume & progressiveness adjustability. MC² compression separates high/low-speed compression to tune out brake dive and firm it up for less technical riding. And TPC rebound damping rounds out return adjustability after those smaller or bigger hits.
The Manitou Mastodon Pro LE gets a Hexlock SL thru-axle with 15x150mm spacing, and features Post Mount disc brake tabs for a 180mm rotor (up to 203mm).
Topping it all off, the entire system is designed to offer reliable suspension performance down to -40°F/-40°C (a convenient international base point, right?)
Manitou Mastodon Pro LE – Pricing & availability
For this coming winter, Manitou has given the Mastodon Pro EXT a LE limited edition finish inspired by its frigid weather origins in white, gray & black snow camo. Only 300 LE forks have been made, so get them before they are gone for $1050.
Regular edition black Mastodon Pro forks are also available for $950 or Comp forks for $725 – both in standard or extended lengths and 80-150mm of travel (150mm used to be OEM-only, but are now offered in Pro builds too).
