Sanity Seems to be Returning to Mountain Bike Companies

I ran headlong into this last year while buying the Anthem: nearly everything had 6"+ of suspension and weighed well into the mid-30's range.  Sorry, at my age if riding something takes 6" of suspension, I'm just walking it.  Or they were over-built hardtails for some damned jumping-around thing that nobody over 17 does.  Or... it's a fly-weight 110mm XC race machine that considerably lightens the load further by removing many, many dead presidents from one's wallet.  (yeah, guess which one I picked, and while it is cool to know that my bike cost more than my F-150, it's still... yeah)  While coming in from a test ride of a Cannondale, I actually heard the store guy arguing with a 50-something would-be buyer that six inches travel on a slack frame is the new hotness and perfectly suited for Munson (where anything over 2" is a waste) and that he'd just have to adapt.  The customer walked.  For that matter, so did I.  That razor-sharp Cannondale was a good 30% more than I was looking to spend.

Well, not everyone lives in the mountains of Colorado and California, and the times they are a'changing.  Two months back it was noted here that XC is Suddenly Cool Again, next here comes a company making a damned good sub-$2k gravel bike with a chromoly frame no less.  Now Specialized has made an about-face with a new 4" travel full-sus addition to their Chisel line for about half the price of the above-mentioned flyweight XC race bikes (link goes to an article at Singletracks online bike mag).  Things are definitely looking up.