Pole's Upcoming Taival Is an All-Mountain Machine Built With Timeless and Recyclable Steel

Folks, steel is definitely not like disco, dead. As a matter of fact, I've been noticing a rather powerful wave in the cycling industry that focuses on nothing other than steel as a building material for frames and sometimes forks. The latter is not the case with Pole Bicycles' Taival because this machine feels most at home among rocky and root-ridden trails, wild bushes, and trees, and keeping up with the local wildlife as if you're trying to hunt down dinner, and that typically requires a suspension fork.

If the name Pole Bicycles is new to you, once we're done with this article, you'll probably jot their name down under your to-buy category. Considering this Finnish cycle manufacturer is known for introducing a couple of industry firsts into the game, it should pay to keep yourself in the loop with what they're releasing onto the market. All that brings us to the Taival, meaning "journey" in Finnish. With a name like that, you can already start to get an idea of the sort of machine that Pole has in store for us.

I already mentioned that this bugger features a frame built from steel, and that's a big thumbs up for the bike. Aside from the inherent properties that steel brings to the cycling game, another benefit of this material is that it's completely recyclable, an ability Pole integrates into all their machines.

However, as a rider, I don't really care about what happens to a bike after I'm done with it; I want to know what it can bring to the table and how it will feed my need for adrenaline and the great outdoors. Without riding the bike, one way we can determine what it can do is to look at the frame's geometry.

Overall, the bike boasts a rather slack head tube angle of 64.5 degrees. So to place you in the center of the bike and on top of the action, a seat tube angle of 75.5 degrees is used. For the K2 size bike, 480 mm (18.9 in) of reach and a stack of 659 mm (26 in) are in place. This size will also yield a frame that weighs around 3 kg (6.61 lbs).

Now, like most other cycle manufacturers, Pole sells this beast bare, no components added. If, however, you decide not to go through any trouble putting together your own bike, complete builds are available too. Since Pole literally sold out of all 2021 Taivals, a re-stock is coming, and the complete build does revolve around Sram and RockShox components.

A GX Eagle Lunar cassette with a 10-52T range supports a GX Eagle chain that's manipulated by an Eagle Lunar derailleur and shifter. The fork this crew drops as standard is a Lyrik Select with 150 mm (5.9 in) of travel. This much travel on a hardtail means only one thing: this bugger is built to take you on one heck of a ride.

Regarding the sort of prices you can expect for the upcoming release, I was pressed somewhat hard to find any details or info. Nonetheless, some dealerships still sell last year's models for around $3,000 (€2,990 at current exchange rates). That price is yet another benefit of using steel as a building material, and if I may input a tad of my opinion on the use of steel, I feel we're only going to be seeing more and more machines built out of the stuff.