The Festka One | Cascade Bicycle Studio

Festka One Framesets

Zac and Terry have each been riding their Feskta One framesets for about eight months. The wet winter has interrupted their time on their “sunny day” bikes but they have nice sampling of the performance and sat down to share their impressions of the newest brand in the studio.

Zac – The Festka One is the best carbon bike you’ve never heard about. It’s hard to give credibility to a round tubed carbon bike from a manufacturer that isn’t a household name, but Festka has done their homework. First off, a Festka carbon bike is fabricated in a very different way than most carbon bikes.

Rather than using a bladder mold, a Festka uses filament wound carbon strands to create a tune to exacting ride specifications. This winding of carbon fibers give the bike a lively acceleration, all day comfort, and metal-bike durability. The handling of the One is intelligent and intuitive. The acceleration is like driving an electric car….no lag, no hangups, pure speed.

Terry – Yeah, I think Zac sums it up very well. Each time I ride my Festka One I am just blown away that the bike has no short comings. No trading this for that. All five boxes are check; light, stiff, comfortable, great handling and beautiful aesthetics. It is the kind of bike you forget is there when you are riding tempo on a great day, it becomes apart of you.

If you are real bicycle geometry wonk you look at some of the numbers that will affect handling and you think, “the Festka One is going to be a bit of nervous bike that needs to be tended too.” I have ridden other bikes with similar geometry and found this to be true. I was really pleased to find this was not the case with Festka One. The bike is very stable but can just rip fast corners and descents. When we did the Festka Tour in Portland and San Francisco we rode some very demanding descents. I have never leaned a bike over so hard and had it feel like it was on a rail stuck to the road. Total command.

I mentioned my initial observations about the geometry and my actual experiences on the bike to Michael Mourecek, co-founder of Festka, when they visited in Seattle. He shook his head with acknowledgement and a big smile. Then he went on to explain that the tubing supplied by CompoTech are so resilient to pedaling and corner forces they can build a bike with more aggressive handling while creating greater underlying stability. I can personally tell you the results are awesome.