Alex Lavallée did not set out to start a bike company. The Montreal industrial designer, who spends his days designing hockey gear for CCM, just wanted a real mountain bike for his kids. Not a tank. Not a toy. A proper trail bike that would let them ride the same kind of terrain he loves. He couldn’t find it. So he built it.
Lahyla’s first two models, the Drew 24 and the Drew Mullet 26×24, promise everything we expect on adult bikes, only sized and tuned for smaller riders. Full carbon, four-bar suspension, Manitou dampers that work for light riders, proportional parts and the small stuff parents care about, like bottle cages that fit a real bottle on a 24.
What we tested and where
We spent time with both bikes and watched 11-year-old Colin Konings absolutely rip the Drew 24 at the local pump track. Then he tried riding it at Horseshoe Valley bike park during a summer camp there. He loved it then graduated to the Drew Mullet. Colin was able to lift it onto the chairlift by himself; something he couldn’t do with the rental bikes he’d been riding. He raced it in the dual slalom race at Horseshoe Valley Bike Fest and got fifth. And by the end of the day he was jumping the slopestyle course (left over from Crankworx) that featured nine foot lips and 19 foot gaps.
“It was awesome,” Colin said. “Because it was so light. The brakes were phenomenal.”
His dad, Kevin, watched the progression in real time.
“He seemed very comfortable on the bike and just whipping the thing around,” Kevin said. “I don’t know if it was the weight, the geometry or the way the suspension was set, but he had a lot of confidence.”
On-trail feel
That’s the first thing you notice on these bikes; the weight. The Drew 24 is 24.5 pounds. The full-carbon frame makes lift-and-carry moments simple, but more important, it lets smaller riders move the bike in the air and change lines mid-corner. Colin cleared Party Train’s biggest jump on the first go. He actually over cleared it, then settled into it like he had been riding the feature all summer.
Grip and braking impressed our young tester. Narrower kid grips took a minute to adjust to, then felt normal. The lever reach is actually small-hand small, not “almost there” small. Both bikes come with short droppers, which Colin used constantly on steeps and roll-downs.
Suspension that finally wakes up for light riders
Lavallée and the engineers over…
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