Intense 6.6 or Santa Cruz Nomad

Both are good bikes. The Nomad is probably a little better in rougher decents, and the 6.6 is probably a little better in really tight terrain...but I bet neither gives up much to the other in either place. I'm on a Nomad since January. It's an awesome bike.

This thread is "spot-on" with the added specialized wrinkle. I'm looking at getting a second bike, that will primarly serve as a "freeride" rig but will occassionally be used for more epic trail rides. My criteria is over 6" of travel and under 32 lbs. From that I've narrowed my selection to the Nomad, the 6.6, or the Specialized Enduro.

I've got a 2004 Enduro (5" travel) and I love the way it descends, while being a competant climber. I split time between Hawaii (home of my Enduro) and the mainland (California, Colorado and Utah ... yeah, I've got it good!). When on the mainland I usually pay for good demo bikes (since the airlines rape me and it's fun to check out new bikes) and have spent significant time on VPP designs, but these were shorter travel bikes (spent significant time on 5.5, the Blur and the Spyder). In my experience on shorter travel bikes, I prefer to go downhill on the FSR design, but prefer the VPP for climbing.

Curious about others takes on the FSR design vs VPP for downhill since that's my focus. I know that Intense abandoned the FSR design for the VPP on their downhill rigs so it makes me wonder if my experience is biased. Others have thoughts on this?