I ride a sentinel in northern Vermont.
It’s perfect in my view. I have the cascade link so it’s basically the same as the v2. It’s very progressive with the link, and is poppy or stable depending on where you make it sit in the travel. It also corners really well. It can tend to take a bit of wide cornering arch, so you have to pay attention in some of the older school tight tech. Mine is aluminum with a heavy ass wheel set. Still climbs fine. I demoed a bunch of bikes this year and didn’t find anything that was better.