About the Owner Craig Seekins

Craig is originally from Maine and lived in Bucksport during his grade school and college years. His father owned a small motorcycle repair shop where he helped during his summers in high school. He was accepted into the University of Maine College of Science and Engineering in 1978.

Here he obtained a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering
at the University of Maine at Orono, Maine May 1982.

Upon graduating and accepting employment to General Dynamics he moved to Connecticut to start his career.

From 1982 to 1996 Craig was with General Dynamics Electric Boat Division in Gtoton, Ct. In his last four years he was the lead engineer and Integration Team Leader for NSSN Submarine Weapon Stowage, Handling and Shipping Systems where he was responsible for the program planning, concept development, detail design, vendor procurement, construction and testing. Prior to this he was the Senior Engineer for the SSN21 Submarine responsible for concept development and presenting design study reports to the Navy, he was also assigned to Navsea in Washington, DC as a design team member of the Navsea Preliminary Design Team for SSN21 Submarine.

Currently, Craig is president and CEO of Avalanche Downhill Racing Suspension and Racing Suspension Products(RSP). In this capacity he is responsible for development of new products, manufacturing, procurement and testing of the hydraulic dampers, suspension systems and performance aftermarket products for shock absorbers.
Prior to Avalanche, from 1988 to 2002, Mr. Seekins was President and owner of C Cycle Suspension Service. In this capacity he oversaw the daily efforts of a New England based Motocross and ATV suspension tuning trackside service business.

 

History of Avalanche Suspension

Avalanche Downhill Racing was formed in 1998 by the owners of C Cycle Suspension and Wold Tool Engineering Racing (WTE). The objective was to design a Mountain Bike front suspension system with all the key design features developed by motocross technology. Craig the owner of C Cycle Suspension would provide the engineering and design skills and Eric Wold of WTE would provide the machining and insights as well as industry contacts as a NORBA expert racer.

We formed a National race team the attended many national races for the next 2 years where the team members sported our MTN-8 forks and the MTN-3 rear shock on our custom designed Cortina frames.

 

Our team exposure warranted us to design and develop our production DHF-8 and DHS shocks which became known as the standard for all future shocks and forks to be compared to.

_____ _________

We introduced the industry to a high/low speed compression adjuster system and set some of the new standard sizes and shock overall space requirements for designing frames around. In 2010 we offered our technology to upgrade other manufactures forks with our DHF cartridge technology. This became know as the Avalanche Advantage Program and put our company in the main stream limelight.

We then started to recognize the need to develop upgrade kits and performance parts to modify other manufacturers shocks to perform like our shocks. This has continued to drive our industry to take notice of the performance improvements and our speed sensitive theories we have developed to force the industry to achieve higher standards offered by today's suspension builders.