Finally stopped messing around with this bike and got it out for a few pics. I knew it was a decent bike but it's been next to impossible to find info on it. Here's why:
"Ross" the bicycle company, in it's original form, went out of business and sold their name in 1989. What happened after that is not all that well documented, although from a mountain bike standpoint it is fairly well known that they produced some very nice "Signature Series" bikes in the mid nineties, that I believe sold near the $1K price point almost 20 years ago. Unfortunately, since this bike has Deore DX components on it it was almost certainly manufactured between 90 and 93, between the time Ross went out of business and Rand started making the Signature bikes (94-95).
The Mt. McKinley was always the top of the line Ross mountain bike. I did manage to find a blurry picture of the front of a 1991 Ross catalog which looks to have this exact same bike on it, unfortunately the catalog is being sold by BBC bikes, and I refuse to pay $40 for it. I'm fairly confident the bike is a 1991, and from what others remember from the time, it probably sold in the $700 range. I'm not positive, but I think at that time the DX group might have been the top Shimano mountain group, which was later demoted to 2nd in line behind the XT group. The frameset is a Sakae Litage bonded aluminum setup, also hard to find info on, but the info I have found suggests it was held in high regard.
None of this stopped me from throwing a set of Streamliner tires on it, of course. Even though they are shot, I did retain the original Ross MTB tires that were on it.
More pics:
