As
@jack smith says, that Spesh frame is very upgradable. I'd learn the ins and outs of off road riding on it and upgrade bits as they wear out. The excess weight comes from cheap components as the bike has been built to a price point, and that will mean coil sprung fork and porky drivetrain and wheels/tyres. Depending on the terrain he wants to ride on he'll soon discover that searching the Internet for used bargains is the way to go, with a decent used XT crankset costing about the same as a new Deore, if not less. Same with wheels, a decent used pair of hope hoops will set him back about £150-180, and an air sprung Reba or whatever about £150-200. Those three things alone will save A kilo to two kilos of mass over the OEM kit, then a decent saddle like a Spoon will save another 100g, seatpost another 100g, bars about another 100, tyres, run tubeless anothe 200-300g if he treats it to some quality ones over the OEM knobblies. It all adds up and pretty soon he's back in entry level race weights.
As for modern bikes being encumbered with excess weight, that's not down to progress
@Cycleops , that's down to low budget. My steel framed Hardtail weighs just over 11kg. I used to ride a rigid forked MTB, but it's very limiting, in terms of speed, comfort and traction. The Soul will go down a good amount of red and black graded stuff, and there's a local descent where I used to end up unable to see anything on the rigid because my eyeballs were jiggling too much. The Soul flies down barely batting an eyelid. As for the long travel full susser, well, I haven't found its limits yet. As
@meta lon says, embrace the change.
