Comments on: Mountain Bike Disciplines

By: element22

element22 — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 02:26:17 +0000

Chilly once again the progressive HT bikes your talking about are purpose built for that and are a bit on the heavy side…Now can you imagine someone doing that 15 to 20ft on a box store special or a true XC bike. I wouldn’t dream of trying that with my XC bike, I could see it now ….Pretzels where I used to have wheels..LOL

By: trek7k

trek7k — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:12:20 +0000

Confusing to newbies? These division are confusing to me! I honestly hadn’t heard of “Trail” riding before Interbike this year - I always just lumped that stuff in with XC.

By: ChiliPepper

ChiliPepper — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:22:08 +0000

Ahh, I am not giving Trek a hard time or jumping your posting, but all these new disciplines are just confusing to newbies. It tends to be a bit confusing to many newbs and by adding even more disciplines and categories only confuses it even more. Yes, they really need to build a bike designed for all bike disciplines, minus the big hucks and gnarly high speed DH, thats what they have beefy bikes for that purpose. Of course they will always have the weight weenie class of bikes for racing, like with road bikes, but most riders want a bike that can handle all, a “Do All” kinda of bike. Of course you will pay the penalty in the climbing scenario with the more beefy bikes, but thats why you get your legs in shape and why they have lifts or shuttle service for these beefy bikes. I will admit they are getting much closer to building that “Do All” kind of bike, especially when the weights of most bikes are getting down lower.

Jeff, they huck HT bikes off of 15′ plus drops all the time. I see them all the time at Santos and at our local FR trail. I am getting a progressive HT at the end or beginning of this year and I will be hucking it of 10′ plus drops. Now there are HT bikes and FS bikes that I would not recommend hucking off a 10′ drop by no means.

By: trek7k

trek7k — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:36:10 +0000

Yeah, the whole point is that bikes can cover the spectrum and don’t have to be put into a single category like Trail or All-Mountain. Of course there are limits as element mentioned - you don’t want to huck a 10 foot drop on a hard tail

By: element22

element22 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:12:38 +0000

I think what trek7 was saying chilly is that the manufactures make these “guidelines” more for the less educated consumer as a guide..It gives the person who is looking into purchasing something that they can quickly gauge for themselves what the bike is most suitable for…Just like you said however there could be some people who would want to do more on a bike. But this guide will also cover the manufactures bottom when someone comes back and complains when they crack their frame when going over a 10ft drop on a XC hard tail one to many times. Or when they have to climb ever slope due to the excessive weight.

There are folks out there like your self that would rather have a bigger bike and ride it all the time for example and then people who are like myself who like to both go big and who like to also enjoy the climb up a hill…Although I do like mostly pointing down…he he … Shhhhh don’t tell my wife.

And if you look at the line up this year there are going to be many bikes that really will blur the lines. Such as the Giant Trance….Which could almost be considered a racer for some folks as well as a great trail bike. Or the Specialized enduro which I have seen folks do 20 - 30 foot expansions as well as climb decently enough to hang with the dude with the Trance..If you look at a lot of the new FR and DH bikes they are even coming down in weight, under 40Lbs.

Cheers..

By: ChiliPepper

ChiliPepper — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:15:35 +0000

Man am I getting tired of all this bike discipline stuff. It has spiraled way out of control by all means. What happened to the basic and simple bike disciplines like I have posted in the Singletrack.com forums? I remember the days of taking my bike and doing just about all of these “Todays Disciplines”. Granted I never took a road bike and did the things I did on my BMX, well sort of anyways, but I did take my first ever MTB (a HT) and did just about everything I do now, and it was a rigid. It is just getting crazy with all these categories and disciplines we have now. I’m sorry, but if every one just sticks to the basic frame categories and bike disciplines and rides what they want and how they want to ride, we would not need all this mumble jumble in todays MTB’ing world we live in. Maybe I am speaking out of place here, but this is how I feel about all this mumble jumble, and it really takes all the fun out of true MTB’ing.

Either get a bike for XC riding, a bike for FR to DH riding, or just get a bike that fits into both of those disciplines, like a trail bike/slopestyle. The latter half will do all! Jeez, its real simple, if all you want to do is race a MTB or just ride some off-road trails, then stick with a lighter weight weenie XC bike, but if you want a beefer bike that can still climb but take on some FR or some real DH runs, then stick with a trail bike/slopestyle. Now, if you want a full blown bike that can take the punishment of FR or gnarly DH runs, then stick with the beefer FR/DH bikes, but remember, they are not a climbing bike (unless you have legs of superman), but made to be shuttled up. I will say one thing, and I do not have anything against 29ers, but the 26ers and 29ers do not have a place together racing. They need to be a separate class of bike racing. Just my two cents…..Peace Out!

By: spazjensen

spazjensen — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:11:31 +0000

hey the new coil air from kona does a pretty dang near job of covering the whole spectrum. i hvae been seriously looking at it as my next bike to buy. It changes from like 6 inches (i think) to more than 7.5 inches. And it offers lockout on the suspension parts so you could potentially use it as a XC bike as well as maybe the lighter side of DH