After our 15-year-old Subaru finally bit the dust in 2021, we needed a new car. There were a lot of things to like about the new Volkswagen we chose, but some things — like emergency braking when the car senses an impending collision — were just plain annoying and confusing. Especially when trying to back out of a parking space with a bike rack attached to the car.

I posed this question on the Singletracks forums, back when forums were a thing, asking how to prevent my car from auto-braking with a hitch rack attached. Of course, the answer is simple — just cancel the safety feature by tapping the “X” on the backup camera screen — and reverse as usual. On my vehicle, disabling parking assistance disables the backup camera, too, so I need to turn my head the old-fashioned way to back out safely.

If you don’t cancel backup assistance while in reverse, the vehicle — at least in my case — will go just a few feet before coming to a stop and shifting itself into park. You can put it in reverse again, and go a few more feet, but that gets annoying. Because the car stops abruptly, even at slow speeds, it feels like you’re hitting something, which definitely gets the heart pumping.

While drafting this article, I did some additional testing and found that if I tried backing up in a straight line, emergency braking wasn’t engaged; the vehicle only beeps and shows a warning on the screen. However, if I turn the wheel even just a little bit while in reverse, the car almost immediately brakes and shifts into park.

Bottom line: For those who are wondering how to back up with a bike rack attached to your super safe, super smart car, just hit the “X” and re-take full control.

The article How do I prevent my car from emergency braking with a bike rack attached? appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Rounding out this week’s mountain bike team news, professional downhill mountain biker Marine Cabirou has landed at Canyon following a successful run riding for Scott. Cabirou notched three podium finishes on the World Cup circuit in 2024, good enough for a second place finish to Valentina Höll in the overall points standing for the year. The French rider joins Canyon CLLCTV DH team mentor Fabien Barel who says he’s “stoked to have Marine with us, this partnership will raise the bar for both her and the team in 2025.”

After saying goodbye to Trek, Swiss rider Jolanda Neff is joining Cannondale Factory Racing (CFR) for the 2025 race season. In a release announcing the move, Cannondale says “With Jolanda joining the ranks, the squad takes on a whole new dimension this year. The pioneering performance structure developed by team boss Phil Dixon is now supporting Jolanda in the next chapter of her racing career. CFR were the first XC-racing team to have both a dedicated performance director and a technical coach in-house.”

It’s unclear from the release what the “next chapter” will look like exactly for the 13-time XCO World Cup race winner and six-time Swiss National champion. Neff struggled to make the podium on the World Cup circuit last year, though she came close with a fourth place finish at the MTB Marathon World Championships in Showshoe, West Virginia.

FMD and Orbea consolidate DH race teams, and Brett Rheeder teases new MTB company

In other news, FMD Racing and Orbea are teaming up for the 2025 World Cup DH race season. With various pro race programs cutting back or pausing operations, the move to consolidate could mean one less team in the pits this year.

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Finally, ICYMI Brett Rheeder is starting a mountain bike company which he plans to launch this year. We covered this in our email newsletter, which you can preview right here. Sign up for the Singletracks email list to get exclusive content like this, plus all the top articles of the week, delivered to your inbox.

The article Marine Cabirou joins Canyon, Jolanda Neff lands with Cannondale appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

The United Kingdom’s biggest mountain bike park is planning a major expansion over the next 5-10 years. Bike Park Wales (BPW), in conjunction with landowner Natural Resources Wales (NRW), has a long-term plan to grow the park both within and beyond its existing footprint. 

Bike Park Wales is often considered the flagship mountain bike facility in the UK. Founded by Rowan Sorrell, his partner Martin Astley, and their wives, the park opened in 2013 and has been welcoming thousands of UK riders a year to its ever-growing network of mountain bike trails served by an all-day shuttle uplift service.

30km of new shuttle-served trails and 24km of e-bike trails are planned.

The existing footprint of the park, in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, is getting roughly 30km of new trails, while e-bikers are getting 24km of new dedicated trails on the other side of the hill on a parcel of NRW land. 

Singletracks.com spoke to founder Rowan Sorrell about the ambitious plans for the site, as he and his team were elbow-deep in repair work following damage from a recent storm.

“We’re planning to add 30 new descending trails in total, increasing the overall length of our rideable trails by roughly 30km,” said Sorrell.  “The bulk will be within the current footprint of the park — using nice bits of woodland that we’ve always wanted to connect.”

Sorrell estimates the work will take between five and 10 years in total, but a couple of new features are already built and open, including a blue trail called Funnel and a new skills area in an abandoned quarry. 

The increased popularity of the park with e-bike users has prompted Sorrell and the team to plan some trails just for them. 

“The 24km e-bike loop will be on the other side of the hill, descending into the next valley. It wasn’t workable to build trails there before because an uplift road just wouldn’t work, but e-bikers don’t need that, so we’re building them their own loop, still accessible from the main trailhead. That’s coming a little later, but we’re excited to give e-bikers their own trails.” 

The expansion won’t provide increased rider capacity but will instead give existing users more variety. Sorrell hopes it will give riders more reason to stay for longer. “We’re hoping more people will come for weekend or multi-day trips to try and ride everything. We’ve been here for over 10 years now, but we want riders to know that there’s always going to be more to ride. We’re always evolving the trails here.”

Building trails and rewilding the land — at the same time

Alongside the commercial expansion, the BPW team is also involved in a major rewilding project for the site in an effort to redress the impact of years of commercial forestry on the land. In conjunction with NRW, native broadleaf trees are gradually being reintroduced as the commercial tree felling is simultaneously scaled back.

Sorrell believes the rewilding will help make the site and its land more resilient to some of the factors that have threatened and even closed other UK mountain bike facilities in recent years, such as nearby Revolution Bike Park.

“It takes a cultural shift within forestry to stop thinking of the woodland as a crop. But we’ve been working with our landowners for over five years now, and we’re starting to plant and favor native broadleaf species across the site — birch, mountain ash, oaks, and alders,” said Sorrell. “It’s a long-term transition to a natural and wild environment. Biodiversity increases our resilience to disease, encourages more wildlife, and makes for stronger soil and roots for when we’re hit by storms. We’re the first MTB centre to do this at scale with Natural Resources Wales.”

One step forward

Despite the backdrop of controversy over NRW’s plans to close some of the country’s older mountain bike parks, such as Coed-y-Brenin and Nant-y-Arian, Sorrell is positive about the future of Welsh mountain biking, and hopes BPW’s work can help foster a more MTB-positive culture in Wales. 

“Me and the team at Bike Park Wales share everyone’s pain  about the closures — it’s a difficult time for those facilities and for the commercial life of everyone involved,” said Sorrell. “We worked hard with Natural Resources Wales to show that more trails would bring more revenue from uplift tickets, accommodation, and income for local businesses. […] We want to strengthen the argument that mountain bikers bring in as much revenue as felling trees.”

Here’s hoping the expansion and continued success of Bike Park Wales help the Welsh authorities see that mountain biking is worthy of national support. 

And if you’ve never ridden there, put it on your bucket list. It’s truly world-class. 

Bike Park Wales quick facts

• Bike Park Wales is the largest uplift mountain bike park in the UK.
• It’s located west of Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park.
• Over 40 purpose-built downhill trails ranging from green to pro lines, including the longest green trail in the UK.
• The uplift runs daily from 10am-4pm, taking riders up to the summit at 491m.
• Around 100,000 riders per year visit the park to ride, get coaching, shop, and eat.
• Visit BikeParkWales.com for more information

The article A 54km trail expansion is underway at the UK’s biggest mountain bike park appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Beginning on January 8th and extending through January 15th, “the entire Angeles National Forest is temporarily closed for public safety and the protection of natural resources,” according to the US Forest Service. The Angeles National Forest is one of the most visited national forests in the USA, with over 3 million visitors per year.

The forest closure comes as multiple wildfires burn unchecked in the Los Angeles area. According to the LA Times, there are at least five fires burning: the Palisades Fire, currently at 17,234 acres; the Eaton fire, currently at 10,600 acres; the Hurst fire, currently at 671 acres; the Lidia fire, currently at 348 acres; and the Sunset fire, currently at 42 acres. The Palisades and Eaton fires are dominating headlines, having burned more than 2,000 structures and forced at least 180,000 residents to evacuate. So far, five fatalities have already been reported from the wildfires, but accurate numbers are not yet known.

In addition to destroying homes, the Eaton fire is currently burning up the sides of the San Gabriel Mountains in the Angeles National Forest and is impacting some of LA’s most famous mountain bike trails. Several key Los Angeles landmarks are located in this region, and the LA Times reports that the Mt. Wilson Observatory is “imperiled” by the fire.

“The fire has reached the mountaintop, and firefighters on the ground are working to protect the observatory and the broadcast antenna,” said Tim Thompson, a volunteer with the Mt. Wilson Institute, which manages the site.

The San Gabriels have seen many wildfires over the years, and the Mt. Wilson Observatory specifically had a serious wildfire scare in 2020 when the Bobcat fire came within 500 feet of the observatory.

The article All trails are closed in the Angeles National Forest as LA burns appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

There’s no mistaking it now: the YT Izzo is a trail bike. When Singletracks reviewed the first Izzo back in 2020, it seemed the brand known for building rad bikes for “young talent” was making a play for the XC kids. However, the latest YT Izzo builds pair longer, 140mm forks with 130mm of rear suspension travel for an updated bike that’s clearly a trail biker’s bike.

Looking at the latest YT Izzo models, the frame appears largely unchanged. The flip chip is still there, and while the 65.7° head tube angle is slightly slacker than it was before, this is likely just a result of the longer-travel fork. YT notes they’re now offering size-specific chainstays on the Izzo, though really only two (432mm for sizes small through large, and 437mm for sizes XL and XXL). Core 1 and 2 builds feature a carbon front triangle paired with an aluminum rear end, while the Core 3 frames are fully carbon.

New accessory mounts have been added beneath the top tube, and all frames ship with an integrated Fidlock bottle mount.

In a release announcing the Izzo updates, YT notes they’re doubling down on Shimano drivetrains, with all three Izzo builds sporting parts from the Japanese component brand. It’s worth noting, however, that YT also added UDH compatibility this time around, for those who might want to go with a SRAM drivetrain in the future.

All three YT Izzo models are offered in five different sizes that should fit riders between 5’1.5″ and 6’7.5″. With prices starting at $2,499, the latest YT Izzo looks to provide excellent value overall.

Check the YT website for more build details.

The article Updated YT Izzo trail bike “doubles down on Shimano drivetrains,” adds travel appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Outdoor retailing behemoth REI Co-op announced on January 8, 2025, that it is exiting its Experiences business, a division that offered adventure travel, day tours, and classes for over 40 years. While Experiences wasn’t well-known for mountain bike trips, it did offer several mountain biking itineraries, including two in Arizona and one in Colorado, according to a recent search.

REI’s struggle for profitability

This decision comes after REI has struggled to maintain profitability in recent years, posting $311 million in losses in 2023 and $164.7 million in losses in 2022. 

Eric Artz, REI’s president and CEO, shared in a letter to employees that while the co-op made strides toward financial recovery in 2024, the Experiences business remained unprofitable. Serving just 40,000 people in 2024, less than 0.4% of REI’s customers, the division posted millions of dollars in losses every year, even during its peak in 2019.

“To build a thriving co-op, we need a sustainable economic model that supports our core mission,” wrote Artz. “Unfortunately, the Experiences business, despite its value to many, does not align with this goal.” Artz wrote that they analyzed a plethora of different business strategies to allow Experiences to attain profitability but that none of the models indicated the business could be profitable.

Artz also shared that REI “will be close to break-even for both Pre-Dividend Operating Income (PDOI) and Free Cash Flow (FCF)” in 2024.

428 jobs will be eliminated

The closure will impact 428 employees — 180 full-time and 248 part-time. Full-time employees will continue to receive salaries through March 9, 2025, and severance packages, while part-time staff will remain benefits-eligible through January. The company has committed to supporting employees during the transition with healthcare extensions, outplacement services, and future job opportunities within the co-op.

Artz noted that some full-time employees already split their time between Experiences and working in-store, and those employees “will have a conversation with their store manager later today to learn what options exist for each employee to continue employment in a store capacity based on their employment status and ability to meet the necessary availability standards.”

REI is also reaching out to customers and travel partners to facilitate refunds and resolve outstanding commitments.

REI will refocus on its core strengths, which don’t include cycling

In his letter, Artz emphasized the importance of returning to REI’s roots. They plan to focus on three areas: driving growth in their priority activities, investing in tools to help them effectively manage inventory, and “continuing to enhance the customer experience online and in stores with investments in areas including personalization and visual merchandising.”

Notably, Artz listed REI’s “priority activities” as “Camp and Backpack, Run, and Hike and Outside Life.” Despite investments in cycling generally in recent years, including launching the Co-Op brand of bikes and partnering with Canyon, it appears that Artz still views the cycling demographic as peripheral to REI’s core focus.

The article REI eliminates 428 jobs as it closes Experiences business appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

In high school, I was a straight-A student, except for a single class: Lifetime Fitness, also known as physical education (PE). To be clear, I was a top track and field athlete at my school, and easily the fastest runner in my PE class, but according to the coach, I whiffed the final written project. The assignment was to come up with a physical fitness plan, and I filled mine with outdoor activities like hiking and mountain biking, which, in hindsight, I suppose wasn’t practical given the suburban environment where I grew up. Fail.

Fortunately, PE instruction has changed a lot over the years.

Looking over my own kids’ standards-based curriculum recently, I came across this nugget from Shape America and the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE):

Personally, I can’t think of another sport that delivers all five of these benefits in a single activity the way mountain biking does. See, I told you so, Coach Johnson*! Consider this my make-up exam.

Mountain biking is healthy

Of all the physical activity benefits, health has to be number one. Obviously, riding bikes is great for cardiovascular health, but we’re also seeing that there are tremendous mental health benefits too. Not only that, it’s one of a few activities most people can and do continue into old age, unlike, say, running marathons or powerlifting.

Riding bikes is fun

Looking around, it seems the biggest barrier to regular physical activity for the average person is that it just isn’t fun. If the only way to get in shape was to exercise in a stuffy gym several times a week, I would choose to sit on the couch too. Mountain bikers find plenty of enjoyment in the sport, though to be fair, it’s not usually that way at first (see next item).

Challenging is an understatement

If the commercials on television are to be believed, mountain biking is easy. Just throw a bike on your car, drive to the nearest scenic mountain vista, and start coasting! The reality is, riding a mountain bike isn’t easy, and it takes practice. Like, years of practice. Decades of practice. As soon as we overcome one MTB challenge, whether it be physical or technical, there’s another one to tackle.

To some that might seem daunting, but as the NASPE and others suggest, this is actually a feature among the most effective physical activities, not a bug. Walking, for example, is great for health, but clearly, there isn’t much challenge involved for most people, which means there’s little sense of accomplishment in the end. Of course, an activity can be so challenging that it becomes frustrating, which isn’t ideal either. Mountain biking, for most people, strikes just the right balance.

MTB style

Self-expression in MTB brings to mind Red Bull Rampage, where the riders design creative lines to showcase their own riding style and talents. But it’s the same for all riders, albeit on a much smaller stage. I love following different riders down familiar trails to see how they approach the ride. Some straight-arrow through the turns for maximum efficiency, while others jump and jib over every tiny rock and root. It’s as if the trail is a blank canvas, and we’re all free to express our own style in motion.

Unrelated to the physical value of mountain biking — but then again, maybe related — is self-expression through our bikes and equipment. Unless you’re racing, there isn’t a uniform, and most of us see our bikes as an extension of ourselves, personality quirks and all. There’s some truth to the saying that when you look good, you ride good.

Mountain bikers do it in groups

I suppose mountain biking in a group is really just a bonus, since this particular PE standard tacks on social interaction as an and/or proposition. Riding alone, we get all of the benefits listed above, but the cake is truly iced when riding with friends. For the extroverts in the room, this naturally feeds #2 (fun), but even for those who are perfectly happy to ride solo, there can be benefits to social interaction. At the very least, being nice and saying hi to others on the trail comes naturally for most mountain bikers.

Moved to a new town? Just connect with some local mountain bikers and you’ll make new friends. Bored or lonely? Organize a group ride or volunteer for a trail work day. Keep in mind that a lot of us came to mountain biking because we didn’t fit in elsewhere, so don’t be shy.

Mountain biking as the new standard

This PE standard, which has been adopted almost verbatim by states and school districts around the US, wasn’t written with mountain biking in mind specifically, though it does make a good argument for people of all ages to give it a shot. Personally, I’m convinced there’s no better activity for the “physically literate individual” than mountain biking. I give it an A+.

* Not his real name, because I don’t remember it.

The article Mountain biking by the book: MTB might just be the perfect physical activity appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

In my review of the 2024 $4,899 Marin Rift Zone XR trail bike last year, I wrote, “Does it deliver a killer parts spec at a value price? Absolutely.”

Now that Jenson USA has the Rift Zone XR on sale for $3,299.94, my answer is an emphatic “hell yeah!”

As far as the components go, the obvious star is the SRAM GX Eagle Transmission wireless electronic drivetrain. Prior to this bike going on sale, the cheapest GX Eagle Transmission-equipped mountain bike we had seen was the Trek Fuel EX for $3,999 — and the Marin XR beats that price by $600!

The rest of the build kit is solid enough, with SRAM Code Bronze 4-piston brakes, a RockShox Lyrik Select+ fork, and a TranzX dropper post. The cockpit and wheels are Marin-branded and work just fine, though buyers will probably want to upgrade or replace these items over time.

The aluminum alloy Marin Rift Zone XR frame features mounts for a single water bottle inside the front triangle, internal cable routing, and modern geometry overall. IMO, what really makes the frame is the killer paint job, which has a nice playful and retro vibe.

Sizes small through XL are currently in stock, according to Jenson USA, though it’s likely once these are gone, they’re gone.

• 150/130mm suspension travel front/rear
• Geometry highlights: 65.5° HTA, 77° effective STA, 515mm reach (size XL, tested)
• Build highlights: SRAM GX Eagle Transmission drivetrain, SRAM Code Bronze 4-piston brakes, RockShox Lyrik Select+ fork
• Weight: 15.7kg (34.6lb) size XL as tested
• Price: $4,899 $3,299.94
• Buy from Jenson USA

The article New low: $3,300 for Marin Rift Zone trail bike with GX Transmission appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Andreas Kolb joins the YT Mob

Austrian downhill mountain biker Andreas Kolb is moving to the YT Mob for the 2025 World Cup season. Previously sponsored by Atherton Racing, Kolb notched two podium finishes in 2024, first at Les Gets and then two months later at Loudenvielle.

“The move to the MOB was a no-brainer!,” Kolb said in a release “The team already feels like family, and I’m completely aligned with the bike and brand. I’m already excited for what we can achieve together, but winning a second World Cup with the new team would be a dream for 2025.”

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Zerode Racing suggests UCI rule changes solidified decision to withdraw from DH series

This week Zerode Racing officially announced via Instagram that the team will not be competing in the 2025 UCI season. The brand writes, “We learned so much, had an absolute blast, and we’re already hungry for more. With the new rule changes, it’s one and done for Zerode Racing as a UCI team — but stay tuned, as this won’t be the last time you see Zerode at the World Cups.”

The New Zealand-based brand is known for designing innovative gearbox-driven mountain bikes and has gained a dedicated following among riders.

The article Kolb joins The Mob, Zerode Racing is “one and done” [DH team news] appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Top mountain bikers on the men’s World Cup cross-country circuit could have their hopes for a 2025 World Championship title dashed if Mathieu van der Poel has his way.

The pro rider, with World Championship titles in cyclocross, road, and gravel to his name, is looking to add mountain bike World Champ to his resumé. Van der Poel recently told Sporza, “If I could choose, I would like to become world champion mountain biker this year. I haven’t succeeded yet, and it keeps playing in the back of my mind.”

Under 2025 rules, starting positions 33-40 at the XCO World Championship race are available to riders in the top 20 of the UCI road individual world ranking, and top 10 of the UCI cyclocross ranking, allowing van der Poel a chance to qualify for the race without competing in the overall XCO series. Van der Poel is a member of Belgium-based team Alpecin-Deceuninck, sponsored by Canyon.

Jenny Rissveds joins Canyon CLLCTV XC

In other team news, Swedish mountain biker and 2016 Olympic gold medal winner Jenny Rissveds is joining Canyon CLLCTV XC this year. Previously racing on Ibis bikes, Rissveds will move to the Canyon Lux World Cup CFR Team bike, the same model Mathieu van der Poel has raced in the past. Rissveds notched two podium finishes in 2024 XCO Elite races, including first place in the first race of the season.

The article Mathieu van der Poel could upend 2025 MTB World Championship podium appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

The Pilot Hill trail system rises directly above downtown Laramie, Wyoming, and just to the east, the Happy Jack Recreation Area also offers a slew of singletrack mountain bike trails. Beyond Happy Jack, a short dirt road connection leads to a third trail system known as Vedauwoo. There was no good way to connect these three trail networks until the recent construction of a 7.5-mile trail created a seamless singletrack connection between Pilot Hill and Happy Jack. The new trail is known as either the “Pole Mountain Connector” or “Pilot Hill Connector,” depending on who you ask.

Singletrack connectivity will help increase tourism revenue in downtown Laramie.

The impetus behind the project was to help increase tourism revenue in the town of Laramie. While outdoor recreation represents 4.2% of Wyoming’s GDP, outpacing agriculture, the impact of tourism is unevenly distributed across the state. Famous destinations like Jackson are crushed with tourists, while towns like Laramie yearn for more.

The construction of this critical trail connector now allows riders — both locals and tourists alike — to “leave [their] car in town,” according to Michael Kusiek, Executive Director of Wyoming Pathways. Instead of parking at a Forest Service trailhead, “You’re in Laramie now. You’re gonna have lunch, have a beer, maybe spend the night, whatever.” Kusiek says that this will create a direct economic impact on the community.

Thanks to the Pilot Hill Connector, mountain bikers can now pedal a “100-mile loop without touching pavement from Laramie,” according to Kusiek. “There’s already reports of people doing weekend-long bikepacking trips from town. That’s a whole new thing.”

It’s not enough to have trails nearby — people need to be able to ride directly from downtown.

Attracting people to downtown Laramie is the critical piece of the puzzle, and it’s not good enough to simply have trails nearby. “Curt Gowdy is a great example,” said Kusiek. “It’s a wonderful trail system, but it’s 25 miles from Laramie. So, people from the Front Range, they drive up, they go to Curt Gowdy, they ride, and they go home. They don’t come to Laramie.”

Curt Gowdy State Park’s visitation numbers have absolutely exploded since the mountain bike trails were built. According to an article on WyoFile.com, before the construction of the mountain bike trails, Curt Gowdy attracted roughly 50,000 visitors per year. By 2019 (after trail construction), the park tallied 221,000 visits. And then in 2020, “that tripled to 622,000.” Since then, the numbers have come down slightly, with 543,571 visitors in 2022.

Despite the massive swarms of out-of-state visitors heading to Curt Gowdy, it’s had no discernible impact on Laramie or even nearby Cheyenne. But now, with such incredible singletrack connectivity available directly from downtown, the city hopes to entice some of those half-million visitors to spend their dollars in Laramie.

The Pilot Hill Connector Trail

Work began on the Pilot Hill Connector Trail in 2021, and the ribbon cutting was officially held on October 5, 2024. Wyoming Pathways subcontracted Pointe Strategies to build the trail in two phases over three years, with the total project costing about $240,000.

Since Pilot Hill forms a crucial singletrack connection, it’s designed “to be really friendly to all user groups,” according to Grace Templeton, Community Engagement for Wyoming Pathways. “That includes hikers, horseback riders, [and] mountain bikers from either direction.”

“It’s definitely a blue trail,” said Kusiek. “You’re going to gain 800 feet, leaving the parking lot at Happy Jack to get to the end of phase one.” The trail passes through beautiful aspen groves and high desert meadows. Where the singletrack breaks out of the trees, riders will enjoy stunning views of the nearby mountains just across the Colorado border to the south and the endless Wyoming plains to the north.

Even though much of the terrain is a high desert environment, the trail peaks at 8,600 feet in elevation. It will typically be rideable from late May to late October, depending on snowfall.

Helping make the trail connection as seamless as possible, the trail passes through a grazing tunnel under a highway, which keeps riders from having to deal with dangerous high-speed car traffic.

Future trail development in Laramie

Wyoming Pathways has been working for years to rebuild and improve existing trails near Laramie, primarily in the Happy Jack trail system. These rebuilds have created delightful bike-optimized singletrack throughout the system. The completion of the Pilot Hill Connector is a major milestone for their work in Laramie, but they still have more work they’d like to accomplish.

“We did apply for a giant grant to repair the rest of the trails in Happy Jack that need to be remodeled, [but] we weren’t successful,” said Kusiek. He said that they’ll keep looking for funding so they can put the finishing touches on Happy Jack and this massive interconnected network of singletrack.

The article A new 7.5-mile singletrack connector opens up a 100-mile MTB loop ride in Wyoming appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

“Laterally stiff and vertically compliant.” That pretty much sums up the design brief for carbon mountain bike wheels over the past decade. It’s hard to say whether this mantra was marketing- or rider-driven, but looking back at Singletracks wheel reviews over the past five years, the Kool-Aid mustache is clearly visible.

“I like a wheelset without much lateral compliance,” Travis Reill wrote in this review of the Bontrager Line Elite 30 wheelset review last year. “Stiff wheelsets hold corners well, have me touching the brakes less, and inspire confidence overall.”

In this review of Stans Flow CB7 wheels, a set that boasts carbon rims with three times the lateral stiffness of equivalent aluminum rims, Gerow wrote, “Fortunately, the Flow CB7 wheels hold their lateral shape affirmatively, no matter what bike they’re on. Whether carving deep in a berm or hoping for traction across off-camber roots, the lateral stiffness adds useful precision to the bike’s front end.”

So it was surprising when, early last year, Race Face touted not lateral stiffness but compliance baked into their latest Era carbon wheelset. By September, Enve was making similar claims, saying that their fifth generation mountain bike wheelsets were roughly 50% less laterally stiff than their fourth generation wheels. (The M8 and M9 wheels saw even bigger vertical compliance gains, up to 77%.)

Which begs the question: is it better for mountain bike wheels to be laterally stiff or compliant? I decided to consult the experts to understand what’s going on, and as usual, the answer is more complicated and nuanced than the marketers’ talking points suggest. If we can say anything, it’s that the pendulum may have swung too far in the direction of lateral stiffness over the past decade, and carbon wheels are coming due for correction.

What is wheel compliance, and how is it determined?

Compliance is the ability of a mountain bike wheel to deform in response to an applied force. This can be determined using a simple test in a lab where wheel deflection is measured for a given amount of pressure applied. The opposite of compliance — stiffness — refers to a wheel’s ability to resist deformation.

When mountain bikers talk about carbon wheels, what we’re really referring to are wheelsets built with carbon rims. Bicycle wheels are complex systems that perform based on an interaction between the rim, spokes, and hub. Add in tires, with varying sizes, constructions, and pressures, and the picture gets even more complicated.

“You do have to look at it holistically,” said Matt Hornland, PR and Content Marketing Strategist for Race Face.

There isn’t a single compliance number that’s the right one for wheels, and even if there was, it would be impossible for designers to ensure it’s consistent across every tire configuration, let alone every bike frame and suspension setup. So, rather than target a specific compliance value in the lab, brands like Race Face and Enve look to riders to provide feedback on how a wheel feels on the trail and adjust from there.

What’s the difference between lateral and vertical compliance?

Put simply, lateral compliance measures how much a wheel deflects side-to-side in response to a force that’s applied perpendicular to the wheel’s direction of travel. In mountain biking, these forces tend to come into play when cornering as the wheel is tilted toward the ground and via side hits as tire and wheel pinball between rocks and roots.

Vertical compliance refers to how a wheel deforms up and down, for example, when landing a jump or encountering a square-edge hit. In the vertical direction, pedal forces have an effect as well, with cross-country riders, in particular, favoring more vertically stiff wheels to minimize bounce and maximize efficiency.

Carbon vs. aluminum rims

First and foremost, carbon rims promise weight savings compared to aluminum, though they need to be durable, too.

“People don’t necessarily think of carbon as durable right off the hop. It’s just a weight savings thing, but the reality is carbon is incredibly durable,” Hornland said. “You have a product that is meant to deform and act in a way that doesn’t take damage in the same way that an aluminum one does.”

Still, riders needed to be convinced, especially in the early days of carbon rims. Product designers engineered carbon rims so they were essentially indestructible, and slowly but surely, even the hardest chargers found carbon wheels to be durable enough for their needs.

“The big thing that was coming back was that if you make a bomb-proof wheel, it’s going to be pretty stiff. And the rims are doing a lot of that work,” Hornland said. On the flip side, “we were hearing the ride feel of aluminum was less harsh.”

The benefits of a more laterally compliant wheel

“Like many wheel manufacturers, in the past we understood vertical compliance of a wheel to be the source of improved ride feel,” Race Face wrote in the new Era wheelset sell sheet. However, based on additional testing and rider input, the design team came to the conclusion that a “comfortable ride feel in carbon wheels is the result of wheels flexing in the LATERAL plane, not just the vertical plane.”

Both Race Face and Enve say their pursuit of a more laterally compliant wheel is based on feedback from professional racers who are seeking an improved ride feel. More than once in our conversation, Hornland leans into the squishy concept of ride quality, which clearly can’t be measured in inches or pounds. On the surface, it sounds like a strange argument, especially in the context of professional mountain bike racing, where speed almost always takes a back seat to comfort.

In 2020, sponsored rider Amaury Pierron reportedly told Enve, “When I ride, I am looking so far down the trail, I need the bike to just move around everything while it’s underneath me. If I had wheels that could move around the rocks rather than bounce off of them, I could go faster.”

Enve connects the dots between ride feel and performance this way: “Increased compliance allows the rim to absorb vibrations in impacts, keeping the tire stuck to the ground. This increases grip in times when it’s needed most, like in braking bumps, blown-out corners, or rock gardens. The decrease in vibrations also lessens rider fatigue, allowing for longer and more competitive riding.” The argument is that increased compliance benefits all types of riders, from cross-country athletes experiencing less fatigue to gravity riders who gain more control and, hopefully, faster times.

Along these lines, “what is best for a World Cup-level DH pro is almost certainly not what’s best for the average mountain biker, even a pretty hardcore enthusiast,” Southern Wheelworks founder and former Singletracks contributor Dustin Gaddis told me.

With the Era wheelset, Race Face is mostly focused on delivering the lateral compliance that pro enduro riders say they want. “[Era] bridges into the trail category despite it being really aimed at all-mountain and enduro,” Hornland said. “So, are you going to take your enduro wheelset and expect it to feel like a cross-country wheelset? No, we have cross-country [specific] wheels.”

Aside from ride feel, adding compliance to a wheelset may also reduce the chance of pinch flats, though that’s really just a side benefit. In this review of Quai ISOS 33 enduro wheels, Gerow noted that while the wheels were laterally very stiff, “they do have enough give that I didn’t manage to flat any tires while testing them. Some rigid carbon rims won’t deflect or ovalize enough on impact, and all of the energy usually is taken up by the tire, resulting in a puncture.”

The thinking is that a compliant rim is able to get out of the way of the tire on impact compared to a more rigid design.

Drawbacks

Though increased rim compliance likely leads to fewer pinch flats, it could also cause wheels to wobble prematurely and increase wear and tear on spokes.

“The number one rule for keeping wheels true and not breaking spokes is [that] the spoke tension needs to be as high as possible, and as even as possible,” Gaddis said. He explains that whenever a rim flexes, spoke tension in the wheel drops, which causes fatigue and, eventually, spoke failure.

But what about performance? Circling back to those Singletracks wheel reviews, riders aren’t necessarily wrong when they suggest there’s a benefit to laterally stiff wheels. “Whether carving deep in a berm or hoping for traction across off-camber roots, the lateral stiffness adds useful precision to the bike’s front end,” Gerow wrote in that Stans CB7 Flow wheel review. Later, in a review of We Are One Union wheels, he wrote that product designers decided “the wheels would need to maintain fairly sharp lateral stiffness for precise steering and efficient sprinting.”

The cliché that a set of wheels feels like “riding on rails” is well-worn, but it’s an apt description for a wheel that tracks exactly where it’s pointed with little if any steering input being lost in translation to wheel flex. With the Race Face Era design, the product managers decided to give the front wheel more compliance than the rear wheel, which generally sees larger impacts. The more flexible front is said to deliver added comfort and control at the bars, though this runs counter to the thinking about steering precision, as evidenced by our own product testers and even some wheel designers.

Too much of a good thing

I asked Hornland if any of the prototypes proved to offer too much lateral compliance, and he couldn’t say for sure if test riders ever reached that point. Clearly, there are pros and cons when it comes to wheel stiffness, and trade-offs to be made, though Hornland and team try to look at performance as more than a zero-sum game.

“You have to make all these compromises. [But] we try not to use that word,” he said.

Looking at those Singletracks wheel reviews, riders clearly understand that there needs to be a compromise between lateral stiffness and compliance.

“If the wheelset is too stiff, the ride becomes harsh and rattles your bones,” Reill wrote in that 2024 Bontrager wheel review.

“With a true DH tire casing mounted up front, the lateral stiffness of the wheel and the tire’s sidewall combined was overkill for my taste,” Gerow said of the e*thirteen LG1 wheelset.

Are some mountain bike wheels too laterally stiff? Yes. Are others too laterally compliant? Also, yes. With no two riders alike and an infinite array of bike setups, there will always be room for improvement.

The article Carbon MTB wheels may be too stiff laterally, so some brands are starting to add more flex appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

This might be a bold claim, but I’m going to make it anyway: Wellington, New Zealand, is the best national capital city for mountain biking. After two weeks spent living and riding — car-free — in Wellington, I’ve come away incredibly impressed by both the quantity and the quality of the mountain bike trails surrounding New Zealand’s capital.

“I really feel that Wellington’s got something special,” said Jono Baddiley, Past President of the Wellington Mountain Bike Club (WMTBC) and long-time local mountain biker. Baddiley has been riding mountain bikes around Wellington since before they began building singletrack, which kicked off in the early 90s. “I can be off-road in two minutes from home. I can be off-road in about seven minutes from the office. And that’s an amazing feeling. I haven’t found any large city anywhere in the world that’s like that.”

A capital city, but not a big city

Working in Wellington’s favor is that even though it may be the national capital, it’s definitely not a “large city” on a global scale. According to the latest census data, Wellington City has a population of just 214,000, with a population of between 440,000 and 550,000 in the greater Wellington Metro Area, depending on how big you draw the circle.

Wellington’s geography helps keep the city confined and small. The city was built on a harbor protected from the forces of the ocean, and on the other three sides of town, short mountains rise steeply, hemming in the downtown skyscrapers. Of course, human development knows no bounds, and the houses and suburbs sprawl up the hillsides and spill over into the neighboring valleys.

Despite some urban sprawl, most of the ridges and steep-sided valleys are covered in deep forests and are now protected by natural areas. “Essentially any hill that you look at, [if] it’s got trees on it, it will have tracks on it,” said Baddiley.

The forests covering the steep-sided ridges are lush, with many of the trails forming green tunnels through the dense undergrowth. The ecosystem varies dramatically from one side of a mountain ridge to the other, and over the past 25-35 years, the locals have worked hard to replant native species and eliminate invasives — both plants and mammals.

Easy trail access from downtown

While many capital cities have trail networks you can drive to, Wellington boasts numerous mountain bike trails that are rideable directly from the heart of the city.

Mt. Vic, and WMTBC’s work on trail rebuilds

The closest trail system to downtown is Mount Victoria, aka “Mt. Vic.” This small ridge is laced with popular “tracks,” as they call the trails here in New Zealand. The trail network is popular with mountain bikers, hikers, and trail runners, and is very much an urban park. While many of Mt. Vic’s trails began life as social trails, over the years, many have been revamped into purpose-built downhill-only trails.

The trail density is so high on Mt Vic that the Wellington City Council has decreed that no new trails can be built on the mountain. However, “What they have said is you can maintain the existing trail, and you can basically modify the existing trail, so long as it stays within the existing trail corridor and it maintains the existing trail grade,” according to Baddiley. “So, we’ve gone through and […] completely refreshed trails there, so they’re completely different from what they used to be. But still, we didn’t need to get specific approval from the council to go and do that.”

Even during my time riding on Mt. Vic, I spotted a trail that was in the process of being reworked, with mini excavators building a beautiful stack of berms.

Waimapihi Reserve and bike-specific flow trails

Waimapihi Reserve, also known as “Polhill,” also butts right up against downtown. This area offers more vertical and longer trails, including several popular downhill-only flow trails, particularly Ikigai to Serendipity and Roller Coaster. While Mt. Vic feels like an urban park, Waimapihi feels like a nature preserve, with a much wilder and more isolated feeling, despite being rideable right from the city.

One of the factors that sets the urban trails in Wellington apart from many other major cities are the bike-optimized downhill-only trail designs — and the obvious trail signs denoting them as such. Ikigai, Serendipity, and many of the trails on Mt. Vic, like Hippy’s and the Super D Jumps, are now purpose-built flow trails that are signed as “Bike Priority” trails. The signs clearly note that these trails are “Not suitable for walkers.” The bottom exits of the downhills are all clearly signed with bright red “No entry” warnings, and the tops are all well-labeled with the trail grade, the name, and what you can expect to encounter on each trail.

But these trails didn’t come easily.

“We lobbied for a long time and got the ability to build Ikigai and Serendipity as descent trails and have them as what we call mountain bike priority,” said Baddiley. “So, we’re not saying walkers can’t go down there, but we’re asking walkers not to, because if you’ve got somebody flying through the air, like they do on Te Tuara, on Mount Vic, you really don’t want to land on somebody.”

In part, these trails were built to manage conflicts happening on some of the historic trails. For instance, Ikigai parallels Transient, which used to be a two-way, multi-use trail.

“We always said, ‘look, there’s going to be conflict with people coming too fast down because they’re idiots. And that’s not because mountain bikers are idiots. It’s because idiots on bikes are still idiots,'” said Baddiley.

Today, Transient is only open to bikes in the uphill direction (with walkers allowed in both directions), with Ikigai serving as its downhill-only counterpart.

Makara Peak: the crown jewel

The largest jewel in the Wellington-area singletrack crown is unquestionably Makara Peak. Makara boasts almost 900 vertical feet and 50km (31mi) of purpose-built mountain bike trails. While Makara is further afield than both Mt. Vic and Waimapihi Reserve, it’s still located less than 8km (5mi) from the city center.  I spent two weeks living car-free in Wellington, and I pedaled the roughly four miles each way from my AirBNB to Makara Peak three times, which proves that a car isn’t required to reach these trails.

All the major mountain bike networks in Wellington feature trails for every skill level, but Makara Peak truly offers something for everyone, from beginner to expert. The green climbing trail is smooth and non-technical with moderate grades, and the range expands all the way up to “Yeah Gnar,” widely regarded as the gnarliest trail in the region.

But of course, in the middle of the bell curve, there are plenty of superb trails to choose from down Makara Peak, including both flow and tech descents. Pohatu is the crowd-pleaser — a flow trail riding the line between blue and black with endless berms, some jumps, and a few rocky bits and spicy drops.

And that’s just the beginning…

These three trail networks don’t nearly comprise all of the trails that are rideable from downtown Wellington. The Skyline trails stretch north from Makara Peak along the western hills for many miles, linking to other networks. From Waimapihi Reserve, you can pedal south of the city into an area known as Te Kopahou, which spans all the way to the southern coast of the island. A master plan has been developed for this area, calling for an additional 50km of new MTB trails. A few kilometers to the east of downtown, the Miramar Track Project offers entertaining trails on the peninsula.

If you’re willing to drive (or take a train), the trail options expand dramatically. The Wainuiomata Trail Park is renowned for some of the gnarliest tracks in the region — a few of which I sampled with some trepidation. Further north, there’s Belmont, Tunnel Gully, and more. Akatarawas is the place to go for old-school singletrack and is home to the Karapoti Classic — the oldest mountain bike race in New Zealand.

Parting thoughts

Are there other capital cities in the world with great MTB trail access that might rival Wellington?

Of course. Madrid comes to mind, as do Canberra, Oslo, Stockholm, and Cape Town.

But unfortunately, in most of those cities, you need to get in a car (or train) to get to the trails unless you want to spend a long time pedaling pavement and risking your life in traffic. And bike-specific flow and tech trails that hikers are told to stay off of? That’s pretty unusual in most places, much less an urban park in a national capital.

Whether or not Wellington truly is “the best,” it’s easy to agree that there’s “something special” about this place.

The article Wellington, New Zealand, is the best capital city in the world for mountain biking appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

This time last year I wrote an opinion piece arguing that it’s time for mountain bikes to lose some weight, saying “lighter weight equals better performance and we shouldn’t separate the two.” Since then, not a lot has changed, with a parade of high-end, 2024 test bikes stubbornly failing to weigh under the 32lb. mark. Compare that to just a few years ago, when the lightweight bar was 30lb. or less.

If you’ve been riding for some time, you know that a lighter bike isn’t just easier on the climbs, it’s also a more playful and fun bike to ride. The good news is that there are always opportunities to shave some weight off your current bike, and the following components can help.

Check out our lightweight picks below and keep scrolling for tips to lower your mountain bike weight, including a couple that won’t cost a cent.

HUNT Proven Carbon Race XC MTB 29 Wheelset

$1,399.00 | $1,119.20 sale

These 29″ carbon XC wheels weigh just 1,469g for the pair and feature 30mm-wide rims so you can run tires up to 2.6″ wide.

Buy from Hunt

Fox Transfer SL Dropper Post

$399.00

The bike industry has latched onto the letters SL to indicate bikes and components that are super light. In this case, the Transfer SL weighs up to 25% less than a regular Fox Transfer dropper post, which is significant. For those who are truly dedicated to saving weight (and money), Jenson USA has the shortest travel Fox Transfer SL Factory posts on sale for 50% off.

Buy from Worldwide Cyclery

ESI Chunky Grips

$18.99

The ESI Chunky foam grips are a Singletracks reader favorite, though personally it took me a while to give these a try. I worried they would be difficult to install, or might twist compared to a lock-on, but it turns out they work great, and at 60g weigh significantly less than a pair of traditional MTB grips.

Buy from Amazon

Vittoria Air-Liner Light Tire Insert

$69.99

Yes, the Vittoria Air-Liner Light weighs less than most tire inserts. But the real weight savings comes from being able to run lighter tires AND wheels while still riding just as hard.

Buy from Amazon

Rockshox SID Ultimate Race Day 3-position Fork

$999.00

The Rockshox SID Ultimate is one of the lightest 120mm suspension forks you can buy. The 3-position damper and tunable DebonAir+ air spring make for a highly capable (and lightweight) downcountry fork. Weight: 1,480g.

Buy from REI

Schwalbe Racing Ralph 29.2.35″

$95.00 | $76.00 sale

The Racing Ralph is clearly designed for racing where every gram counts. Still, if you ride hardpack and are generally light on your feet, two of these tires could save a pound or more depending on which tires you’re currently running. It’s worth a try, right? Weight: 745g.

Buy from Backcountry

Crankbrothers Eggbeater 3

$149.99 | $134.99 sale

These aren’t the lightest Crankbrothers pedals — that would be the $499 Eggbeater 11s. Still, these are lighter than most clipless pedals and at $134.99 on sale, they’re a great value. Weight: 280g (pair).

Buy from Crankbrothers

Specialized Chisel Comp

$3,400.00

$3,400 for a 28.2lb full-suspension mountain bike? You’d have to pay $10,999 for a Santa Cruz Tallboy that weighs under 29lb (and even then, just barely).

Buy from Specialized

Shimano XTR M9100 Brakes

$324.99 | $259.99 sale

Four piston brakes are great, but truth be told not everyone needs that much stopping power. If you’re one of those riders, I recommend going with quality 2-piston Shimano XTR brakes. Weight: approximately 312g.

Buy from Competitive Cyclist

Race Face Next SL handlebar

$179.99

For those looking for a truly lightweight carbon handlebar, the Race Face Next SL is an excellent choice that weighs just 167g.

Buy from Amazon

SQLab Ergowave 612 R

$219.99

The SQLab Ergowave 612 R is one of the lightest saddles we’ve tested. Fortunately it doesn’t sacrifice comfort, making this an all-day saddle fit for any adventure. Weight: 164.5g. Read more.

Buy from Jenson USA

SRAM XX1 Eagle Upgrade Kit

$1,065.00 | $799.99 sale

Sure, SRAM Eagle Transmission is the latest and greatest, but even the lightest XX version still weighs two thirds of a pound MORE than the purely mechanical XX1 groupset. This upgrade kit doesn’t include cranks which will deliver maximum weight savings. Weight (with XX1 cranks): 1438g. Like the light weight of XX1, but want wireless shifting? Upgrading to XX1 AXS only adds about 100g, still almost 200g lighter than an XX Eagle Transmission group.

Buy from Thunder Mountain

Kask Caipi Helmet

$179.00 | $125.00 sale

OK, this won’t make your bike lighter, but a lightweight helmet means less fatigue and more comfort on long rides. Select colors on sale. Read more.

Buy from Jenson USA

Titanium bolts

From $11.99

Weight weenies love this trick! Replace stock bolts with titanium to save single-digit grams off your bike.

Buy from Amazon

Ibis DV9

$2,999

The Ibis DV9 is a no-nonsense carbon hardtail that’s fast and lightweight with a frame that weighs under 3lb.

Buy from Jenson USA

Trail One The Crockett

$125 | $95 sale

The Crockett carbon handlebar features a 35mm clamp diameter and 800mm length with a minimal 20mm rise. With a starting weight of 205g, you could go even lower by trimming to a 780mm or 760mm width.

Buy from Worldwide Cyclery

Specialized Roval Traverse SL II 350 6B

$1,500.00

This is the lightest trail wheelset Specialized makes, and at $1,500 the price is about a thousand dollars less than top-of-the-line wheels from other brands. We found these wheels more than live up to the claim that they’re “engineered to be ridden recklessly.” Weight: 1751g. Read more.

Buy from Specialized

Blackburn Cinch Carbon Bottle Cage

$69.95

Bottle cages are lightweight to begin with, and at just 16g, these are among the lightest of the light, with many competing carbon cages weighing almost twice as much.

Buy from Competitive Cyclist

Tips for saving weight

Chasing bike weight savings a gram at a time gets expensive quickly, with diminishing returns beyond a certain point. Fortunately, most of us aren’t there yet, and can reasonably shave a pound or two off our trail bikes with minimal compromise.

Consider what you really need: Depending on your riding style and the trails you ride, you might not need four-piston brakes, or tires with the toughest, heaviest casing known to man. It will take some experimenting, but try to find the level of component that’s reliable enough without being overkill.

Weigh your bike periodically: As a friend loaded my bike into his truck, he remarked how heavy it felt. This surprised me; I had selected the mostly high-end components for my build with an eye toward keeping a reasonable weight, but he was right: it was a beast. It turns out the main culprit was all the stash tools and accessories I had added over time, many of which were unnecessary. Weighing your bike periodically will alert you to weight creep so you can avoid carrying things you don’t need. It also gives you a feel for how little choices, like heavier-duty tires, add up.

Customize your ride: Trimming handlebars is an easy way to save a little weight, and also allows you to dial in the right fit. Ditto for a shorter stem and/or cranks. Of course, this tends to go the other way if you’re tall. Ultimately, getting the right fit is more important than saving weight.

Sometimes lighter is cheaper: Don’t assume that lighter bikes and components cost more than heavier ones. As you can see in the picks above, sometimes lighter is cheaper. When that happens, it’s a win-win!

Do you have a tip for saving mountain bike weight? Please share it in the comments below!

Want to find the best price on your next mountain bike? Try our comparison shopping tool and don’t miss our Weekly MTB Deals for the biggest savings on mountain bikes, gear and more.

The article Your mountain bike is too heavy. Drop real weight with these picks and tips. appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

September 2024 wasn’t the first time that adaptive mountain bikers competed in the Mountain Biking US Open, but it was the first time riders with disabilities who ride bikes to accommodate their physical differences were able to compete at the US Open on the same course as the pros. 

Greg Durso’s persistent advocacy paved the way for adaptive racing.

“Being a Vermonter and knowing Killington and knowing the trails and loving to ride them, I wanted to be able to race here too,” said Greg Durso, Senior Program Director at the Kelly Brush Foundation, adaptive athlete, and the de facto race director for adaptive athletes at the US Open. “I wanted a bigger opportunity to grow our sport of adaptive mountain bike racing and show what we can do on adaptive bikes. I wanted to push for us to be included.”

Durso met US Open/Pro Downhill Series race organizer Clay Harper in 2023. He says he “followed Clay around and kept bugging him” about adding an adaptive category until Harper agreed. Harper let Durso pre-run the course in 2023. “It was cool to prove that we could do it,” said Durso. “There are adaptive riders who want this race experience, but historically, we’ve been blocked by insurance, race directors not wanting to deal, and courses too narrow or off-camber for our bikes.”

The US Open was not the first North American adaptive bike race. Crankworx has an adaptive category, though racers who compete there are segregated from Crankworx’s main events, and according to racer Sierra Roth, spectators are few and far between. In the US, the Sea Otter Classic in California allows adaptive riders. Adaptive riders have ridden in the US Open since 2017, but away from the mainstage on a black run, Rabbit Hole, with the youth downhillers race. “They’d get a time, but it was loose,” said Harper.

That changed this year when Durso convinced Harper and his team, as well as USA Cycling, that adaptive mountain bikers belong. 

Advancements in technology made riding Killington’s Goat Skull race course possible.

Sierra Roth, 27, is a former motocross racer and adaptive rider from Calgary, Alberta, who works for adaptive bike manufacturer Bowhead, said that five years ago, adaptive riders would not have been able to ride the Killington Goat Skull course because adaptive bikes just weren’t good enough. “The US Open let us show how far our abilities have come and also how far the technology has evolved.”

“The US Open was particularly cool because there were tons of people around,” said Roth.”Pros were watching us, people tagged us, and many saw people riding adaptive bikes for the first time. At other events, we’re a sideshow. At the US Open, we were part of the main attraction.”

Challenges to adding adaptive categories to the US Open

There were two main obstacles to including adaptive riders in the US Open, according to Harper, and neither had to do with riders’ abilities. “The weekend is so packed,” said Harper. “Finding time to get another category on that track was the main challenge. We don’t want to put adaptive athletes in a weird position where there is pressure on them from other riders on the course or where they feel like they’re holding people up. So we ran a bunch of scenarios so that we could get them on the track at the calm times.”

Harper said that the second major obstacle was securing insurance through USA Cycling for adaptive racers, who typically ride e-bikes for this type of race. “It was an itty bitty technical nuance,” said Harper. “USA Cycling didn’t have the right allowance of battery wattage in their policy. They limited the wattage of a battery and prohibited throttle — a silly thing because adaptive bikes still have the speed limiter. They all still go the same speed. Wattage just makes them last longer.”

USA Cycling granted an exception for 2024, but not until September 1st, less than a month before the race. We reached out to USA Cycling to ask about plans to revise their adaptive racing rules for 2025. They did not respond to our request for comment as of press time.

Harper says that adding adaptive categories wasn’t a heavy lift for him and his team. “And it’s worth it from our perspective,” said Harper. “To see how stoked those guys were, and how smooth it was, how fun it was. […] Greg is a remarkable character. I don’t want any credit. Greg is the guy pushing the rock up the hill. His heart, soul, and drive is making this happen. No other adaptive riders came out of the woodwork to make this adaptive race happen. I have lots of respect for him. His excitement is real. You could feel it when he came across the line. That was the best part of the whole thing — how happy they were to do this. Safety was at the forefront. Greg didn’t come into it with blind exuberance. He took the steps to do it right.”

That said, Harper says it’ll take work to incorporate adaptive categories into other races in the Pro Downhill series, and initiative from the adaptive community can forward that agenda, though some courses may prove prohibitive. “There are things that make it tough,” says Harper. “The track — it’s hard enough to find a venue that supports having a DH race, that will close the track to the public. The US Open is clearly way ahead of the others with how that works. We’re a pro downhill series with a highly concentrated focus on professional racing, on elevating downhill racing. And unfortunately, adaptive racing isn’t plug and play.”

Future growth potential for adaptive downhill racing

Harper said that in the past 10 years, mountain bike racing has grown up. He acknowledges that it’s not easy to create a sport and that it’s important the ask comes from the core participants. Harper also acknowledged that mountain biking is a dangerous sport, and he doesn’t want anyone getting hurt.

“That said, everybody thought it was awesome,” said Harper. “It was impressive too. They ride really well. It was all positive, and there was a shared sense of excitement for it. The track works. But there is no guarantee that if we go to another track, it’ll work for adaptive bikes. The nature of a downhill track is that it’s steep and rough. Every track doesn’t necessarily have a navigable, rollable route for adaptive bikes. I hope they take what we did with the US Open and look at it at Crankworx, Sea Otter, and other festivals. I also think there is some merit to stand-alone adaptive DH races. That’s where a lot of development can come from… what should an adaptive race look like? It’s in its infancy, and it’s hard to figure out.”

Durso says that race directors often do a lot of “mansplaining” to adaptive riders about why they can’t race, and he implores race directors to be open. “They sometimes think they know it all, but most have no idea what adaptive riders can handle. Come for a ride with us, engage us, and give us the same opportunities as other racers. Let us discuss and review race courses. Let us participate.”

Roth was the only female participant this year, but she hopes that won’t be the case in the future. “There are not a ton of women adaptive riders racing DH,” said Roth. “I hope that eventually there will be a field of women competing in races like the US Open, not just me. The gain in the long-term for the sport and for the development of adaptive racing is huge. I’m excited to see where it goes. It’s cool to be part of creating a sport from the ground up. It’s cool that now the tech exists to do that.”

The thrills of racing the US Open and learnings for the future

For Durso, racing the US Open was more awesome than he could have imagined. “The point of the US Open is to let anyone race against the pro,” said Durso. “It makes sense for us to be a part of that. “To have Wyn Masters and his crew on course sending us video of them cheering us on, and Jackson Goldstone making time to watch us start and say “holy shit” as we come flying out of the start gates, that’s a cool experience. We got the same reactions from the pros that we have to the pros. And that was super cool. That’s the win — that’s what we want. To have downhill riders that I fanboy about there, knowing they’re watching us go down, seeing them cheering for us, having them swing by the Vermont Adaptive booth to congratulate us and get their pictures taken with us… that was freaking awesome. To ride in a race I’ve always watched was so cool. I also truly enjoyed helping put the race together. I enjoy helping others [get] the opportunity to race. As hard as it was logistically, I loved that aspect of it too.”      

The 2024 US Open adaptive race was both a major proof of concept and a potential blueprint for future adaptive downhill races. “If I can promote the 2025 US Open Adaptive race in June next year and not a week before the race, I can get 15-20 adaptive riders registered to compete,” said Durso. “Let’s do this.”

His advice for race directors open to considering an adaptive category: “If you look around, you’ll realize there is a community of people who want to race, but we need to be able to be part of the conversation, and we can help you make it happen.”

Durso said he learned a lot at the US Open and that he’s hopeful that the 2024 US Open was the start of more inclusivity in DH racing. “Racing is hard. It’s such a physical and mental sport. You have to push yourself and discover your limits. I learned about organizing events and that there is a need, a space, and a barrier that needs to be broken. Getting to work with Clay and his team was huge — we felt accommodated and felt part of the race.”

Harper is excited to see where the adaptive community takes racing. “The biggest issue with adaptive is lack of clarity on categories,” said Harper. “It’s a growth issue in the sport. Men’s and women’s, three-wheel and four-wheel, suspension or no suspension, throttle or not, intermediate or expert… We’re waiting for the adaptive community to define it. We’re here to provide a platform for people to come out and race. We’re not experts. But what we do know is that if little leaguers have to play against major leaguers, it won’t work. In regular two-wheel downhill racing, there is not a lot of variation. In adaptive, there are a multitude of different kinds of bikes as well as gender, age, and skill that could all determine race categories. I’m not the right person to determine how riders should be divided up. But it’s my opinion that it’s really important that bike type be delineated — the advantage of some bikes is crazy.”

Despite the success of the 2024 US Open, the future of the sport is unclear

Harper isn’t willing to make predictions about the future of adaptive racing but is committed to providing the platform. “We’re here for it; we think it’s sick,” said Harper. “Baseball started with kids in the parking lot with a broomstick and a ball, and mountain bike racing started on a dirt road in California. It will take a few more years for adaptive racing to develop, to work out the kinks. 

“There are many factors that draw people to the US Open: big-name racers, a big prize purse, good access to athletes, the pits, and the track, and it’s easy to get in and see everything,” said Harper. “Everything is done in the interest of fun, which has been the ethos of the US Open since day one. We’re not trying to leverage adaptive riders as a draw. The truth is that people enjoy watching adaptive racers compete. It exposes current fans to something they don’t know about, and it draws in people from the adaptive community who have never seen their community race like that.”

For Durso, being able to compete in the US Open means something more. “Racing the US Open gave us normalcy we don’t get in the adaptive sports world very often. We proved that we belong.”

The article For the first time ever, adaptive MTBers competed on the pro downhill course at the US Open appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Mountain bike races are a lot of fun, even if you aren’t the competitive type. Plus racing is a great excuse to get and stay in shape for riding.

With the new year ahead, now is the time to put a race or two on the calendar, but which ones? Check out the Singletracks MTB calendar to find an event in your area, and tell us what’s most important when choosing a race to enter.

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choosing a enter?

What is the most important factor when choosing a MTB race to enter? *

• Location
• Entry fee
• Trail / course quality
• Prizes
• Level of competition
• Whether friends will be there or not
• Race beneficiary (charity or otherwise)
• Quality of event logistics, etc.
• Something else I’ll mention in the comments

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Have you already signed up for a mountain bike race in 2025? Tell us which one(s) in the comments below!

The article What is the most important factor when choosing a bike race to enter? appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

The new Giro Loam Knee Sleeve offers lightweight knee protection for trail rides with comfort that can last for hours. Unlike a knee pad that’s designed for big impacts, a knee sleeve offers protection for small scrapes and slides, but in a package that is generally more flexible (read: better for pedaling) than a full-on knee pad. A knee sleeve like the Loam can be the perfect choice for pedal-forward rides with few major obstacles.

Giro Loam Knee Sleeve key specs

• 8mm Trivent XTI padding from D30
• Ax Suede Stretch microfiber knee zone
• Hi-vent stretch mesh back panel
• Weight: 233g/pair
• Price: $120
• Buy from Amazon

The first thing I noticed when pulling the Giro Loam Knee Sleeves out of the box was just how light and low profile they are. The pads lie flat on the table, and are easy to stuff in a fully loaded pack without taking up much storage space. But of course, the purpose of sleeves such as the Loam is to wear them for the entire ride, and thanks to their light 233g weight for the pair, they won’t weigh you down even after hours in the saddle.

The heavy-duty silicone gripper on the upper successfully held the pads up through multiple rides, including extended climbs. The lower also has a built-in gripper, although it is lower-profile than the upper, which helps when sliding the pads on. Throughout my rides, the Loam stayed very reliably in place, unlike some other pads I’ve tested recently.

Even during long pedals, I found the hi-vent back panels to be very breathable and comfortable.

What happens when ‘flexible’ knee sleeves don’t flex?

Since the silicone grippers and the stretchable mesh backing were excellent, I found it curious that the one part of the pad that should flex the best did not, in fact, flex well: the pad itself. As noted above, the pads lie flat in the box, as in flat as a piece of cardboard — and they feel like it, too. When I donned the pads, the Trivent XTI D30 padding bent around the knees, but there was no ergonomic forming or flex zone incorporated into the pads whatsoever.

As you can see in the images, the corners and edges of the pad bend and buckle when your leg is bent, such as when moving through the pedal stroke. To me, it seems very strange that a knee sleeve marketed for its flexibility and comfort doesn’t incorporate any ergonomic forming into the pad itself.

I’ve tested heavier-duty pads with radically better ergonomic forming in the pad itself than these so-called “flexible” knee sleeves — for example, the G-Form Terra and the Ion Arcon LT, which I am currently testing.

Above and beyond the strange and somewhat uncomfortable sensation around the edge of the pads, I’m also concerned about the long term durability. Crimping and binding where the pad is sewn to the lightweight sleeve could conceivably cause tears to develop over time, but this testing period was not long enough to reach the point of failure.

Fit notes

While I found the pads to fit fairly true to size, unfortunately, Giro does not publish a size chart for the Loam Knee Sleeve. So, while you can purchase the Loam on multiple websites, I’d recommend trying them on before you buy.

Pros and cons of Giro Loam Knee Sleeve

Pros

• Lightweight
• Flexible back is comfortable for pedaling
• Silicon grippers keep sleeves in place

Cons

• Padding bends around the edges when flexed
• No size chart

Bottom line

The Giro Loam Knee Sleeve is lightweight and stays firmly in place, even during long climbs. However, the lack of ergonomic consideration in the design of the padding causes the pad to bunch and crimp along the edges when the knee is flexed and when pedaling. For a product that’s supposed to be flexible and comfortable, the lack of ergonomics here seems to be a big miss.

The article When ‘flexible’ knee sleeves won’t flex: Giro Loam Knee Sleeve review appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

The new Fourmile Mountain Bike Park is now “the biggest dedicated bike park in the greater Des Moines area,” according to Adam Fendrick, Park Planner for Polk County Conservation. Iowa’s new mountain bike park features 3.5 miles of professionally built trails with progressive jump lines ranging from beginner to advanced.

“The flow trails have the typical tabletops, rollers, and berms — all common features in trails, but these features are new to the Des Moines area,” said Fendrick.

While the trails are relatively flat, they’re still “designed to accommodate riders of all skill levels,” according to Aaron Steele, owner of Tailored Trails, who built the bike park. “There are multiple cross-country trails for beginners, and then there are four downhill trails with varying levels of difficulty to allow riders to improve their skills and work their way up to the black diamond lines in the jump park.”

Steele worked to make the most of the minimal elevation to build trails that have “the feel of a bigger and progressive difficulty loop network.” To do this, they incorporated imported rock, dirt, and wood structures.

During the build, they also pivoted quickly to make the most of 9,500 cubic yards of dirt that had been stockpiled on the site. While the dirt was originally intended for another project, “construction timelines changed, and that dirt needed to remain on site,” said Fendrick. “It was a bit of a last-minute scramble to determine how to utilize this surplus of dirt, but we were able to develop some nice gravity trails off the dirt pile ranging from a fun green trail with rollers to a BMX-style jump line trail that starts off with a steep drop from an over/under bridge.”

The challenges of building an urban trail system

The park “sits in the middle of a very urban area,” said Fendrick. Building an urban park is no small feat, and it took over five years for Fourmile to become a reality. Work to purchase the property began in 2019. Money was raised via the Water & Land Legacy Bond referendum, a U.S. National Parks Service Land & Water Conservation Grant, a State Recreational Trails Grant from the Iowa DOT, the IMBA Dig-In grant, and the local mountain bike club, Central Iowa Trails Association (CITA).

Polk County Conservation had to raise $1.3 million before they could put the project out to bid. Of that amount, $560,000 was invested in the construction of the 3.5 miles of new singletrack, and the “parking lot and trailhead improvements [are] estimated at $700,000,” according to Fendrick. The land was acquired for $300,000 — half of the original asking price. “I believe they sold it at a reduced cost because they believed in the vision we had for the land as a park and believed in the mission of Polk County Conservation,” said Fendrick.

The biggest challenge to getting the new singletrack built was the neighbors. The land for the new bike park had to be rezoned, “and in that process, there was a large opposition from the adjacent neighbors that emerged,” said Fendrick. “The cycling community was incredibly supportive of the project from the start. They turned out to city and county government meetings and celebrated the project. That played a huge part in the rezoning being approved.”

Eventually, most of the neighbors came around when they realized that a conservation-focused public park is a much better use of the land than the vacant lot — which had often been used for illegal dumping.

Bikes and conservation coexist harmoniously in Fourmile Park.

From the beginning, “Polk County Conservation’s goal for the park was to first restore the land and stream back to a more natural state, and second, add an element of recreation throughout the property,” said Fendrick. The trails were carefully laid out to avoid a floodplain, which covers about half of the site.

The conservation measures in this highly urban park “can’t be understated,” said Fendrick. He said that conservation will continue to be an integral part of the park. “When bikers, trail runners, and others are here, they can feel really good knowing the people who care for the park care as much about the health of the plant and animal life as we do about the health of the community and recreation.”

Finishing touches and future construction

While the singletrack construction concluded in late 2024, and the trails are already on the map, the park won’t fully open until 2025. The parking lot and trailhead still need to be completed, and at that time, “some very important stream restoration will be undertaken to make sure the creek that runs through is healthy and able to handle floods and general urban runoff,” according to Fendrick.

There’s also still about 10 acres set aside for future trail development. Fendrick envisions putting a pump track and skills course on that parcel, as well as additional parking.

The article The biggest mountain bike park in Des Moines has just opened appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

The health benefits of mountain biking are pretty clear, particularly when it comes to strength, cardiovascular health, and mental health.

Now, a new study suggests that those whose occupations “demand frequent spatial and navigational processing,” like taxi and ambulance drivers, are less likely to die from Alzheimer’s disease than the general population. Could this apply to mountain bikers too? Though the study doesn’t say, trail riding can require significant spatial and navigational processing skills, depending on where and how we ride.

A much earlier study in 2000 found that London cab drivers showed posterior hippocampi that “were significantly larger relative to those of control subjects.” The hippocampus is the part of the brain that’s responsible for memory and spatial navigation. The posterior region, in particular, is thought to be specifically involved in cognitive and spatial processing.

As the 2000 study notes, the posterior hippocampus “can expand regionally to accommodate elaboration of this representation in people with a high dependence on navigational skills. It seems that there is a capacity for local plastic change in the structure of the healthy adult human brain in response to environmental demands.” This suggests that as we use our spatial and navigational skills more, our brain likely adapts and grows.

But GPS use could cancel the effect

Back to the recently published NIH study. The study notes that bus drivers, airline pilots, and those who follow pre-determined routes don’t exhibit the same reduced chance of death from Alzheimer’s disease as cab drivers. Not only that, “the popularity of GPS could affect these kinds of results over time as cabbies rely less on their own internal navigation and more on their phones, experts said,” according to this STAT article.

So it seems that for mountain bikers to get the maximum benefit, good old-fashioned trail navigation is the way to go. One way to stretch our brains could be to ride extensive trail networks with multiple intersections, piecing together a complex mental map of the trails along the way. Cycling challenges like Wandrer.earth and races like the Pisgah Mountain Bike Adventure Race, which are designed to encourage riders to formulate unique and efficient routes, seem likely to provide a similar benefit.

What do you think: Has mountain biking improved your spatial or navigational skills? What do you do to stay sharp?

The article Could navigating MTB trails be good for brain health? appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Today the Giant Factory Off Road Racing Team (GFORT) announced the addition of 2024 World Champion and overall series winner Alan Hatherly to the cross-country team roster. A release from Giant notes that Hatherly plans to compete in “most” mountain bike world cup races in 2025 while also competing for the Team Jayco AlUla road cycling team. “Combining road and MTB is new and refreshing, and I am really looking forward to where this journey can go,” Hatherly said.

He joins Jens Schuermans, Dario Lillo, and Carter Woods to round out the men’s XC team. On the DH side, Giant adds brothers Jakob and Dane Jewett.

Alongside the XC and DH team news, Giant announced a pause to their enduro racing program.

“Right now, the level of competition in World Cup racing is incredibly high, and sharpening our focus on XC and DH was a necessary decision for our goals in the future,” Team Manager Sebastian Boyington said in a release.

Last month Trek announced similar plans to “pause” their enduro race team for 2025.

Other team news

Norco Team Director Greg Minnaar will have an even split of men and women for the 2025 pro race division. Gracey Hemstreet and Lucas Cruz will be joined by Danny Hart and former Trek rider Bodhi Kuhn on the men’s side, and Erice van Leuven and Lina Frener on the women’s.

The Trek Factory DH men’s team said goodbye to Kuhn, Loris Vergier, and Reece Wilson at the end of 2024 and promises to “have some exciting announcements soon.” Sacha Earnest will be racing women’s DH Elite for Trek after posting five Junior podium finishes in 2024.

The Trek Factory XC team announced late last year that Jolanda Neff and Anton Cooper are leaving the team, so we’ll be watching to see where they end up. Gunnar Holmgren is joining team Trek for 2025 and is looking to build on a top 10 finish in last year’s Nové Město World Cup race.

Ellie Huslebosch and Felix Griffiths joined the Santa Cruz Syndicate DH race team anchored by returning veteran racers Jackson Goldstone, Nina Hoffmann, and Laurie Greenland.

The article MTB World Champ Hatherly leaves Cannondale for Giant, two enduro teams are “paused” appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Toppled trees and massive flooding destroyed homes, businesses, roads, and other infrastructure as Hurricane Helene made landfall on September 26th. Trails in popular mountain bike destinations such as Asheville, North Carolina, were closed indefinitely, as was most of the public land across the region in the wake of Helene.

Now, thanks to the hard work of organizations like Pisgah Area SORBA, residents are regaining access to their favorite trails and trailheads. 

Deciding when to start

Hurricane Helene left a devastating wake of destruction. Homes, businesses, and livelihoods were all significantly impacted or lost due to Helene. However, these losses pale in comparison to Helene’s death toll. Two hundred thirty-four people lost their lives as a result of Hurricane Helene, making it the deadliest hurricane since Katrina in 2005.

With such destruction, it can be nearly impossible to determine the right time to start rebuilding trails. Natalie Narburgh, the executive director of Pisgah Area SORBA, said they had many intentional conversations about this topic.

“For the first two and a half weeks, our team wasn’t even thinking about the trails,” Narburgh said. “It was basically whatever the immediate need was — which was human lives. That was first.”

Rather than clearing trails, Pisgah Area SORBA sawyers were out in the community, clearing roads and homes of fallen trees. As very basic needs — getting a vehicle out of a driveway — were met and more help came to the area, the focus shifted to the trails. Several weeks after Hurricane Helene devastated the region, Pisgah Area SORBA began to focus on the trails loved by Asheville and surrounding communities. 

Rebuilding everything

Neither the Pisgah Ranger District nor Pisgah Area SORBA had exact data on the number of trails impacted and the extent of the damage. However, Narburgh shared that the Pisgah Ranger District claims 30% of its infrastructure was damaged by Helene. 

“I believe that ‘infrastructure’ means more roads and rec sites,” Narburgh explained, “but it does give you a little bit of insight.”

Helene impacted every trail in the Pisgah Ranger District in some way. On some trails, only a few fallen trees needed to be cut, while others will need reroutes due to mudslides.

While mudslides and sections of eroded trail were an issue, downed trees have proven to be Pisgah’s major hurdle. While some trails were more impacted than others, no trails were spared from fallen trees.

“We’ve cleared — I don’t know — 500-plus trees in the first couple of weeks,” Jared Hartman, Trail Specialist for Pisgah Area SORBA, told us. Cutting a single tree that has fallen across a trail is easy for Hartman and Pisgah Area SORBA’s sawyers, but the spiderweb of timber Helene left in some spots was more difficult. Those volunteers continue to work alongside Forest Service sawyers, clearing roads and trails.

Trails closer to water tended to be more significantly impacted. Hartman explained that trails following rivers and creeks were hit the hardest.

“There are certain pockets. [Places like] Turkey Pen Trailhead and the South Mills River area took a lot more damage than the rest of our area,” Hartman explained. “So those areas are still recovering and potentially will be inaccessible for a while.”

In many of the more heavily impacted areas, roads leading to trailheads suffered significant damage. Forest Service officials are working on accessing some of these trailheads and trails to assess the damage. Other areas will have to wait. 

Trails that sustained more significant damage, such as landslides or rising water, will likely need to be rerouted and entire sections moved. This will require a new National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) survey.

“The thought is, if [a trail] was damaged because it’s right next to a creek,” Hartman told us, “Instead of rebuilding it in place, it needs to be moved up onto a side slope away from the river.”

Fortunately, Hartman mentioned that the Forest Service will expedite those NEPA decisions to keep the process moving. However, he doesn’t expect anything for at least a year.

Many hands make light work

The Pisgah National Forest was closed for the weeks following Hurricane Helene, reopening on October 18th. Upon regaining access to the land, locals wanted to know how they could help. 

“We use an email list server that sends out our volunteer day sign-ups,” Hartman told us. “That list went from about 400 emails to 1,400.” 

While many trail organizations will host one or two work days a month, Pisgah Area SORBA hosted multiple work parties every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday following the reopening. They even had to start a waitlist due to how many people are allowed on a work party per the Forest Service. 

It is easy to take trails for granted. When every trail is closed in your area for weeks and, upon opening, every trail has downed trees that need to be cleared, it’s a reminder of how much we all appreciate the trails we ride and hike. And when those trails begin to be cleared, it is much easier to see the value in a local trail organization and realize how much they do.

“You can’t really see maintenance in a normal time,” Narburgh explained, “but you can definitely tell when a trail has been cleared of trees or not. I think that allowed people to get involved with us that maybe hadn’t been before.”

Community involvement included not only boots on the ground but also financial contributions. For 2025, Pisgah Area SORBA allotted $120,000 for trail maintenance. Of course, this allotment did not include the ongoing cleanup and rerouting that many trails will need.

Yet, the community has stepped up to support trails. Organizations have matched fundraising efforts, businesses have donated raffle proceeds, and individuals have donated to Pisgah Area SORBA. Other SORBA chapters have also helped out by sending funds. 

North Carolina needs the trails

While the financial needs aren’t yet fully known, the greater Asheville community supports its trails. Narburgh shared just how important the trails are to the area’s economy.

“The outdoor recreation economy is huge in western North Carolina,” she told us. “There were bike shops that, when they were able to reopen, [had] lost 80% of what their normal income is.” 

Hurricane Helene couldn’t have hit at a worse time. October is peak tourism season in Western North Carolina, and many come to experience the fall colors. It is also a phenomenal time to mountain bike, as fall weather brings needed moisture to blown-out trails. 

Understandably, the North Carolinian tourism boards asked people to stay away from the area in the weeks after Helene. But as recovery efforts brought the area back to where it could support tourism, people simply weren’t coming. 

To further recover, western North Carolina needs tourism to return. While they must wait until next October for peak season, Narburgh and Hartman urge vacationers to pack their bikes and head to Asheville. 

Check Pisgah Area SORBA’s website for trail conditions as they continue clearing trail damage from the hurricane.

The article The best MTB trails in Western North Carolina are slowly reopening following Hurricane Helene appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

The More You Know (TMYK) is a series of articles that explain how to use the Singletracks website. Have a question about how the site works, or feedback to help us make it better and easier to use? Email info@singletracks.com.

For those who use the Chrome internet browser on a smartphone (either iPhone or Android), here’s a quick tip to keep up with the latest mountain bike news from Singletracks.

While reading this article, click the three dots at the top right of the screen (Android) or bottom right (iPhone) and choose “Follow singletracks.com.”

Now, you can get the latest news from Singletracks and any other online publications you follow whenever you open a new Chrome tab on your phone. Suggested articles, based on topics you’ve shown interest in, appear in a tab labeled “Discover.” You can also switch to the “Following” tab to see news from just the publications you follow.

If you’ve used Flipboard or an RSS feed reader in the past to keep up with news, Google Discover and Following work similarly to the two, respectively.

Google Discover is only available on mobile browsers for users in the US, though it may be available on desktop computers in some countries. Note that some business and educational accounts do not have access to Google Discover, depending on account settings.

To unfollow a publication, click the three dots again, and choose “Unfollow” from the menu.

The article TMYK: Follow Singletracks in Google Chrome appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Editor’s Note: Singletracks neither encourages nor condones underage alcohol consumption, alcohol abuse, or excessive drinking. If you’re underage according to local law, choose to abstain, or just can’t stand it when people geek out over beer, we ask that you choose another article to read.

Non-alcoholic beer has had a bad rap for many years, and rightly so. Up until recently, there were very few choices, and all of them tasted awful. Athletic Brewing founder Bill Shufelt was arguably the first to create and market a non-alcoholic beer that beer drinkers actually enjoyed, though it was no easy task. (Listen to this podcast interview to get the full story.)

Is Non-Alcoholic Craft Beer any Good for Mountain Bikers?

For those who enjoy the taste of beer, but not the after-affects, non-alcoholic beer can be a good option. I’ve been on a quest to find the best-tasting non-alcoholic beers over the past three years, and here are my tasting notes for 2024, along with my top-rated picks overall.

New-to-me NA beers in 2024

Athletic Atlética: As the brand that kickstarted the modern NA beer scene, Athletic continues to add new styles. Athletic Atlética is a Mexican cerveza-style lager that’s pretty true to the genre, with a smooth and light taste. I like a more flavorful beer, so this wasn’t one of my favorites.

Athletic Wit’s Peak: Wit’s Peak is a Belgian-style non-alcoholic beer that delivers that distinctive spiced banana taste, albeit a little watered down compared to the real thing. Out of the half dozen or more Athletic beers I’ve tasted, this is probably my second favorite.

Athletic Ripe Pursuit: Non-alcoholic radler-style brews are getting pretty far from “real” beer, but damned if they don’t taste delicious, especially after a hot ride. This one is fruity and sweet, but not overly so. I could easily chug a six-pack of these.

Clausthaler Original: Like Athletic, Clausthaler is a dedicated NA brewer. Based in Germany, the brand has a few offerings available in the US, which I first discovered last year. Their IPA is good, and this year I tried the Original, which I think tastes even closer to a regular beer. I’ve only seen Clausthaler Original in bottles, but it sounds like it may be available in cans too, which would be more convenient.

Clausthaler Grapefruit: This 50/50 blend of Clausthaler and “grapefruit drink” tastes a bit like a Spindrift sparkling water, just with a vaguely beer-like aftertaste. Like the Athletic Ripe Pursuit, these basically go down like Gatorade after a ride.

Deschutes Fresh Squeezed Non-Alcoholic: Fresh Squeezed is likely Deschutes’ best-known and/or best-selling beer, and the non-alcoholic version is a decent rendition. It’s hoppy and piney, but tastes drier and lighter than the original. This has quickly become one of my favorite NA beers overall.

Guinness Draught 0.0: I’m not a big Guinness drinker, but I have a lot of respect for the tradition around this brand. Guinness Draught 0.0 does a great job looking the part, right down to the way the carbonation settles after a pour. Regular Guinness doesn’t have a lot of flavor compared to hoppy craft beer anyway, so for me, the stripped-down NA version gets pretty close to the original.

Sierra Nevada Trail Pass IPA: Our regular Tuesday night mountain bike ride ends at the same pizza place every week, and we finally convinced the manager to stock an NA beer, Sierra Nevada Trail Pass Golden. Personally, I like the IPA version better than the Golden ale, but they’re both pretty decent. We still order pitchers of whatever’s on tap, but instead of drinking two regular beers after the ride, I feel a lot better the next day if I drink one regular beer and one NA beer.

Untitled Art Non-Alcoholic Orange Peel Wit: Untitled Art brews all kinds of beer, including at least seven different NA beers. Jason shared this one after a hot summer ride and I found the fruity, clean taste was exactly the thirst quencher I needed.

[More] Delicious Non-Alcoholic Beers to Get You Through Dry January

Overall favorites

I’m not done taste-testing NA beers by any means, and plan to try all the new ones I can get my hands on in 2025. Thus far in my quest, these stand out as my favorites overall.

• Athletic Free Wave Hazy IPA
• Deschutes Fresh Squeezed Non-Alcoholic
• Lagunitas Brewing Co IPNA
• Sam Adams Just the Haze

Your turn: Which non-alcoholic beer is your favorite?

The article These favorite NA beers will leave you feeling great for that New Year’s day ride appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

The staff at Air India in Heathrow Airport aren’t bemused by the idea of someone traveling with two mountain bikes — they’re utterly and completely dumbfounded. Two boxed full-suspension MTBs are stacked on my luggage trolley, and when I let go of the handle, the whole cart tips forward so that its rear wheels poke up in the air. They have no idea what I’m doing, and I’m not sure I do, either.

So why am I trying to haul luggage the size of a piano through the UK’s busiest airport at 6:30am? Because I’m going to the Kingdom of Bhutan to play a small part in the future of its mountain bike scene.

Mountain biking in Bhutan is in its infancy.

There are only 30 serious mountain bikers living in the Kingdom of Bhutan out of a population of 750,000 people, so it’s fair to say Bhutan’s MTB scene is in its very beginnings, but that’s why we’re here. 

Where, exactly, is ‘here’?

The Kingdom of Bhutan is a landlocked country in South Asia, in the Eastern Himalayas, sandwiched between China in the north and India in the south. Dogs, cattle, and horses roam freely in the streets of its cities. Its devoted Buddhist citizens decorate their houses, public buildings, and temples with a dazzling array of colorful, intricate carvings and paintings. It’s like nowhere I’ve ever been in my life.

Our guide, host, and the man behind this whole circus is Pelden Dorji, and he wants Bhutan’s mountain bike scene to be different from the rest of the world. He doesn’t want it to suffer from the age-old obsessions with racing and performance. He doesn’t want it to be unfriendly to women. He wants the whole world to come and ride here and for women to guide them when they do. So he’s invited Julie Cornelius, founder of the charity World Ride; photographer Leslie Kehmeier; filmmaker Colleen Maes; and me.

We’re here to help train the first four women in the history of Bhutan to become qualified mountain bike guides.

The right tools for the job

Bhutan is remote, landlocked, and very hard to reach. The descent into its airport is so dangerous that only 50 pilots in the world are qualified to fly it. So importing even simple spares like tires and tubes takes time and costs a fortune. 

That’s why we’ve brought two new Marin bikes, a bunch of Osprey packs, some Lazer helmets, Shimano clothing, and any other spares we could lay our hands on. It’s going to form a mountain bike library, so any Bhutanese woman who wants to can start learning to ride for free. 

This was all Julie’s idea.

Let’s talk about Julie Cornelious and her World Ride organization for a minute. Julie’s a seasoned Moab mountain bike guide who’s been taking riders out to the White Rim, the Needles, and the other legendary backcountry locations near Moab for most of her professional mountain bike life. 

But a little while ago, she started to think about the inherent imbalance in mountain biking travel. 

Let’s say that you book a mountain bike trip to Tanzania. It’s the holiday of a lifetime. It costs you a fortune. But the chances are that the person who set up the tour company and the people on your tour probably look a bit like you. 

World Ride tries to redress that imbalance. It resells places on high-end mountain bike trips all over the world — Guatemala, Chile, Peru, Tanzania, Botswana — and uses the money to train local women as mountain bike guides. So when, say, eight Swiss dentists land in Botswana, a young local woman can show them the best places to ride, show them that women can ride as well as they can, and she can earn a respectable wage, too. 

It works. Julie’s been running World Ride for over six years, with established programs all over the world, but this is her first official visit to Bhutan and the beginning of a unique journey for four of their most adventurous women. 

First day of the rest of their rides

We’re in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan. It’s first thing in the morning in the town square, with stray dogs lazing in the sun and a handful of locals watching in genial bemusement. Of the 30 or so people in the whole country who ride mountain bikes, there are hardly any women. So we’re starting at the very beginning. Four women from Thimphu who have volunteered to be the first qualified mountain bike guides in the country’s history are all standing here. Time to get to work. 

Dawa, Khusala, Tshering Dolkar, and Tshering Zam seem as nervous as we are, but as soon as we produce two boxes containing the bikes, it’s like someone’s thrown a switch. All shyness disappears, and they fall on the bikes like an F1 pit crew. With Julie’s help and a couple of multi-tools, they attach rotors and rear derailleurs, adjust brakes, and set the pedals, fumbling with Allen wrenches, skimming their knuckles, and laughing all the while. 

Pelden leans and whispers in my ear as we watch. “This is the beginning of female mountain biking in Bhutan, right here, right now.”

Leaps and bounds

Only Khusala rode a bike as a kid. The other three only started riding a bike at all less than a month ago, and the younger Tshering got on a bike just three days before we arrived. So once the bikes are up and built, Julie’s seasoned guiding experience really comes into its own. 

She is gentle, kind, and patient as our candidates take their first tentative steps — it’s truly heartwarming to see. Our candidates struggle to balance and to manage the power of the brakes, but the progress is incredibly fast. Julie is on standby the whole time, but their support for each other speaks volumes about how positive the future of mountain biking here could be. They run alongside each other with hands on the saddle, urging one more pedal stroke, a lean into the turns… it couldn’t be a more positive start if we’d scripted it. 

Dirt and determination

Later that afternoon, all four volunteers decamp to a nearby trailhead, about half an hour’s drive outside of Thimphu. Against a stunning backdrop of a giant golden Budhha and the Eastern Himalayas receding into the horizon, all four women ride an off-road bike off road for the very first time in their lives. 

The terrain’s nothing crazy — just a dirt plateau without too many bumps or slopes — but it takes me and everyone else watching right back to the very beginnings of our mountain bike journeys. It’s no easy thing to ride a bike on something that isn’t tarmac, but within minutes, all of them are standing in the saddle, adopting attack positions, and lowering their torsos to the bars. Some progress faster than others — it’s all still pretty wobbly — but they’re doing a hell of a lot better than I would if I’d been riding for a week at the age of, say, 35. When the older of the two Tsherings gets the spirit in her and just rides off down the trail unprompted, the collective cheer rings off the mountainside loud enough for the whole valley to hear it. 

A steep learning curve

Because they’re just starting out, our volunteers aren’t experienced enough to join us in riding Bhutan’s huge network of natural trails. We’re all sorry they’re not with us, but as soon as the riding starts, we’re grateful, too — this is some seriously wild terrain. 

With so few riders and such a huge network of natural trails, there’s no way to build features or even do much trail maintenance. So the riding’s about as far from the sculpted lines of an established bike park as you can imagine.

After shuttling over an hour up a rutted, seemingly impassable mountain road pitted with holes, stray rocks, and curious gray Langur monkeys, we begin the first serious ride of the day. It starts with a long, steep hike-a-bike at an altitude that makes my sea-level lungs heave in protest on a path that takes us to Lungchutse Monastery, built in devotion to Tara, the goddess of compassion. That compassion takes the form of a cup of hot milky tea from the resident monk so our wheezing crew can rest, contemplate the majesty of the Himalayas, and scratch a couple of dogs behind the ears. We’ve not even ridden a yard, and we’re already transported — the sun glints from the snow-capped peaks across the valley, the air is as cool and crisp as a glacial stream, and we’re about to begin our first descent from 11,700ft. 

Wet and wild

It’s snowed recently, and now it’s melted, leaving a slick layer of mud on the trail and its many, many rocks. My desert-dwelling companions are aghast at the lack of traction, and I’d like to say I wasn’t gleeful about my many years riding in the slime and slop of UK trails, but I was. It’s a hair-raising slither down rocky chutes for the first few hundred feet, but what a rush. We duck under spider webs stretched across the dark forest canopy, slide around fallen trunks of 600-year-old trees, and periodically burst out onto open hillsides with millions of dense, forested acres spread beneath us. It seems like just minutes, but we’re descending so steep and fast that hundreds of feet fly by in the blink of an eye. We roll up the sides of the forest floor, hop from rut to rock and back again, sliding around on leaves and loam in all directions, and it’s truly wild — hardly anyone has ridden here, ever, and it feels like magic.

Lunch is pretty special, too. Forget the usual squashed ham and cheese made on a truck tailgate — this is a proper meal. The bike transport truck is parked halfway down the trail, and its bed is groaning with a hot buffet of rice, dhal, greens, cooked beef, and chili relish, all served from hot bowls on real plates. 

We complete the day with a beautiful, challenging afternoon of singletrack perfection. The forest grows denser, greener, and wetter as we descend, with slippery muddy sections, loose dirt, stinging nettles, and punchy climbs, all broken up by periodically breathtaking snapshots down the valley toward Punakha. We roll across rope bridges and down steep steps, with the river twinkling on the valley floor. The valley sides are stepped for rice growing, and smoke drifts lazily across hillsides. Pheasants and ravens and curious dogs abound.

Our hardy group survives a wire in the derailleur; a bent rotor; several wet, muddy washouts; minor altitude sickness; and some slightly questionable line choices; and the day ends with a dramatic plunge down the last few hundred feet of fast, flowing trail in fading light, to be greeted by the most spectacular building I’ve ever seen — the fortress at Punakha.  

Not enough words

I want to tell you about every inch of every trail we rode. About the natural drops from moss-covered rocks and the wild moguls of red mud. About the steepest roots I’ve ever tried to descend on. About hiking a bike through fronds of sunlit moss, dangling like beads after Mardi Gras from the trunks of Cypress trees, and of pouring water onto hissing rotors to try and squeeze ten more minutes of grip on 13-kilometer descents.

But there’s just not enough room in this article, or enough skill in this writer, to completely do it justice. And, as I kept reminding myself, the fact we’re riding at all was a bonus — our real job was to help Khushala, Dawa, Tshering, and Tshering begin their mountain bike journeys as best we could.

Leaps and bounds

Although they may not need anything except the bikes and each other. By the time we meet up with our intrepid four in Paro, just nine days after they built the bikes, it looks like they’ve been riding for months. The younger Tshering, who was struggling to stay upright on the first day, is now riding unaided with confidence, turning in tight spaces and grinning like a Cheshire cat. All four women follow Julie’s lead and start riding together in single file around a giant prayer wheel, and casually drop off a high curb, standing on their pedals, without a hint of nerves. We get word that they’ve been practicing together every day for two hours, refusing to let each other give up until real progress has been made.

After a couple hours of coaching from Julie, we repair upstairs to a nearby coffee shop to hear how they’ve been doing, and it’s hard to stop them all talking at once — the excitement and enthusiasm pour out in an unstoppable stream, and ratchets up several notches when we show them some footage of women riding this year’s Rampage. 

It’s a cliche to say a journey like this is a privilege, but there’s no better way to describe our time in the Kingdom of Bhutan. We’re all overwhelmed with the beauty of the mountains, with the welcome we’ve received, and the nerve-shredding steep natural trails we’ve been able to ride. Most of all, though, we’re privileged to have been given the chance to meet four women who — despite having little or no experience, few role models, and precious little free time after working and raising their families — are determined to play their part in the future of Bhutan’s mountain bike culture. 

So if you believe — as they, and Julie, and millions of riders around the world do — that the future of MTB has to be more female, bear that in mind when planning your next trip. If you’re lucky, a Bhutanese woman might just be there to show you the way. 

Tips for traveling to Bhutan

• You can’t just show up — all visitors are required to be accompanied by local guides. Every MTB trip needs to be booked with a local tour operator, such as Bhutan Rides.

• You’ll need a tourist visa, and to pay a tourist tax of $100 USD for every day you’re in the country (which is half of what it used to be).

• If flying from the USA, you’ll first need to catch a flight to Dubai, Bangkok, Singapore, Kathmandu, or New Delhi before catching a connecting flight to Bhutan with Drukair. Those transit stops may require visas of their own, too. 

• Bike shops and spares are few and far between, so take more than you might otherwise — derailleur hanger, brake pads, tires, tubes, etc. — and anything special your bike needs.

• Pack your tools in your hold luggage — between us, our group lost Allen wrenches, multi-tools, tubeless tire spikes, and numerous other bits to zealous airport security. 

• Take a wide variety of clothing — we were in multiple layers with buffs over our faces at the start of rides and sweating in short sleeves by the end. You’ll also need to wear long pants and long sleeves when you visit any religious sites. 

• Be prepared for the altitude. For example, our highest ride started at 11,200ft after a two-hour hike-a-bike. Lots of fluid, lots of food — and two Ibuprofen before riding, in my case — seemed to help. 

The article We witnessed the beginning of female MTB guiding in Bhutan appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Pick up a GT bike while you can, and save! While we aren’t too surprised to see discounted GT bikes given the latest news, we ARE surprised to see so much winter gear on sale in-season. Save big on quality jackets, gloves, and shoes right now, or even a smart trainer and fat bike to get you through the winter!

Flylow Royal Shirt

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This long-sleeve jersey features a snap closure which makes it easy to open up so you don’t overheat. And the poly-blend material provides excellent sun protection and dries quickly too. The women’s Flylow May jersey is also sale, marked down from $150 to $74.83.

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The Garmin Tacx FLUX 2 trainer has a heavy 7.6Kg flywheel for a realistic ride feel. It’s also nearly silent and is compatible with popular training apps like Zwift.

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Snatch up a GT bike while you can! The Sensor Sport was already a great value, and at $1,000 off it’s a steal! More GT bikes are also on sale at Mike’s Bikes.

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The Rapha Explore Zip-Neck is a four-season jacket with zippered vents and a fitted cut designed to move well on the bike. Sizes small, medium, and XL are still available.

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Nobody wants to go endo, which might explain why this pack is on super sale. Fortunately, Gregory is known for producing quality packs, and this is a big one that includes a 3L hydration bladder.

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This wind jacket is soft and stretchy, and is water-resistant as well for those times you’re caught off guard. Features three rear pockets and a zippered pocket for holding important items. Sizes XXS through XXL are available.

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Do yourself a favor and pick up a pair of quality Merino socks to keep your toes warm all winter long.

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Buy this solid aluminum fat bike for well under $1,000 and you’ll be riding in all conditions this year! Features a 9-speed drivetrain and 4.5″ Kenda tires. Sale price available for a limited time, add to cart to see savings.

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Endura Mens MT500 Freezing Point Jacket

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This waterproof jacket is also insulated for riding all winter long. But don’t worry, it’s easy to avoid overheating thanks to two massive zippered vents under the arms.

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This Specialized Crux first caught our eye thanks to its killer paint job. At this price it’s also a great value, delivering a carbon frame and fork with Shimano GRX drivetrain and disc brakes. Sizes 54, 56, 58, and 61 are still available.

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Nothing says ‘mountain biker’ more than a Dakine pickup pad slung over a tailgate. On a tight budget? The evo tailgate pad is on sale for just $39.99.

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The Gore Wear Zone Thermo gloves are wind- and water-resistant to keep hands warm and comfortable. Price shown includes an extra 20% off with code EXTRA20

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Endura Mens MT500 Freezing Point Trousers

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These Endura pants are a popular choice for winter riding and it’s rare to see such a big discount in season. Also check out Endura waterproof gloves for $34.99 (normally $69.99).

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Five Ten Trailcross Mid Pro Mountain Bike Shoes

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The Five Ten Trailcross Mid shoes are up for just about anything, with a grippy sole for flat pedal riding plus ankle protection for when conditions get squirrley.

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Craft Men’s Core Active Comfort Baselayer

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Want to find the best price on your next mountain bike? Try our comparison shopping tool and don’t miss our Weekly MTB Deals for the biggest savings on mountain bikes, gear and more.

The article Get these GT bikes while you can, plus big discounts on winter gear too appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Building new mountain bike trails takes a lot of time and effort. Maintaining trails takes even more of both. While trail maintenance may not be sexy or glamorous, its effects are felt by everyone who visits.

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Clearly, mountain bike trails don’t maintain themselves. What needs to change in your local community so that trail maintenance can be improved? Are there certain times of the year when the trails are in better shape than others?

The article Are your local MTB trails well maintained? appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

September 2025 will mark 20 years of my life spent mountain biking singletrack. This number doesn’t include messing around on trails as a child, and instead, marks a turning point in my life when a light bulb went off and I realized, “This is FUN!!”

As the decades have rolled on, I’ve grown somewhat complacent in my mountain biking goals, particularly when it comes to fitness. Now, I’ve often pursued travel goals, and I continue to pad my numbers with more trail and countries to solidify my status as one of the best-traveled mountain bikers in the world.

And that is one of the things that leads to complacency. When you set a goal and then accomplish it — or, in my case, add up the stats, upload them to a different online platform, and realize that it has already been accomplished — you can feel a distinct letdown at the challenge being over. In Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World, philosopher Iddo Landau calls this the “paradox of the end.”

“It is our efforts, which until now we had seen as means, that are really the end,” Landau writes. “Paradoxically, it seems as if the struggle to achieve the end was more meaningful than the achievement of the end.”

Mental barriers arising from limiting beliefs

Thankfully (or not-so-thankfully?), there are always new goals to chase if we look hard enough. In 2024, I realized that even though I’d already accomplished one of my major lifetime mountain biking goals, I had allowed complacency to creep up on me in the form of limiting beliefs. I realized that I had erected many mental barriers in my mind to improving my performance or accomplishing things that I’d long dreamt of. As I started to examine some of those barriers, I realized that they were ultimately self-imposed.

Now, I’ve listened to podcast episodes where guests have opined about “confronting our limiting beliefs,” but I always thought it was a bit disingenuous. In my opinion, the toughest part is first identifying that you have a limiting belief in the first place, as they seem to be, by definition, blind spots. If you knew you had a limiting belief, would you just let it sit there untested? Probably not. Instead, we erect these false barriers without being mentally aware of them.

Over the past several years, I’ve slowly identified several limiting beliefs that have held me back. Instead of being angry at myself for having held onto these beliefs for so long — sometimes, decades — I’ve instead been so thankful to have seen into my blind spots with enough light to recognize them and slowly begin to change them.

I began to question these self-imposed barriers through a series of questions. If you’d like, here are some good questions to try:

• Is this true?
• Is this really true?
• What if I’m wrong about this?
• What if I did the opposite?
• Have other people who are less smart/fit/accomplished/wealthy/privileged than me done or achieved this thing I’m afraid to do?

A few limiting beliefs I’ve shattered (so far).

It’s tough to discuss this idea in abstraction, so to make it concrete, here are a few limiting beliefs I’ve confronted and barriers I’ve shattered, specifically related to physical fitness.

In 2023, I questioned long-held beliefs about my diet, alcohol consumption, and my weight. After switching to a whole foods plant-based diet and cutting out alcohol, I proceeded to lose 20 pounds in three months, and then another five pounds more slowly… and I kept the weight off. At the same time, I quickly increased my speed and endurance on the bike. For more on this journey, check out this article.

Ever since I pedaled a dirty century in 2013, I’ve told myself that I don’t necessarily need to be able to ride 100 miles, but I’d like to be in the kind of shape where I can get off the couch and ride 50 miles of hard singletrack in the mountains at a moment’s notice.

That was 11 years ago, and I still had yet to attain that benchmark. Why? What was holding me back? Sure, I had dealt with several major injuries and a couple of surgeries in the intervening 11 years, but in early 2024, I asked myself some of the questions above and realized that maybe some of the barriers I’d erected around improving my endurance were self-imposed.

So, I dedicated myself to breaking down that barrier piece by piece and slowly building my fitness this year until, in September, I succeeded in riding over 52 singletrack miles, covering all of the trails at Phil’s World in one massive loop.

Shattering more limiting beliefs in 2025.

The past few years have set the stage for what I hope to accomplish in 2025. As I’ve written before, it is the height of foolishness to create a New Year’s Resolution out of thin air and expect to accomplish it. Instead, the best way to accomplish a goal is to launch into it with momentum — to build on previous successes to achieve something new.

This belief informs my focus for 2025, which will consist of shattering even more self-imposed barriers as I strive for new heights. But which barriers? What obstacles will I overcome?

As I alluded to above, I think that limiting beliefs are inherently blind spots in our lives, and thus it’s difficult to identify one until you stumble into it through some combination of self-reflection and being exposed to new outside information.

That said, I think we can get a glimpse of our limiting beliefs by writing down a list of things we’ve always wanted to do or have told ourselves that we want to do “someday.” Then, once you have that list, ask yourself: “Wait a second: why haven’t I done these things yet?”

This will get you really close to honing in on some blind spots and limiting beliefs.

So, while I may not know precisely which barriers I need to shatter, here’s a glimpse into the murky future of what 2025 may have in store.

New Zealand

As I write this, I’m in the midst of an epic journey that I’ve wanted to take for longer than I’ve been a mountain biker: exploring New Zealand.

When I first seriously began planning a New Zealand trip back in 2019, I created a limiting belief that said, “If I’m going to spend the time and money to travel to New Zealand, I need to max out my visa and spend a full three months there. Then, I need to head to Tasmania and mainland Australia and spend at least three to six months there. Next, I have to go to Nepal and see the Himalayas, maybe hit India while I’m in the neighborhood, pop over to Japan…”

My wife has pointed out that this doesn’t really sound like a limiting belief, and instead might be a case of existential overwhelm (see Oliver Burkeman’s work on this topic). While this may be true, I think for me, the desire to have as long of a trip as possible moved from being enabling to limiting — and I think that’s one of the keys. Limiting beliefs are highly personal, and we can only uncover them with truly personal introspection.

In this example, I asked if it was really true that I had to plan a six to 12-month trip or not go at all. So, I trimmed down my ambitions to focus solely on New Zealand, and I’m currently in the midst of a two-month trip, bookending 2024 and beginning 2025 on the right foot.

Building more endurance

Due to a couple of overuse injuries that cropped up following my 50-mile ride (although perhaps unrelated — long story for another time), I had to modify how I structured my training to focus on beginning my New Zealand trip with as much health and all-around fitness as possible. Instead of focusing on building longer one-day endurance, I had to focus on recovery without losing too much fitness, plus building some more foot-sporting endurance for a multi-day hiking objective.

So, once winter wraps up, I’ll have to reassess what building endurance looks like in 2025. Does it mean going longer in a single-day push? Going the same distance (~50 miles), but multiple days in a row? I have a few ideas, which relate to my more specific goals below.

5,000 human-powered miles

My year-long goal is to complete 5,000 human-powered miles in 2025 across all activity types. This would, by far, be the most mileage I’ve completed in a single year. 2024 will actually peg a new high-water mark for me as well, but I probably won’t quite hit 4,000 miles this year (TBD).

As you can imagine, most of these 5,000 miles will be singletrack mountain bike miles, but this goal is intentionally sport-agnostic. That said, here are a couple of basic rules governing this goal:

• They must be actual miles covered outside. I hate seeing people’s Strava recordings this time of year saying they’ve ridden 25 or 50 miles in “Wattopia.” Newsflash: if you’re pedaling on a trainer, you’re riding hours not miles. Learn how to use a dictionary.
• E-bikes are for the elderly and the infirm — neither of which apply to me (yet).

A multi-week European bike tour.

This one comes from the list of “Things I’ve always wanted to do, but haven’t yet.” After asking myself, “Why the FUCK not, Greg?!” I couldn’t come up with a great reason.

This goal was actually on the docket for 2024 but then ended up getting postponed due to some other life challenges. But instead of capitulating to life, it has remained on the list and been elevated to the Tier 1 goal spot for 2025.

The bike tour got booted from 2024 in part because my wife and I had established New Zealand as the Tier 1 goal for the year. Remember, “You can afford anything but not everything,” as Paula Pant likes to say. “Every choice that you make is a trade-off, and this doesn’t just apply to your money, but also your time, your focus, your energy — any limited resource that you have to manage.” So, the trade-off in 2024 ended up being New Zealand mountain biking over a European bike tour.

Now, nothing is knocking the bike tour out of 2025.

This bike tour probably won’t look anything like a tour you’d sign up for with a commercial company and pay thousands of dollars for. Instead, I’ll plan the entire adventure myself based on the type of riding that my wife and I like to do.

In my opinion, riding in traffic sucks, so I strive to build routes that eliminate as much traffic as possible. Also, I think drop bar gravel bikes are the perfect machines for a long-distance bike tour with variable surfaces. Based on these criteria, I try to build routes anchored by paved bike paths separated from traffic, gravel canal paths, and sinuous singletrack connectors where the opportunity arises.

In early 2024, I used this framework to build a practice ride in Phoenix, which I dubbed the “Water in the Desert Loop.” My wife and I pedaled a 150-mile loop (ending up with 166 total miles of riding) almost entirely on paved bike paths, gravel canal paths, and a few spicy singletrack connections. It was an absolute blast, and I think taking this ideology to Europe will result in an incredible experience.

Parting thoughts

I’ll leave you with a few ideas from one of the foremost thinkers of our time on shattering limiting beliefs: David Goggins. (Yes, I quoted an academic philosopher and David Goggins in the same article.)

Don’t forget that you hold the keys. Now, go out there and shatter some limiting beliefs!

The article Shattering limiting beliefs in my 20th year of mountain biking appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Ask someone if they have any New Year’s Resolutions, and chances are decent that they’ll say they don’t believe in resolutions. And I get it: most of us have had more than a few failures when it comes to following through with our goals for the new year, sometimes within the first week of January. Not only that, I tend to think of resolutions in terms of the things I want to stop doing, but according to the textbook definition of the term, a resolution can cover things to do, or not to do. Still, I prefer to use the word “goal” since it has less baggage.

Mountain biking is such a rich and dynamic sport, it’s hard to choose just one goal for the year. With that in mind, my 2025 goals include plans to build, progress, and ride.

Build: Backyard pump track

I’ve been wanting to build a small pump track in my backyard for years. A recent landscaping project in another part of the yard gave me literally tons of dirt to work with, making this dream a reality. Well, potentially.

Admittedly, I’ve never built a pump track before, but I’ve ridden a ton of them and have interviewed experts who design and build pump tracks all over the world. I’ll probably get it wrong the first time, and likely the second time, too, but I’m looking forward to learning as I go.

Along with the pump track, I’m also hoping to create some more skills features like jumps, skinnies, and rock gardens, so I can work on bike skills at home whenever I have a free moment.

Progress: Jumping and cornering

The last time I shared my MTB goals in an article like this one, I mentioned that I wanted to get better at cornering. Well, guess what: I’ve still got plenty of room for improvement, haha. The pump track should help, especially since my backyard build will need to have a tight radius by necessity.

I’d also like to get better at jumping my mountain bike. There aren’t a lot of trails with jumps close to my house, so here again my plan is to build some progressive skills features at home, including jumps.

Last year I committed myself to riding with flat pedals for a month so that I could get to a point where they didn’t feel totally sketchy on the trail. Much to my surprise, it’s already been a year, and I’ve fully committed to flat pedals for mountain biking. Flat pedal riding isn’t a big deal by any means, but it does give me confidence that I can achieve my jumping and cornering goals if I’m committed.

Ride: Bikepack somewhere new

I didn’t go bikepacking in 2024, but I’m hoping to get out for at least one big trip in 2025. Putting a bikepacking ride on the calendar is a great way to set a goal, one that involves both travel and fitness. Some friends are planning to do a modified version of the ~300-mile Tally Tango in Florida around the first of February, which sounds like a blast, though it will probably end up being too close to an Arizona bike trip I have planned around the same time.

The bikepacking trip that I really want to take is one that my friend Nick designed. The idea is to ride Amtrak from Atlanta, Georgia to Birmingham, Alabama, and then bikepack back home to Atlanta. The route hits quality singletrack in Oak Mountain State Park and at Sylaward in Sylacauga, crests some of the tallest peaks in Alabama around Cheaha State Park, and finishes on a 60-mile+ rail trail through Georgia. We don’t have a date yet, which has me worried it might not happen, so maybe I should just put it on the calendar and see who shows up. I know I’m in!

Your turn: What are your mountain bike-related plans and goals for 2025? How’d you do on your 2024 goals?

The article One of my 2025 MTB goals is to build a backyard pump track appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Remember, you can keep up with the latest mountain bike news by subscribing to the Singletracks newsletter. Each week, we round up the top stories and also include some exclusive content that you won’t see posted online.

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The most viewed Singletracks mountain bike articles this year spanned a wide variety of topics, including new trail and destination coverage, fitness tips, epic bike sales, inspiring stories, and yes, debates over wheel sizes and eMTBs.

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Trek Slashes bike prices by thousands including SRAM Transmission builds

Like 2019 housing prices, we're going to look back at this Trek bike sale and kick ourselves for not buying a whole fleet of bikes. Click to read the article.

This tiny Nevada town of 840 people now boasts 60 miles of raw desert singletrack

They built it — now you need to ride it. Tim and John spent a day ripping the raw desert singletrack in Caliente, Nevada, just 150 miles from the Las Vegas strip. Click to read the article.

This small Nevada town is upping the ante by investing $12 million in 50 miles of new singletrack

The small town of Ely, NV, is making a big bet to become a recognized IMBA Ride Center. Click to read the article.

After a decade riding 29er wheels, I returned to 27.5 (front AND rear)

Dedicated 27.5 bikes may not be nearly as popular as 29ers, but as we found out, they still have their place. Click to read the article.

He’s riding his grandfather’s MTB from the early 90s and winning races 🏆

Nathan Peterson is racing his grandfather's 1994 Merlin Mountain titanium hardtail mountain bike, and in spite of the dated geometry, he's winning. Click to read the article.

Do you own an electric mountain bike?

We've been writing about e-bikes for over a decade, and we're curious to know how many Singletracks readers own one. Click to read the article.

$1.3 million for 6 miles of top-tier trails: The newest county park in Washington is only open to mountain bikers

"These trails have saved my life." Through a rare private-to-public land swap, the residents at Tehaleh have access to an incredible bike-only trail system. Click to read the article.

How a North Carolina Community Managed to Build High Quality MTB Trails in a City Park

A lottery winner helped fund the new trails at Rocky Branch Park near Charlotte, North Carolina and the project greatly benefitted from a master planning process. Click to read the article.

The Hidden MTB Deals of Planet Cyclery’s Closing Sale

Popular products from big brands like Shimano, SRAM, Kuat, and ENVE have been marked down and inventory is already looking limited. Click to read the article.

Most commented social media posts

Ugh, social media. Love it or hate it, this is where many important conversations are happening in the world of mountain biking. These are the Singletracks stories that garnered the most comments on our Instagram and Facebook accounts.

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Most shared social media posts

These are the Singletracks stories that were shared on social media the most in 2024.

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Most Singletracks podcast listens

The goal for the Singletracks podcast is to learn from our expert guests. This year we tackled a range of topics from skills to gear, and from trail building to fitness. These were the top three episodes based on the number of listeners. Click to see all the shows we produced in 2024.

Finding Flow with Flat Pedals – MTB Skills

Both flats and clipless pedals have their pros and cons, and there's no right or wrong answer for mountain biking. Skills coach Carol Baldwin shares her tips for finding flow on the trail. Click to read the article.

So, You Don’t Have Time for MTB Training. Welcome to the Club

Former pro mountain bike racer and cycling coach Sara Bresnick shares tips for busy folks who want to ride faster. Click to read the article.

Is carbon better than aluminum for MTB frames? It depends on how you use it!

Specialized engineer Chuck Teixeira explains why aluminum is still a great choice for mountain bike frames and why early carbon MTB rims caused so many pinch flats. Click to read the article.

You made it to the end, congratulations! Now, tell us which Singletracks article or podcast was your favorite in 2024.

The article Singletracks Wrapped: The most read (and most commented) MTB stories of 2024 appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Emily Greaves looks like a person who has her life together. She’s ex-military, speaks her mind without hesitation, and has a laugh like a car alarm. If you were looking around a sinking ship for someone who might know where the life rafts are, she’d probably be your first choice. 

So when she tells me about a friend who took his own life and begins to tear up at the memory, it’s an unexpectedly affecting moment and one that makes the story of Greaves’ work even more fascinating to learn.

Comrie Croft

Greaves is part of the mountain bike skills and coaching team at Comrie Croft in Scotland. It’s a set of trails on private land that feels a world away from the publicly-funded forestry facilities found elsewhere in the country. No brisk committee-approved signage. No digital parking meters or state-mandated fencing. 

This cozy, homespun enclave boasts over 21km of purpose-built trails ranging from family-friendly blues to some seriously technical blacks, with a skills area, a full-service bike shop, and coached or guided rides for individuals and groups. You can also eat excellent organic food; shop at a well-stocked store that carries everything from vegan chocolate to locally-knitted hats; camp in your vehicle, your tent, or one of their Norwegian katas; take a sauna… you can even get married here. It feels very much like a reflection of the way Greaves and her husband feel about their fellow riders and outdoor enthusiasts. It’s warm, friendly, and clearly a labor of love. 

Which is perhaps why this place, and Greaves, were the first choice for the beginning of a unique mental health experiment — one that puts mountain biking at its heart.

Head set

As riders, we all know that getting out on our bikes is good for our minds as well as our bodies. An argument at home, a hard day at work, a problem that needs a bit of space and time? We go for a ride. It doesn’t make problems go away, but a combination of adrenaline, fresh air, exposure to nature, and the singular focus it takes to navigate trails has a way of putting those problems into perspective. 

It turns out this vague, often-unspoken mental uplift is real — so real that it’s inspired Scottish riders, mental health professionals, and academics to create a program that prescribes mountain biking as therapy. Greaves is one of the first mountain bike guides and coaches in Scotland to be trained as a Trail Therapy practitioner, and local patients can now self-refer or have the program recommended by doctors, nurses, and mental health practitioners. If you get a place, you’ll get a real mountain bike to ride from the rental fleet, be taught how to use it, then be taken out with a group of other riders, two hours a week, for eight weeks. 

All paid for by the Scottish National Health Service. 

We’ve reported on this program before, back in 2019 and 2021 — its launch, how it was funded, etc. — but recently, we got a chance to spend some real time with Greaves on the trails, talk about her experiences delivering this therapy to real people, and ask what she thinks is happening in the heads of the people she rides with.

Risk is rewarding

We all know that mountain biking is risky — it’s why we do it. The rush from defying warning signals from our brains and bodies is palpable. It’s this powerful physical and mental reaction to risk that’s at the heart of the Trail Therapy project, and Greaves is keen to stress the specific benefits of riding at risk, as opposed to just being outdoors or exercising in general.

Greaves believes that trail riding’s therapeutic magic is found in the little moments — the stuff that literally flies right by as we’re riding. “This therapy needs to be actual mountain biking, not just riding a bike, because of the challenging aspects of actually doing real trail features,” said Greaves. In other words, it has to be a genuinely “risky” outdoor ride if it’s going to make any real difference. 

Most of us take those moments of risk for granted — we don’t think too much about what’s happening. So it’s useful to approach the therapeutic benefits of risky features like we’re watching a skills video and break down what’s happening step by step:

1. When we ride up to a challenging feature like a drop or a steep roll, our brains and bodies begin to react. 
2. We anticipate danger, we experience fear, and our systems flood with adrenaline, cortisol, and a host of other chemicals associated with stress as the brain and body work at lightning speed to decide what to do. 
3. If we’re experienced riders and we’re confident in our skills, we use our bodies to navigate that feature and keep rolling. That intensely pleasurable rush that comes right after pulling off a tricky move is that same warning system rewarding us for, essentially, feeling the fear and doing it anyway. 

That process is proving to be an excellent method for helping people with mental health issues. Learning to ride a mountain bike on a real trail, with all the bumps, drops, rocks, and rolls that entails, strengthens their ability to recognize, face, and overcome stressful feelings.

In fact, Greaves is convinced that deliberately choosing, facing, and managing technical trail features is at the heart of why Trail Therapy works. “It’s really important to have that fear. Because then we can manage their cortisol, and do breathing exercises to calm down, and get to a place where they can ride a feature,” said Greaves. “The hit of dopamine afterwards is visible — you get to the bottom of an amazing trail, and you’ve loved it, and everyone’s high vibing, you’re up. And that’s that feeling that everybody gets.”

Unlike talk therapy or medication, being out on a mountain bike trail and facing frequent moments of challenge forces the body and mind to work together to overcome fear, and participants experience strong positive feelings as a result. That exposure to risk gives participants like Corie Davis* both the mental and physical tools to face similar feelings in other aspects of life. She’s been using the lessons she’s learned on the trail in ways she never expected.

“The emotional regulation… the decision making… it helps,” said Davis. “When you’re stressed, or scared… you can transfer that to going for a job interview or phoning the gas company or whatever you need to do.”

Doing the work

This isn’t just a whimsical experiment. The Trail Therapy program in Scotland is a result of Occupational Therapist Niamh Allen — herself a keen rider — being convinced that riding bikes on mountains would have tangible benefits for all kinds of mental health issues and working with Developing Mountain Biking in Scotland and other local stakeholders to find the funding to train Greaves and her colleague Scott Murray to be some of the first official practitioners. Since the program began in 2018, inquiries have been coming in from around the world. It’s cheaper than individual therapy sessions, it makes use of existing trail resources during quieter weekdays, and it doesn’t compete with or counteract any other therapy people might be receiving: counseling, drug treatment, or anything else. 

It’s all worth it.

Greaves emphasized that a huge amount of the benefit she’s seen comes from the groups themselves. She’s watched them bond over the stress and success of tackling scary features and build mutual support over those shared weeks. Groups sign up for two hours a week on loaner bikes but often end up riding for way longer, showing up on week three with bikes they’ve bought themselves, or organizing bigger and longer rides without her help. 

Greaves is the last person in the world to seek out any credit for the work she’s doing. But she does make a point of mentioning an intimate conversation with John Hollingdon — an early participant and cheerleader for the program — as one of her most treasured memories of working on the project:

“He said that trail therapy had done more for him than any medical intervention, any tablet, anything else he’d tried. It’s incredibly important to me, because my friend Gareth killed himself two years ago, and it was horrific. I said that if I can stop another person from doing that… John looked at me and said, ‘You have.’” 

* Some names have been changed to protect the anonymity of participants.

The article How Scottish MTB therapy gives mental health patients control of their lives appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Breaking the rules can be a lot of fun, even when it just feels like you’re breaking them. In February of this year, I found myself riding wet and muddy trails down slopes that were surely too steep to be sustainable in what would turn out to be my most memorable and eye-opening ride of the year.

There’s no greater shame for a mountain biker than to be caught riding muddy trails, and for good reason. Biking on wet trails can cause significant damage that’s unfair to other trail users and also to the folks who build and maintain the trails. On top of that, it’s not great for our bikes either.

Still, there’s something about playing in the mud that makes us feel like kids again. So, when I found myself at Windrock Bike Park in Tennessee on a wet, misty morning, I was conflicted. Surely it would be irresponsible to ride that day, but then again, the privately-managed trails are rarely, if ever, closed. And I wasn’t riding my own bike that day, I was riding a Mullet test bike (thanks Miles!).

So, weather and trail etiquette be damned, I dove right in. The wide-open, groomed Talladega trail was squishy but rideable, but my eyes were truly opened once I ventured onto the steep and natural trails at Windrock, culminating in a tense descent down Golden Oak. It was while riding this narrow, loamy trail that I realized what I had been missing across thousands of miles of trail riding on public land: mountain biking with true reckless abandon.

I had a taste of this the day before, riding at Ride Kanuga and Rock Creek bike parks in North Carolina, and again a few weeks later at Jarrod’s Place. The mountains and forest felt intimately familiar — after all, I had biked trails in the area for decades. But this was a new experience, a lifting of the rules, a relaxing of constraints, that both challenged me and opened my eyes to another style of riding. It felt more raw, more old-school, more renegade.

Riding Golden Oak at Windrock that day, it was as if I had stumbled onto a secret, illegal trail that had been scratched into the side of the mountain just the day before. “How did they get away with building this trail?” I wondered. Well, when it’s private land, you can pretty much do whatever you want to do. That day, I experienced the same excitement and adrenaline rush I’ve felt biking questionable trails in well-known destinations like Bellingham and Santa Cruz, but without the fear and guilt that sometimes tag along for the ride.

To be clear, when it comes to accessible and sustainable (public) mountain bike trails, I don’t think we can ever have too many. We’ll always need more safe, accessible, and sustainable trails that are designed for everyone to enjoy. After all, for every “best” ride, there are dozens of after-work rides and hot laps at the local trail system to be ridden.

And in the end, it’s those everyday trail rides that make a ride like mine at Windrock that day stand out among the best of the year.

The article I broke all the rules, and that’s what made it my best trail ride of 2024 appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Compared to mountain bike technology trends, mountain bike trail trends move at a glacial pace. It usually takes years, sometimes decades, for a trail to go from ideation through approval and funding until it finally gets built. Consequently, new trends in trail construction and development can take many years — even decades — to gain momentum.

Even though the pace of change may be slower, that doesn’t keep us from tracking trends in trail construction, design, and access as they unfold. Here are five of the most important trail trends and three trail building hot spots that we’ve observed in 2024.

Trail Trends

1. E-bikes are gaining legal trail access across the USA

Out of all the trends discussed here, this one feels like it’s moving the fastest in 2024. However, e-bike proponents are quick to note that the USA was caught on the back foot in managing e-bike access compared with the rest of the world, and that it only feels fast right now because government agencies are playing catch up. And, well, they’re right.

Even still, in 2024 we’ve published countless articles about e-bikes gaining legal access to trails on public land all across the USA, along with a few notable examples in other countries. Unfortunately, there is no coordinated nationwide legislation making this happen. Instead, individual Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and US Forest Service (USFS) districts have to initiate the various environmental assessment and public comment processes individually.

That said, we’re seeing the BLM propose e-bike tests in critical areas, like Moab. In this case, the Utah BLM has indicated that if the process goes well in Moab, the BLM may quickly open trails on BLM lands across the rest of the state to e-bikes.

2. Shuttle-served bike parks on private land

A new mountain biking trend is sweeping the planet and may even be changing the sport as we know it: the privately-owned, shuttle-served bike park.

These bike parks all share a few key similarities: they are operated on privately-owned land, and to keep infrastructure costs to a minimum, vehicles are used to transport riders up the mountain instead of chairlifts. These parks are generally also open to riders who want to pedal to the top, whether under their own power or through the assistance of an e-bike motor.

While the concept isn’t new, we’ve seen more of these parks open in 2024 than ever before. For more information, catch the full article here: “Are shuttle-served bike parks on private land the future of mountain biking?“

3. More downhill jump trails on USFS land

As I highlighted in the full article about private bike parks, part of the reason these parks are being started is due to the difficulty of getting jump lines approved and built on public land. However, we’re seeing that resistance slowly erode across the nation. The USFS in Arizona, in particular, has become much more receptive to the idea of jump-filled flow trails, and in 2024, some of the first such trails were opened on USFS land in the state: the Bean Peaks trail system in Prescott and the Full Sail flow trail in Flagstaff.

Local advocates will note that the Hawes trail system in Mesa was already home to purpose-built jumps on USFS land. This is true, and it just goes to show that these trends don’t happen overnight — they take time to develop.

4. More trails close to home

In 2019, IMBA created a goal of building “new trails close to home in 250 communities by 2025,” according to Eleanor Blick, Director of Communications for IMBA. As of spring 2024, IMBA was engaged with 530 communities, had 89 communities committed, and had already realized trails in 84 different towns. Recently, IMBA launched a new map on their home page to visually track all of these amazing projects.

In 2024, we reported on trails built close to home in communities across the USA. From the East Coast to the Midwest, the Rockies, and the West Coast, this vision is gradually but consistently becoming a reality.

Full Article: “More Mountain Bike Trails Close to Home: 10 Exciting Projects that IMBA Is Working On in 2024“

5. The professionalization of trail building

The trail building profession is transforming from a ragtag group of DIY builders who learned their lessons the hard way to a true career path. This new career path includes the opportunity to take college courses and get certified in trail building. According to Greg Mazu, founder of Singletrack Trails, “there’s about 15 different community colleges out there that are developing some sort of certificate program for trail building.” We covered one of these programs in Arkansas.

The trail building profession also now offers more codified means of career advancement and skills development, especially at some of the biggest companies. Stay tuned for a deeper dive on this topic soon.

Trail building hot spots

Well-known trail meccas like British Columbia, Washington, Colorado, Utah, Arkansas, Vermont, and North Carolina continue to build trails at a typical pace — which is to say, rapidly. However, in 2024, we spotted several destinations bursting onto the trail building scene in force.

1. The Upper Midwest

Choosing the entire Upper Midwest as a “hot spot” might be cheating, but we’ve seen multiple trail systems open across Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio in particular. Iowa is particularly interesting, as we’ve spotted at least three substantial trail system openings in a state that’s not been known for riding up to now.

While several networks of trails close to home have opened in Michigan, 2024 also saw the completion of a continuous 45-mile loop in the state known as “The Dragon,” which was prominent enough to earn it an award as the best backcountry-style trail opened in the USA in 2024.

2. Nevada

Communities across Nevada have been investing heavily in mountain bike trail development. The trend may have begun with Beatty almost a decade ago, but in recent years the towns of Caliente, Pioche, and Ely have all doubled down on mountain biking as an economic driver. Even Las Vegas is expanding its substantial trail system, even though surely the area already receives plenty tourism dollars by other means.

3. West Virginia

West Virginia is investing millions of dollars in a dramatic mountain bike trail expansion. This investment is a concerted bid to inject tourism money into a stagnating economy by capitalizing on the incredible beauty of the Appalachian Mountains. We’ve covered three major projects in West Virginia this year, with future phases of development planned in some areas. We’ve also heard rumors of more projects in the pipeline for 2025 and beyond. Watch this space: we aren’t done talking about West Virginia.

Full article: “West Virginia is investing in trails — big time. Next up, a brand-new 27-mile trail system”

Did you spot a trail building trend or hot spot that we missed? Let us know about it in the comments below 👇

The article 5 important MTB trail trends and 3 trail building hot spots in 2024 appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Today’s mountain bikes and components are unarguably better than the ones that were available just five years ago, but getting to this point hasn’t been a straight line of progression. Along the way, we’ve seen good — and bad — trends come and go. The good ones tend to stick around, while the bad ones become the fodder for “remember when” conversations among riders. The frustrating thing is, it’s not up to us as individuals to decide which ones are which.

However, given the following trends in mountain biking, we want to know which trends — if it were up to you — would fade into obscurity.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

to end you

Which mountain bike trends would you like to see the end of in 2025?

• Longer reaches
• Slacker head tube angles
• Lower bottom brackets
• Mixed wheels
• Electronic shifting
• Electronic suspension controls
• Wireless dropper posts
• eMTBs
• Increased suspension travel
• New standards
• Adjustable geometry
• Other (tell us in the comments below)

Submit

Everything is awesome? Tell us which MTB trend has you stoked in the comments below!

The article Which MTB trends do you want to end in 2025? appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Simmons is a larger-than-life character. His enthusiasm is infectious, for bikes or otherwise, and he lights up the room. Meeting him in a small coffee shop in North Vancouver, he bursts through the door, loudly greeting me in the way he does with everyone, and exclaiming to the barista, and whoever else is listening, how great my mustache is. That’s Simmons on pretty much any day, as I’ve come to learn. It’s never a dull moment when The Godfather is around.

Simmons has been in the mountain bike industry longer than most, starting as a mechanic at Deep Cove Bike shop, as many do, and not long after becoming a pro athlete. He’s one of the few that has managed to successfully carve out a niche for himself after the pinnacle of his pro-athlete days. I wanted to catch up on what that looks like, and find out more about his latest project, Godfather’s Garage.

Don’t be fooled; though Simmons’ pro freeride days may be behind him, he’s still on Rocky Mountain’s pro athlete roster, and for good reason: he’s damn handy on a bike. While he’s not throwing down with the young freeride crowd any more because, by his own admission, he’s not getting any younger, he can still teach them a thing or two.

On top of being an athlete and all that entails, Simmons has been a rep for Rocky Mountain, Fox, Race Face, and Marzocchi for a number of years. It’s a good gig in itself, but always the entrepreneur, Simmons wanted to create his own brand, and make his mark on the industry. Running through a number of options, starting a bike brand seemed like a good idea. Simmons tells me that at one point he, Ritchie Schley, and Brett Tippie almost started a brand.

“We had a business proposal for a bike company called Legend Bikes. We had a stylized ‘L’ in our logo. You can see it now, right?”

Ultimately, they decided it wasn’t going to work, and he admits that there might be too many bike brands out there anyway.

Creating cockpit components would have been a winner, but he didn’t want to step on the toes of Race Face.

Then Simmons started noticing Muc-Off. A proud Canadian, he couldn’t fathom why one of the most popular chain lube brands here is a bright pink British Company. I tried not to take offense, being a proud Brit myself, but I can see his point.

“I see Muc-Off, I see these big ugly pink stands, and I’m like, ‘how does Muc-Off have any space in the PNW, in BC, in North America?’ You see it everywhere, they own the lube space. So we’re like ‘lube, dude! There’s no BC lube company.'”

Simmons wanted to create something authentically Canadian, and made in Canada. After all, oil is big business here. Partnering with Keith Stark, long-time friend, and ex-pro XC and downhill racer, Godfather’s Garage was born.

Simmons and Stark wanted to build the complete package with Godfather’s Garage, so that riders here can count on them to be able to keep their bikes in great shape. The Godfather’s Garage product range consists of three chain lubes, a grease, a de-greaser, a bike wash, and a tubeless sealant, all of which are produced here in Canada.

How does one start a chain lube company? Simmons and Stark spent the better part of a year contacting Canadian oil and lubricant companies to see if they could do what they needed.

“If Wade Simmons is going to make a lube company, we’re going to be asked the hard questions — why did you start a lube company?,” Simmons told me. “Well, A. we want to be Canadian. B. We want to be sustainable, and C. you’ve got to be good — we can’t come to the market with crap, so we started vetting oil companies.”

Settling on a supplier in Ontario, they worked together to formulate high performance bicycle lubes.

“We found [a supplier] in Misissauga, Ontario. They make big industry lubricants, food-grade lubricants, they do it all. We collected all the best lubes out there right now, and sent them to[the supplier], and they broke them down in their laboratory, and we said ‘we need to be as good as or better than these, can you do it?,’ and they said ‘yes, of course we can do it’. It’s bike lube, not rocket science. Bike lube is not subject to high heat, it’s not subject to high torque.”

So formulating bicycle chain lubes is clearly a little easier than in other industries, since the environment it’s being used in is less demanding. Simmons goes on to dispel some myths.

“It’s impossible to create a lube that lubricates and cleans. You cannot have something that lubricates in the wet without attracting stuff.”

Instead, they wanted to make a lube that works the best for as long as possible, and says that their wet lube can last multiple rides in the wet.

Simmons and Stark wanted to build something they could be proud of, using local manufacturing and produced in environmentally friendly way. Locally produced means fewer air miles, and more Canadian jobs — I can’t argue with that. The base oils for their chain lubes are plant-based, and so they’re about as green as they can be.

The Godfather’s Garage tire sealant uses no latex or ammonia, and is produced just blocks from the coffee shop where we were sitting.

“It’s plant-based, the carrier is plant glycerin, so it’s environmentally friendly, and it doesn’t dry out.”

Likewise, all of their lubes are plant-based, with no petroleum, because they know that these lubes are going to be used in the natural environment. For the same reason, they wanted to make sure that none of their lubes contained any PFAS “forever chemicals,” like other lubes out there that contain Teflon, for example.

“We started off two and a half years ago and started off with four products, now we’ve got ten. We’re focused on just getting it out now and occupying the space. Now we can keep someone’s attention, they don’t have to go anywhere else.”

Simmons and Stark know they’ve got big competition, but the brand is young, and they’re doing well. The Muc-Off brand has more than thirty years on Godfather’s Garage, but Simmons is confident they can make it work.

We start talking about branding; one of the big reasons Muc-Off got to where they are is branding and story, and that’s true of any great brand. Fortunately, Simmons is a storyteller, and an excellent one at that.

“When we talk about the name Godfather’s Garage, I never called myself ‘The Godfather’. Tippie gets pissed about this — I got the name from the New World Disorder (NWD) crew. I never claimed I started freeriding, right? But I can do it all — I competed in trials, I raced dual slalom, I raced BMX, I can ride urban, and when you watch my NWD segments, there’s a little bit of everything. I embodied everything about what mountain biking and freeriding was.”

I’m bearing with Simmons at this point — I appreciate the friendly shade he’s throwing at Tippie since they’re old buddies that go way back, and I’m sure he’s getting to a point. He’s a charismatic talker, and I like that.

“I told Tippie, ‘we’re all Godfathers’. We sponsor Mark Matthews and I see him as a godfather, and Remy, everyone’s a godfather in their own right.”

Simmons is a hype guy, he loves to ride his bike, and to inspire others to get out and ride too. I think what Simmons is getting at, is that anyone that gets out and rides their bike is a godfather, and Godfather’s Garage is made for them. I like that sentiment — and let’s be honest, good chain lube is important, but if we’re talking about successful businesses, story, integrity, and branding are just as important.

If buying Godfather’s Garage means supporting some of the most influential riders in history, that’s reason enough for me.

The article Freerider Wade Simmons starts Godfather’s Garage, with lubes and sealants for the godfather in all of us appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

The legislation which became the Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences (EXPLORE) Act has been in the works for 10 years, and it has finally passed both houses of Congress. On December 19, 2024, the U.S. Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent. The bill had passed the House of Representatives earlier this year and will now go to the president’s desk for signature

The EXPLORE Act is “a first-of-its-kind bipartisan package that improves outdoor recreation on America’s public lands and waters,” according to a press release from the Outdoor Alliance.

“This action shows Congress understands the physical, mental, and economic importance of outdoor recreation on our public lands,” said Todd Keller, Director of Government Affairs for the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA).

Key congresspeople who helped spearhead the passage of the EXPLORE Act include Senator Manchin, Senator Barrasso, Representative Westerman, Rep. Grijalva, Senator Wyden, Senator Cantwell, Senator Heinrich, Rep. Curtis, and Rep. Neguse.

Highlights of the EXPLORE Act

Highlights of the bill include:

• The Biking on Long Distance Trails Act (BOLT Act), which identifies and creates more long-distance bike trails. (Learn more about the BOLT Act here.)
• The Protecting America’s Rock Climbing Act (PARC Act), which safeguards Wilderness climbing.
• The Simplifying Outdoor Access for Recreation Act (SOAR Act), which improves recreational permitting for outfitters and guides.
• The bill codifies FICOR and the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership, which funds parks and green spaces in neighborhoods that need it most.

The BOLT Act is the portion of the bill that’s most noteworthy for mountain bikers, and which IMBA has fully supported.

“The BOLT Act will identify at least 10 existing long-distance bike trails and identify at least 10 areas where there is an opportunity to develop or complete such trails,” said Keller. “The bill will also direct the Department of Interior to publish and distribute maps, install signage, and distribute promotional materials.”

Outdoor recreation is a vital part of the nation’s economy.

According to a recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), outdoor recreation in the U.S. generated $1.2 trillion in economic output. This equates to 2.3% of total GDP and creates 5 million jobs. The report also showed that bicycling was the fastest-growing outdoor recreation activity in 2023. Biking increased 26.6% from the previous year, narrowly outpacing winter activities. While these statistics appear to include all types of biking (not just mountain biking), the impact that cyclists of all stripes are having is abundantly clear.

However, despite the massive economic benefit provided by outdoor recreation, public land management agencies like the US Forest Service are woefully underfunded. As we covered in our exclusive newsletter content, the US Forest Service has implemented a hiring freeze on seasonal employees for 2025, which will have a disproportionately negative impact on trail maintenance.

In part, the EXPLORE Act addresses funding for trail maintenance and development. As we understand it, the bill mandates that fees collected from permits for recreational activities, special recreation events, and commercial uses such as filming or photography on federal lands are retained by the respective agencies. Those fees will then be allocated directly for on-site improvements, which include trail building and maintenance, installation of signage and maps, and facility upgrades near trailheads.

In a recent article we published about proposed trail use fees in Western Colorado, one of the primary criticisms of the proposal was the lack of a mechanism to direct the fees toward improvements on the specific trails where they were levied. The EXPLORE Act addresses this problem explicitly.

In addition, the EXPLORE Act specifically funds public agencies like the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to produce updated and accessible trail maps.

Finally, the bill mandates that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) itemize and publish annual federal spending on outdoor recreation. This will ensure a transparent view of funds allocated to trail-related initiatives and will allow Congress to monitor and adjust appropriations for trail development.

“The passage of EXPLORE sends a clear message that outdoor recreation and our public lands are bipartisan priorities,” said Adam Cramer, CEO of Outdoor Alliance, one of the organizations that envisioned and advocated for the EXPLORE Act. “Signing this bill into law represents a meaningful investment in our shared outdoor heritage and the vibrant outdoor recreation economy it sustains. We look forward to continuing to advocate for the protection and enhancement of outdoor recreation and public lands for generations to come. And we are very grateful to members of the public who took the time and effort to let their representatives know how important it was to them to pass this meaningful legislation. That helped make the difference.”

Update: The EXPLORE Act has been signed into law

After being passed by Congress, President Biden signed the Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences (EXPLORE) Act into law on January 4, 2025.

The article After 10 years of advocacy, the EXPLORE Act has passed Congress appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

With year-end approaching, two iconic mountain bike brands are making big moves to stay afloat in a difficult market.

Yesterday, Rocky Mountain announced in a press release that it has filed for protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act in Canada in order “to avoid business interruption as much as possible.”

“Despite strong demand for its bikes during the pandemic, the Company struggled to secure supplies due to shortages and rising costs,” according to the release. “Once the pandemic was over, the Company had to contend with a sharp drop in selling prices.”

The release continues, “As a result, margins have tightened, putting unprecedented financial pressure on the Company. Rocky Mountain has no choice but to initiate restructuring procedures to launch the Sales and Investment Solicitation Process (SISP) to become a resilient and successful long-term business.” Many bike brands, both large and small, have been similarly affected by oversupply issues and falling margins brought on by the COVID pandemic in 2020.

Rocky Mountain was founded in 1981 by mountain bikers living on the North Shore of Vancouver. In 2021, the brand celebrated its 40th anniversary.

Pon is shelving the GT brand

Also this week, Bicycle Retailer reported that GT Bicycles is “pausing new product releases,” though Singletracks has been unable to independently verify this characterization of the situation. Quoted statements from the brand vaguely point to a “strategic reorientation,” and the publication says GT Managing Director Jason Schiers confirmed that layoffs will be coming to the brand this month.

YouTube personality and GT sponsored rider Phil Kmetz says he and other athletes were included in a call with the brand earlier this week, and his account supports what we’re hearing from other publications.

“They’re not shutting down. They’re gonna sell off the inventory that GT has, and then once that inventory is done, they’re going to pause the brand,” Kmetz said in this video.

GT parent company Pon owns more than half a dozen bike brands, including Santa Cruz, Cervélo, Cannondale, Schwinn, and Mongoose, plus component brand OneUp Components and bike retailer Mike’s Bikes. GT got its start in 1972, and over the years the brand has changed hands before eventually falling under Pon.

The article Rocky Mountain restructuring to avoid bankruptcy, and GT is laying off staff before year-end appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Bikes and components are increasingly electronic, and now they’re going wireless.

It’s obvious our mountain bikes are becoming increasingly dependent on batteries, even on bikes that aren’t electric. Honestly, this has been going on for a while, though this year it’s become clear that wireless electronics are the future of MTB components. A partial list of wireless releases this year includes new SRAM Transmission drivetrains, Fox Neo shocks and dropper posts, and e-bike systems from brands like Bosch.

In a Singletracks survey this summer, 48% of respondents said they’re currently running wireless shifting on at least one of their mountain bikes.

This is a huge shift, and it’s clear many mountain bikers just aren’t ready for it. With every new mountain bike frame that’s released without support for a mechanical drivetrain, there are dozens of comments decrying the move. It reminds me of 2016 when Apple got rid of the headphone jack on the iPhone. At the time, I thought it was a dumb move, but clearly, the smartphone market has moved on and hasn’t looked back. In my opinion, mountain bikes are facing a similar inflection point, at least for the upper end of the core market.

Beyond the philosophical pushback against wireless bike components, tricky technical hurdles needed to be jumped, namely developing systems that are fast and reliable enough for mountain biking. With those issues largely resolved in just the last year or two, we’ll likely see a proliferation of choices in the seasons to come.

Better bikes are now available for younger riders thanks to growth in the sport.

In 2024, Transition launched three new bikes targeting young riders, including the Bandit, which rolls on 20-inch wheels and fits riders as small as 3’6″. All three are real mountain bikes that include suspension forks, and for the larger-wheel bikes, rear suspension, too. While smaller, niche brands like Trailcraft have long offered fully capable mountain bikes for talented young shredders, this year saw several mainstream brands like Transition, Liv, and Giant rolling out youth-specific bikes, plus we saw more new bikes being offered in extra-small sizes, including the Specialized Status, Rocky Mountain Instinct Power SL, and Trek Marlin+. And then there are bikes from brands like Jibe and YT that seek to bring high-performance bikes to young riders on limited budgets.

The bike industry has long ignored the small-stature segment, either through willful ignorance or simple cold-hearted supply and demand calculations. Looking at the growth in youth cycling programs and the (oft-related) proliferation of family-friendly trails across the USA, I’d say the increased demand for more capable youth bikes is what’s driving this trend, rather than the industry finally recognizing an unmet need. Either way, kids and parents have a wider selection of quality mountain bikes to choose from today, and that’s a good thing.

We’ve also seen more brands adopt size-specific geometry over the past several years, and while it’s not a new trend, it’s certainly made bringing smaller bikes to market more feasible. Though this takes a bit more time and investment up front, and economies of scale tend to be diminished, the end result is bikes that fit riders better, no matter their size.

Bikes became more flexible in 2024.

At the short-travel, cross-country end of the mountain bike spectrum, it’s clear flex stays, while not a new design, are here to stay. Examples that come to mind include the 2025 Rocky Mountain Instinct with a single-pivot flexstay design, the new aluminum alloy full-suspension Specialized Chisel, and the world-beating Pinarello Dogma race bike.

Not only are mountain bike frames getting more flex, bike geometry is becoming more flexible too, thanks to flip chips and adjustable headsets, making it possible to dial in everything from reach to chainstay lengths and head tube angles. Again, this isn’t anything new. However, in 2024, it’s become a feature that buyers expect from the latest releases.

Y’all are into some weird stuff: chain waxing, anti-clog valves, and electronic inflators.

On the component front, chain waxing seems to have had a moment in 2024 with at-home wax accessories selling out left and right, and a surprising amount of interest in this podcast interview with Lennard Zinn on the topic. If anything, this just shows that riders aren’t totally happy with the chain lube experience and are looking for more long-lasting and performant alternatives. Curiously, carbon belt drives and gearboxes still do not appear to be the answer for most riders along this front.

The lowly Presta valve suffered a major assault in 2024, with at least three new “Presta killers” seeking to dethrone the king. Though Reserve attempted its own assault way back in 2021, it’s clear they were only able to inflict a flesh wound. Time will tell if any (or all) of these options become widely adopted.

Electric tire inflators have been a surprise hit with mountain bikers this year, and it seems few of the bike pump brands (other than maybe Muc-Off) saw it coming. We expect to see many more options hitting the market in 2025 from well-known brands.

What’s not trending

Just a year or two ago, it seemed there was a trend toward lightweight eMTBs, with brands dropping super light models left and right. These bikes were/are characterized by lower-capacity batteries and less powerful motors for a more natural ride feel.

This year we’ve seen just as many “full power” e-bike launches, many centered around the new Bosch Performance Line CX motor. While motor efficiencies continue to improve and battery energy densities are increasing, there’s no getting around the fact that e-bikes are going to remain heavier than traditional mountain bikes. Not only that, brands are finding that many riders just aren’t interested in e-bikes with limited battery range. Though e-bikes will continue to get lighter, I predict we’ll see more of a focus on the performance characteristics, like responsiveness, that lend a more traditional ride feel to eMTBs.

Did we miss anything? Tell us which MTB trend surprised you the most this year in the comments below.

The article These 2 mountain bike trends stood out in 2024 appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Ninja Mountain Bike Skills founder Richard La China had a problem.

The ramps his instructors were using to teach mountain bikers how to jump kept breaking. Fortunately, the injection-molded plastic ramps weren’t expensive — only about 100 bucks each — but it was a constant hassle to get replacement ramps out to instructors who criss-cross the country teaching jumping skills clinics. What’s worse, “when they broke, it was catastrophic,” La China said.

The team developed their own welded steel structure to reinforce the ramps, which helped, but one day, the ramp supply dried up completely. “Everyone was out of stock,” La China told me. “So then I found out that they went out of business.” Not only did he need the ramps for teaching clinics, many Ninja students saw the ramps being used in class and wanted to buy their own so they could practice at home.

A serial entrepreneur, La China had hoped to buy the ramp company’s remaining supply, or even better, the molds used to make the ramps, but came up empty. So in late 2019, he decided to build his own.

Building a better bike ramp

Ninja bike ramps are made from high-quality plywood that’s designed to fit together almost like a piece of Ikea furniture. “All of our ramps are portable. Even our biggest ramp has wheels, and it can be towed behind your bike.”

Not only did La China want a design that’s easy to transport and store, he also needed a product that’s easy to ship. The company’s ramps are available for purchase online with worldwide delivery options; only the largest ramp — the six-foot Lobo Launcher — requires freight delivery.

Before launching his own ramp, La China tested all the bike ramps from various companies that he could get his hands on, though he found that none of them were quite right. So, he set out to come up with his own design. Once he had a workable prototype, he found a manufacturer in Europe who agreed to make the ramps, and the first batch sold out instantly.

“I’m a little bit of a control freak, especially for things that my name’s on,” La China said. “And I wanted to make sure that if this is Ninja-branded, that it’s Ninja quality.”

With a clear demand for the product, and given his desire to have complete quality control, the next step was to mass produce the ramps himself. He hired an engineer from the Oregon Institute of Technology, who also happened to be an avid rider and backyard ramp builder, and set up a shop in Klamath Falls, Oregon. He purchased a 5×12-foot industrial CNC router to start, and now has four of them operating 16 hours a day, seven days a week, to keep up with demand.

La China received a US design patent for Ninja ramps this year, along with similar patents in China, Europe, the United Kingdom, and other countries.

“We have a bike stand called the Stoke, and we were selling hundreds and hundreds of those,” he said. “Then all of a sudden, the sales came to a screeching halt, and no one could figure out why. And then we look, and this company 100% blatantly copied our design and did it in injection-molded plastic and just blasted it all over every marketplace, Amazon, etc.” With a design patent in hand for the ramps, this time, the team is hoping to avoid copycats.

Ramps for every rider, but at a price

Ninja offers eight different ramps, ranging from $99 skateboard/RC-car jumps to the $2,899 Lobo Launcher, which most buyers tend to purchase with a Ninja Airbag Lander. Then there are ramps for heavy electric motorcycles like the Surron, capable of supporting up to 450lb. Though all of the ramps look simple, they aren’t cheap, especially compared to what one could build at home.

Early on, “the feedback was, ‘Wow, this is ridiculous. $500 for a ramp? I could make that out of dirt and a piece of plywood,'” La China said. “And my response would be like, ‘Cool. Do it. That’s what I did. Nothing wrong with that.'” He argues Ninja ramps are safer and more portable than homemade ramps, and their design makes them ideal for learning and progression.

White men can’t jump… but they want to learn

La China has built a business teaching mountain bike skills to eager students across the USA, with a constant stream of new riders wanting to learn the basics. And for those who have been riding for years, there’s always room for improvement, either through a class like the Ninja Jumping Mini-Clinic or practice at home.

“I’d say the bulk of the [ramp] customers are middle-aged men who want to learn how to jump,” La China said. Many buyers have attended a Ninja clinic and want to get more practice, while others already know how to jump and just want the convenience of doing so at home instead of driving to a bike park. And, of course, parents are buying ramps for their aspiring young shredders, too.

La China doesn’t see demand for the ramps slowing anytime soon. “There’s always people moving up to the mountain bike, in and out of the mountain bike or BMX world.” With progressively larger ramps available, and add-ons like the Ninja Skinny Balance Beam Log Ride, there’s a long runway for riders to improve their skills.

“You can buy one [ramp], use that the first season, get the bigger one next season. Or put two ramps side by side, or one after the other. I think it’s endless,” La China said. “I’m gonna keep making them as long as people keep buying them.”

The article Mail-order Ninja bike ramps are taking off among riders looking to gain jump skills 🚀 appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Proposals to grow two of Bend, Oregon’s winter riding spots — Cline Butte and Horse Ridge — are on land managers’ desks and are currently being worked on. While Horse Ridge’s public comment period has wrapped and now awaits NEPA, Cline Butte has already seen new trails built. These trail systems are located primarily on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land and have gone relatively unregulated for years. 

Many Bend locals are excited about the prospect of new trails. However, others worry about what “official” involvement could mean for existing trails and e-bike access. 

Cline Butte: Existing trails

Cline Butte rises approximately 800 feet above the high desert landscape about ten miles north of Bend. This small network of trails is part of a larger riding zone called the Cline Butte Recreation Area (CBRA), which includes the nearby Maston and Cascade View trailheads.    

“So the goal is to have Maston be green, Cascade View is blue with rock tech, and Cline will be more advanced with steep descents,” Alex Brieger, Trails Program Director for Central Oregon Trail Alliance (COTA), told us. Cline and the other two trailheads are managed by COTA’s Redmond Chapter.

Cline Butte is known for three major descents — DH 1, 2, and 3. The three DH trails drop from the top of Cline and are chunky, steep, and technical, easily falling into their black and double-black ratings. 

A fourth, less technical descent known as “The Saddle” drops from roughly halfway up the Butte and leans toward the advanced side of intermediate. The beginning is fast, loose, and off-camber with decent exposure. The second half is more technical, with loose gravel corners and optional rock drops or rolls. 

New trails have already been built at Cline Butte.

Working with the BLM, COTA proposed an additional 12.1 miles of singletrack in the CBRA, with some trails already completed on Cline Butte. These additions to Cline filled much-needed progression gaps. 

“The goal is to make everything manageable for people to ride,” Brieger told us. “We have two black trails and a double black trail, so we’re looking at where is the need.” COTA identified this need as intermediate descending from Cline’s summit. 

COTA added two blue trails: The Goat and Chainbreak. The Goat was an existing but not well-established trail scratched into the top quarter of Cline Butte. COTA officially adopted the trail, reworking its entrance and extending it to three-tenths of a mile down the Butte to the start of The Saddle. The Goat is more technical than Chainbreak, with two rock roll options near the top, followed by optional drops and fast corners. By combining these two trails (The Goat to The Saddle), riders now have a top-to-bottom intermediate descent from Cline Butte’s summit.

Chainbreak is nearly three-quarters of a mile long and descends over 500 feet down Cline. The trail is flowier, with steep switchbacks for practicing cornering skills. Chainbreak has a few technical sections, but they consist of mellower rock gardens rather than the steep rock rolls on other descents. It also provides another blue option to the bottom of Cline, as The Saddle is closed for several months of the year due to a nesting golden eagle. 

Besides intermediate options, COTA recognized a need for a more direct climbing route on Cline. The current climb has riders pedaling a few miles on the Buttes XC trail to the back of Cline before grinding another mile up a service road. A more direct route is available on the front of the Butte but involves a grueling hike-a-bike up an old access road. This particularly steep road climb starts near the beginning of The Saddle.

“The section from The Saddle to the top of the road climb is heinous,” Brieger said. “The goal was to make a nice pedal-access trail that allows you to get to the summit.” 

COTA added Return Policy, replacing the hike-a-bike road. Climbing 227 feet in over half a mile, COTA designed Return Policy to climb gradually. The trail has several tight switchbacks before getting somewhat technical at the top. Still, it maintains a manageable grade.

The CBRA plan also calls for a trailhead with multiple entry points, 20-30 vehicle spaces, and toilets. More trails are also in the works for Cline, including a climbing trail from the trailhead to the summit and an intermediate jump line.

More “official” involvement brings up concerns among locals.

A proposal at Horse Ridge could also drastically increase its number of trails. While the proposal isn’t nearly as far along as the CBRA plan, some locals are worried about more “official” involvement in both zones. 

Cline Butte and Horse Ridge have long been riding zones where steeper and more technical trails were built — illegally. With these proposals on the table and trails already constructed, some worry that existing trails may lose features and technicality or be shut down altogether. 

Many riders have voiced concerns on social media and online forums. In response to a COTA Instagram post about new trails at Cline Butte, commenters asked COTA not to “dumb down” the trails and to hire the “original builder.”

On a post about the proposal at Horse Ridge, another commenter wrote: “This worries me. Horse Ridge has flourished to this point. It would seem the community at large would like to preserve existing features and technical elements of the trail, I hope this is taken into account as BLM gets involved.”

Another would say: “Enjoy them while they last.”

All three DH trails at Cline were grandfathered in as they are, with no plan to change the nature or difficulty of any of the trails. That said, DH 3 will see a reroute to keep the bottom of the trail off private land. This won’t be a “dumbing down” of the trail but saving it for the future.

Regarding Horse Ridge, Brieger explained that all the current trails on the ground were included in the proposal with the features and level of difficulty they currently have. It will be up to the BLM to perform environmental assessments of the current trails and, ultimately, decide what will happen to them.

“There are changes that come with trails that are built illegally,” Brieger said. “[Trails] for you and your ten buddies are not sustainable for the 100 or 200 people per day you’re gonna see on those trails.”

Future e-bike access is not guaranteed.

The BLM will ultimately have to make a decision about e-bike access, another concern locals had. Unlike Cline, e-bikes are considered in the proposal at Horse Ridge. Brieger told us they weren’t proposed in the CBRA plan because it would have required a new environmental assessment. Like the Forest Service, the BLM designates trails as “motorized” and “non-motorized.” Currently, the trails at Cline Butte and Horse Ridge are both designated as non-motorized. It is also the BLM’s responsibility to enforce such designations, something they have not historically done.

However, we have seen an increase of trails opening to class 1 e-bikes, including a proposal for Bend’s westside trails, which is supported by COTA. In all cases, the land manager decides if any trails on Bend’s public land will allow e-bikes.

Regardless of “official” involvement that might worry some local riders, both Cline Butte and Horse Ridge are officially on BLM land. To leave things as they are – meaning unofficial and technically illegal — would mean risking losing mountain bike access altogether. For example, another user group could potentially approach the BLM with a proposal instead of mountain bikers. Brieger told us Horse Ridge backs up to an OHV park and a Wilderness area.

In fact, public access to Cline Butte was questionable only a few years ago when an application was put in to purchase 400 acres of surrounding land for a resort. Brieger explained that the new CBRA plan secured existing BLM land for public recreation, and they hope to secure the future of Horse Ridge as well.

The article New trails have been built in Bend, Oregon, but are e-bikes and some historic trails threatened? appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Gear Watch Wednesday is a weekly update on the latest mountain bike gear releases and products that Singletracks has received for test. Have gear news to share, or products you’d like us to check out? Email jeff@singletracks.com.

New full-suspension Haro mountain bikes start at $1,999

There’s an all-new MTB collection from Haro, a brand that’s well known in the BMX world, but that has been on-again, off-again when it comes to mountain bikes. The “coming soon” pipeline looks pretty stacked with nine different full suspension builds priced between $1,999 and $5,699, plus new hardtails, too.

At the high end, the Haro Greer Alloy LTD 1 enduro bike, with 170/160mm of suspension travel front/rear, sports an “anodized raw finish over the burnished surface” with “etched detail,” a massive Fox 38 fork up front, and powerful TRP DH-R EVO brakes. The up-to-date geo sports a 63.8° head tube angle, 78° seat tube angle, and long reaches that max out at 510mm.

The $1,999 Haro Daley is a trail bike with 150/140mm of travel front/rear with similarly progressive geometry, and even at this price, buyers get four-piston brakes and burly Marzocchi suspension.

• Price: Full suspension bikes from $1,999 to $5,699
• Buy from harobikes.com

EKOI Perf Protect D3O® BOA® MTB Back Protector includes chest protection, too

The EKOI Perf Protect back protector is actually a back and chest protector, too. Featuring flexible D3O material that hardens on impact, the vest looks well vented and easy to fit, thanks to the BOA ratcheting lace system.

• Price: €249.90
• Buy from ekoi.fr

Wolf Tooth Encase mount gets one or more tools out of your pack

If you haven’t seen Wolf Tooth Encase bike pumps, they’re pretty sweet. The portable mini pumps are designed to fit tools inside the pump shaft, and the larger 85cc pump fits a multi-tool and chain breaker inside, or a tire plug tool. For those who prefer to attach a pump to their frame rather than inside a pack, the new Encase pump mount is just the ticket.

• Price: $14.95 for the mount, pumps start at $64.95 without a stash tool
• Buy from Wolf Tooth

Lōgōs Gida SL wheels weigh just 1240g for the pair

The Lōgōs Gida SL wheelset weighs an impressively light 1240g for the pair of XC race wheels. The carbon-fiber rims are 30mm wide internally with a shallower profile to reduce vertical stiffness. Lōgōs’ own Gen2 arché|OS SL hubset features a dual-spring, star-ratchet design, which saves weight over the previous hub version.

• Price: $1,850 for the pair ($2,400 with upgraded Enduro XD-15 Ceramic Hybrid bearings)
• Buy from logoscomponents.com

The article $1,999 Haro trail bike features Marzocchi suspension, 4-piston brakes appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

It was June of 2020, the height of COVID and civil unrest in the nation, and thankfully, four days since I’d seen another human — the perfect time to be out in the middle of nowhere with nobody around. I buried myself in endless walls of sagebrush, mahogany, and pinyon pine with nothing more than a pair of loppers and a Makita reciprocating saw in hand. No cell reception. No outside distractions. No news of the social apocalypse. Just the endless expanse of Nevada’s Great Basin, resurrecting the longest trail in Nevada, the Toiyabe Crest Trail (TCT), one mile at a time.  

Off in the distance, I saw a herd of sheep traversing across an open ridgeline at 9,000 feet above sea level. Leading them was a short, stocky man of South American descent, most likely Peruvian. He and his flock crossed a steep drainage and found themselves on a section of the TCT I just cleared. As he approached with his sheep dog on his heels, he smiled at me from under his gaucho hat, moving his hands forward and back along the narrow ribbon of dirt previously hidden by an impenetrable wall of sagebrush. 

“Aaaah…Camino!” he exclaimed.

“Si!” I responded, proud of myself for knowing what he said, as my Español is not so bueno. It was the first word I uttered to another human in four days. I stepped off the side of the trail and waved him through a freshly cut path up to the top of the ridge at 10,000 feet elevation, where his giant white tent was pitched. “Gracias!” he said, vanishing back into the sage with his flock close behind.

I’m not sure what the sheepherder thought of this gringo, covered in sage dust and mowing down brush like it was my only mission in life. But considering how many hours I’ve invested into the TCT since first riding it eight years ago, it kind of has been my biggest mission in life. 

The longest National Recreation Trail in Nevada

Few experiences humble you more than standing beside your bike at 10,500 feet in the dead center of Nevada, looking out hundreds of miles in every direction and seeing nothing but endless basins and ranges. Nothing but utter remoteness, a welcome loneliness, and a very real sense of being completely insignificant in the scale of the Great Basin. 

At 130 miles in length, the Toiyabe Range in central Nevada is one of the state’s longest, with more peaks in excess of 10,000 feet than any other range in the state. Aside from the tiny, 80-person hamlet of Kingston at the trail’s northern terminus, the closest town is Austin, 20 miles north, located along Highway 50, aptly named the “Loneliest Road in America.” But considering barely 150 people live in Austin, the wildlife ranks in far greater numbers. The next closest town of reasonable size is Fallon, more than 100 miles to the west. If you look at a night sky map of the lower 48 states, the darkest, most lightless place in the country is a bullseye right over the center of Nevada and the Toiyabe Range. 

The TCT is a National Recreation Trail (NRT) constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps between the 1930s and 1960s. Totaling 70 miles in length, the southern half of the TCT is within Arc Dome Wilderness, while the northern half is outside the Wilderness boundary and legal for mountain bike use. Despite its congressionally-designated status, the TCT has not seen a trail crew work on it in four decades. Since the 1980s, the most frequent trail users include the aforementioned sheepherder and free-range bovine traffic. 

I discovered the trail after reading a firsthand account written by my friend Yuri Hauswald in 2011, documenting an unplanned overnighter on the TCT with two friends, cliffed out and lost in the dark at 9,000 feet. The crew had no intel on the trail, got a late start, and got lost numerous times along the way because of how overgrown the trail was. At least the weather was favorable during their misadventure: they made it out the next day scratched up and bleeding with nothing more than an emergency blanket and a few granola bars to get them through the night. 

With redemption as the goal, in 2016, I re-assembled the original crew for a BIKE Magazine story and successfully navigated the non-Wilderness portion of the TCT. Although it was a 15-hour, 35-mile bushwhack suffer fiesta, in the afterglow of the adventure, I imagined how incredible that ride would have been had the TCT been maintained. Since trails don’t magically maintain themselves, I grabbed a reciprocating saw and a pair of loppers and started cutting with one of the original lost trio, Chris Brown. 

Resurrecting the TCT

It was about a mile into the 40-mile mission of brush busting when I realized this would take a lifetime without some more substantial help. The Deputy Administrator of Nevada State Parks, Janice Keillor, is an avid mountain biker, and when she heard of my efforts on the TCT, she recommended I apply for a Recreational Trails Program (RTP) grant. RTP is a program funded through the Federal Highway Administration, focused on motorized, non-motorized and educational recreational trail projects for state and local governments. RTP is also specifically designed to fund work on National Recreation Trails like the TCT, one of more than 1,300 NRTs in the country.

I reached out to the non-profit Great Basin Institute (GBI) in Reno, receiving help from them in applying for the grant with support from the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest – Austin Ranger District. Since January 2019, GBI has received two rounds of funding totaling approximately $120,000, including a contribution from the NV Energy Foundation. And in 2023, we applied for a Nevada Division of Outdoor Recreation grant, securing new signage along the entire non-Wilderness portion of the trail.

After more than 700 hours of volunteer labor coordinated mostly through a couple dozen friends, word of mouth, and six week-long deployments of the Nevada Conservation Corps – a division of AmeriCorps – 28 miles of the TCT have been cleared from Kingston Canyon south to Tierney Creek canyon, including the feeder trails of Washington Creek, South San Juan Creek, and Marysville Canyon. Approximately 12 miles remain to be cleared on the TCT from Tierney Creek south to Mohawk Canyon. 

During this process, the enthusiasm and interest in the project have been remarkable. The TCT resurrection project has been featured in several magazines, Patagonia’s 2023 “Human Powered” ad campaign, and two regional PBS shows – Reno’s Wild Nevada and Las Vegas’ “Nevada Outdoors”.

How to ride the Toiyabe Crest Trail

The best way to get a taste of the TCT without a huge commitment is approaching from the west side of the range, riding up the South San Juan Trail to the TCT, making a left, and heading north on the TCT for approximately 11 miles to Washington Creek. From there, descend back to the mouth of Washington Creek where it meets San Juan Canyon. Approximately 22 miles in length with 3,500 feet of climbing, this triangular loop gives riders a great option with free dispersed camping in Washington, Cottonwood, and San Juan canyons. 

As an “extra credit,” continue north on the TCT from the Washington Creek junction, climbing an extra 1,000 vertical feet in 1.5 miles to Carseley Saddle, turning around for a full 3,000 vertical foot singletrack drop on the TCT and Washington Creek, making the loop closer to 25 miles and 4,500 feet of climbing. For a point-to-point, continue north on the TCT another 10 miles, finishing with a ripping fun 3,000 vertical foot singletrack descent into Kingston Canyon featuring massive views and a final 1,800-foot “gravity cavity” testing the worthiness of your brake pads and rotors. 

For those extra adventurous types, riding point-to-point from Ophir Pass at the Wilderness boundary 32 miles north to Kingston Canyon is also an option, but just be warned that after passing the Mohawk Canyon intersection, the TCT to Tierney Creek is very overgrown and hard to follow in a couple of spots and will remain this way until 2026 when the next round of maintenance is scheduled to begin. Aside from being a skilled and fit rider, expert route finding and map reading are required. Central Nevada is one of the most remote locations in the lower 48 states. And although the trail is not rocky technical, it’s technical in a primitive and narrow tread-width sense. Purely for the sake of its primitive nature, I would consider the TCT an expert-only type of ride. You don’t want to get hurt out there. Help is a long way off.

Although there are no bike shops or big shuttle service businesses, local Kingston resident Chad Kelly has secured a guiding permit with the local National Forest Service office and can provide a shuttle from Kingston to the South San Juan trailhead for a 25-mile ride back to Kingston on maintained trail. 

The TCT is one of many trails in America being lost to lack of use, maintenance, and funding. It is up to us as enthusiasts, trail users, and public lands supporters to go out there, find an old trail, and be the champion in its resurrection. For me, it’s been a rewarding and life-changing experience, introducing hundreds of adventurers to a unique and beautiful corner of Nevada. So get out there, find a trail that means something to you, and reintroduce it to a new generation of trail users.

The article How one mountain biker is resurrecting the longest National Recreation Trail in Nevada appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Lance Canfield is a mechanical engineer and former professional mountain bike racer who drew his first mountain bike design in 1996. Today, his bike brand, Canfield Bikes, sells mountain bikes and components designed and tested in Poncha Springs, Colorado. 

• What were downhill bikes like when you began racing in 1994? What did you want to improve about your bike?
• Your first bike design in 1999, the Big Fat Fatty Fat, had 12 inches of travel front and rear. How did that work?
• You competed on some of your own bikes in Red Bull Rampage, including at the first competition ever in 2001. What was it like? How did it compare to today’s spectacle?
• Why do you think there aren’t many (any?) dedicated freeride bikes on the market today?
• What makes the Canfield Balance Formula (CBF) suspension design different from others on the market?
• Is CBF better suited for certain applications or travel ranges?
• Why are you such a proponent of shorter cranks for mountain biking?
• How has Canfield been affected by industry supply fluctuations over the past few years?
• What’s next for Canfield? Which mountain bike developments or trends have you excited about the future?

Visit canfieldbikes.com to see the bikes and components discussed in this episode.

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Automated transcript

Jeff Barber 0:00
Hey everybody, welcome to the Singletracks podcast. My name is Jeff, and today, my guest is Lance Canfield. Lance is a mechanical engineer and former professional mountain bike racer who drew his first mountain bike design in 1996 today, his bike brand, Canfield bikes sells mountain bikes and components designed and tested in poncha Springs, Colorado. Thanks for joining me Lance.

Lance Canfield 0:26
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Jeff Barber 0:28
You first started racing downhill bikes in 1994 what were the bikes like back then?

Lance Canfield 0:36
A lot of the bikes were built kind of like a road bike using road bike tubing, they really under built. They were quite bad, quite bad. Full suspension was fairly new, and so the kinematics were also very bad. You always had some kind of a sacrifice somewhere within the bike, whether it was braking, bump, performance, durability was certainly a huge part. Yeah, lots and lots of broken bikes in the early days of my riding. I had a GT LTS at the time, okay? And I broke that thing three times.

Jeff Barber 1:17
You broke it three times!? So what, did you repair it yourself?

Lance Canfield 1:21
No, I warrantied it. Okay, just a random consumer. And, you know, riding it probably way beyond what the thing was capable of. And, yeah, so it was considered a downhill bike at a whopping three inches of travel, yeah, 80 Mills, 80 mils of travel front and rear. It was amazing.

Jeff Barber 1:42
What was the competition like then? Because, I mean, I assume everybody was riding similar bikes, right? So were the courses as rough? Like, was it? Were people going as fast? Like? What was the competition like on bikes like that?

Lance Canfield 1:59
Riding certainly wasn’t as fast, but the competition was mostly on similar bikes. And then you had a few randoms that were on, you know, Team bikes. You’re on Team Cannondale, Missy Giove shows up with a fulcrum bike, and it was just like, Oh my gosh. What is that?

Jeff Barber 2:18
Were the bikes like a big differentiator? If somebody was on, you know, whatever the latest, newest one was, was that a big advantage?

Lance Canfield 2:27
Those bikes started to come out, probably ’97 or ’98 is when bikes started to jump from three inches, four inches up to all of a sudden, it was eight inches. And so there was a radical change in the market. Yeah, in the late 90s when that happened, and construction changed drastically, all of a sudden, you saw super eights out there. Those things were like, oh, it’s like a motorcycle. This is amazing, right? You know? And Brooklyn machine works was way ahead of their time. They were building burly bikes early, yeah, and those were really cool, and they still are, like, that’s a collector’s item for sure.

Jeff Barber 3:07
Yeah, I bet. Well, so when that shift happened, you know, when people started going from like a three inch travel bike all the way up to an eight inch travel bike, did you and other athletes have to, like, adjust how you rode, or was that like a pretty natural progression, like, as the bikes got better, were you able to adapt pretty easily?

Lance Canfield 3:28
Yeah, I mean, it made riding a lot easier. Obviously, the downhill racetracks prior to that were a lot of fire roads and and they were not really, like a downhill track, like, by today’s standards. Yeah, right. But once those bikes were a lot more travel, all of a sudden, the promoters were building tracks that were, like, borderline rideable for a lot of riders. People would complain, usually, at most every race, like, oh, this part’s too hard. Like, you know, if they’re like, I was in sport class when I started. And, okay, I really wasn’t a very fast rider. That was my goal, was to become a fast rider, right? And so I had to work really hard at it, and focus and learn how to race, like, mentally, to become a fast rider, yeah, and at a certain point I realized my equipment was the biggest limiting factor at that point, yeah. And that’s when I started designing a bike.

Jeff Barber 4:30
Okay, yeah. Well, so you had a background, or you studied mechanical engineering, is that right? That’s right, yeah, yeah, yeah. When you were a student, were you thinking that you were gonna do something with bikes, or did you have, like, kind of a different vision of what your career would look like with that degree?

Lance Canfield 4:49
I wasn’t. I wasn’t thinking about designing bikes at that point in my life. I was riding hardtails and what’s considered free ride today, like doing a lot of urbans. Stuff, just jumping my bike downstairs, off roofs and off roofs. Just doing dumb stuff that kids do. I don’t know many kids that were jumping off roofs at that time, but I was going up in the hills above my house and riding down the steep screw fields and just doing kind of, I thought was super fun stuff. I ruptured a disc in my back. Oh, doing a jump. It was meant to be a step up jump onto a dirt road, flat, okay, I overshot the whole road and landed up into the hillside above there and completely stopped. It was probably a 40 foot Whoa, step up and ruptured the disc in my bag. Had to move back to my mom’s house. And she said, Well, if you’re going to live in my house, you’re going to do something. So I was like, Alright, great. So I went to the local college that I had already had a degree at for auto body repair, and so my previous jobs and life were revolving around hot rods and and doing custom paint, custom stuff, and so that was a very toxic job and a lot of work, and I was actually quite excited about going back to school so that I could do something that didn’t wear me out during the day, so that I could ride at night free time and be able to ride Yeah, so mechanical engineering was my choice, and I was excited about it. I really liked it. I thought it was fun. So yeah, at that point, I was able to get back to writing a little bit. I had back surgery. Rehab lasted about a year, and the self paced course at the college was awesome, because I could rip through stuff, because I kind of had a natural intuition about a lot of things that were related to mechanical engineering that was kind of my strong suit, clipped my calculus and my trigonometry courses in in basically one week. I studied for four days, took both of those tests on Friday, and I was done. It was like, bam. Like, moving on. Cool. That was cool.

Jeff Barber 7:22
So getting back to those, those 90s bikes, and some of the the first bikes that you designed, I read that your, your first bike in 99 I think the big fatty fat fat —

Lance Canfield 7:34
The big fat fatty fat, yep, okay, named after our mean little dog.

Jeff Barber 7:39
Okay, I might have missed one of the fats there, but I read that the bike had 12 inches of travel front and rear, massive. How did that work?

Lance Canfield 7:51
It worked great. It rides really well. It’s a couple millimeters off of being a DW link. Honestly, it’s incredibly close. As the first attempt at actually building a bike. It was the most complicated thing you could ever imagine, a multi link bike with a pulley wheel with 12 inches of travel. That should be incredibly hard, even by today’s standards, but it rode really well. I had a bunch of criteria that I wanted to hit, like 17 inch chain stays. I wanted the bottom bracket as low as I could possibly make it without being excessively low, which was still a really high bottom bracket a certain wheel base, because I was doing more stunting. And so I wanted a short wheelbase. And so I had all of this criteria, and the top tube ended up being the one thing that got sacrificed in the process, okay? So it ended up being kind of a small bike, really small bike, okay, but for me at the time, it didn’t really matter, because I was an avid BMX or skate park that kind of stuff. Yeah, little tiny bikes were fun. They whipped around easy, so that was good for the time, but to be able to fit 12 inches of travel, I used a pulley wheel and a rearward wheel path. You know, that’s what a lot of brands are doing these days. It’s become cool now, yeah, finally.

Jeff Barber 9:15
Only 25 years later.

Lance Canfield 9:17
It took a while. I’m surprised that people were still resistant for so long, yeah, but it was the original mullet. Is a 24 rear, 26 front. Okay, so the smaller rear wheel helped make 12 inches fit. You know, the rear wheel path kept it from ramming into my seat. So those were the two key things that allowed me to make a 12 inch bike and have it work, right?

Jeff Barber 9:42
I’m not super familiar with downhill bikes, but the bikes today, nobody has 12 inches of travel, right? Like the bikes have kind of settled around what, like, 10 inches at the max,

Lance Canfield 9:56
Eight inches. Eight inches is norma.

Jeff Barber 10:00
What’s changed? Is it like the shocks are better or different, or able to manage that stuff better, or is it just people found they didn’t need 12 inches that that was just just too much travel.

Lance Canfield 10:12
It’s mostly geometry. Okay, so your bottom bracket height ends up so high that the bike doesn’t feel like you’re down in it, your way up on top of it, way too tall feeling. So that’s why they back down to about eight inches as wheels got bigger, arguably, eight inches is even too much. Okay, you’re interesting. You’re seeing seven inch bikes. Very capable. Yeah, you know interesting. 190 is, is is even, you know, some manufacturers are making 190 bikes that are downhill bikes, but eight inches is kind of what everybody settled on because it was a low enough bottom bracket to feel like you’re in the bike, and the geometry was a lot closer. It’s 12 inches is too hard to bunny hop, and when you hit jumps and berms, you’ve got a lot of travel to push down into before the bike firms up to be able to support you correctly coming around the corner or off the lip of a jump. So it required a lot more body English to handle a bike with that much travel. Eight inches is way easier to handle.

Jeff Barber 11:18
Gotcha, yeah, and you, you know, you mentioned that this was, like, a really complex design. It has a lot going on with it. What did you use to design it back then? I mean, nowadays, I’m sure everything is there’s like software that can make this kind of thing a lot easier. What were you doing to design bikes back then?

Lance Canfield 11:38
I did a lot of research. You know, motorcycles were about the closest thing that you could find information on, and I read everything that I could about motorcycle suspension design, but it didn’t really relate to a multi link bike. And the reason why I chose a multi link bike is because you can get really good pedaling, really good bump performance, really good braking, usually pedaling and braking, those two things fight each other. Okay? So you can have good, good pedaling, but really crappy braking on a single pivot, or vice versa.

Jeff Barber 12:11
And with motorcycles, you don’t have to worry about the pedaling part, right? This is what I’ve heard from lots of other bike designers, is that, I mean, you can’t just copy, paste from a motorcycle. You’re you gotta, there’s a lot more to it, right?

Lance Canfield 12:24
Yeah, I mean, you still have to pedal as a Downhill Racer. Pedaling is a big deal, like we’ll talk about that later. But I focused on motorcycles for a bit. Realized that wasn’t really relevant to what I wanted to do, and I felt like Formula One race cars and Baja trucks. Those two were using multi link suspension. So a arm suspension is sideways, but if you turn it backwards, it’s basically a short link multi link type of system. And Baja trucks, the rear suspension on those a trailing link rear suspension. That’s pretty much the pinnacle of suspension and control on rough terrain. And so I focused on those types of systems, and crawl underneath off road race trucks and eyeball what they were doing, try to figure out how they were doing it. And so at a certain point, I just started putting stuff down on paper and using like, okay, at sag, I need my links to be fairly level flat, you know, so that I have 90 degrees when the bump hits it, it’s at 90 degrees it has the most leverage to push that linkage upward, Right, okay, so it was a lot. It was guesswork, 100% guesswork at that point.

Jeff Barber 13:45
So you had a lot of prototypes, I guess that you were working with, like, full blown on a bike, or were you just, like, kind of playing with little desk models and stuff like that to figure it out.

Lance Canfield 13:55
There were no prototypes. This was all designed in AutoCAD.

Jeff Barber 13:59
Okay, that’s still around. I guess that’s still what people use. It’s probably just works a lot better now than it used to.

Lance Canfield 14:05
Well, yeah, SolidWorks is what I use now. Because it’s a 3d modeling program and you can see every clearance interference, you can make things move. It’s, it’s far more intuitive. It’s a way better program. AutoCAD was like, imagine board drafting, like, you have a front view and a side view and a top view. It was literally that. It was very archaic, and it was really incredibly difficult to make any kind of changes to or evaluate anything, and you couldn’t make anything move right, right? Yeah, so by today’s standards, I would never go back to AutoCAD? I absolutely hate that program.

Jeff Barber 14:43
Yeah, sorry to the AutoCAD people out there.

Lance Canfield 14:46
I’m sure it’s much better today.

Jeff Barber 14:49
I can’t believe they haven’t updated that and put more into it. But yes, SolidWorks seems to be what everybody’s using today for bike stuff. One of the things that I’m really excited to talk to you about is you. You actually competed on some of your own bikes in Red Bull Rampage, actually, at the first four Red Bull Rampage, that’s right, competitions, yeah. What was it like back then? How did you even get involved? Like, what was the first, you know, the call up, like, where they were, like, Hey, we got this thing. Do you want to do it?

Lance Canfield 15:19
Well, I guess, leading up to that, I was riding with Kris Baughman (Krispy), and he was friends with Bender, and so I get a call from crispy, and he’s like, I got this buddy Bender, who I had seen in the down movie. I was like, That means crazy. It was awesome. I’ll go ride with him, yeah, so that I got an invite to go down to his house and and do some free riding for double down the second movie. And I was like, Yeah, I definitely want to do that. That sounds like a right up my alley. Let’s do it. So I go down there. And this was in virgin Utah, and this was at a point where Bender was living in a little shed behind this guy is double wide, and just riding his bike and jumping off cliffs all day and scoping out all sorts of crazy stuff. Wow, he takes us out to this zone, and he’s got a 40 foot drop lined up. So we do a bunch of filming, and we were able to ride these, you know, red rock cliffs and jump off stuff. And it was a great day. We had a ton of fun and got a bunch of great footage. And then at the end of the day, Josh climbs up on this, this Butte, and jumps off a 40 foot cliff. He doesn’t he did it twice, and, yeah, rag dolled a bunch. And it was the biggest thing that I had ever seen in my life. It was the biggest thing at the time that anybody had ever done. Yeah, wow. I was blown away. And so Josh had been talking with Todd Barber, who’s the promoter of Red Bull Rampage. Okay, they were trying to come up with an idea for biking for this event that was similar to, like, a free skiing competition, where people could just start up on the mountain and go wherever they want and come down. And so the zone where Josh had been riding, it’s all BLM, and it’s open riding BLM. So there’s, you don’t have to stay on a trail. You can kind of ride wherever you want. It’s a legal place to do that kind of thing. And so they decided to do the event there some of the stipulations, though, with the BLM was that you couldn’t build, you couldn’t dig out there, okay, and so there was no pre-made jump lines like they’ll like, now today, they’ve got, like, the lower section of the course, is all pre built, right? Kind of big machines. And then up high, you have the opportunity to kind of build your own line and be creative, right? Then it was like, it was all just raw. There was literally no trails, wow, just powder everywhere. So the first year was a lot of camaraderie. It was actually, it was amazing, because everybody was just trying to see if they could ride down the mountain. They weren’t really being super competitive that first year it was, we were all stoked, like watching Wade, jump off a thing, or Richie jump off a thing, and, yeah, it’s like, that was so sick, you know. And we were mostly riding the exact same ridge line. All the entire group was pretty much riding the same lines. The second year, the Canadians had come down in the summer and done a little bit of filming down there, and they had started building other stuff in nearby. And so the second year, all of a sudden, we saw the Canadians doing the Canadian baking line and doing some faster jumps and bigger gaps and and that really stepped it up for all the rest of us. For 2003 the third year, all of a sudden it was competitive at that point, and people were trying to throw tricks. Cedric grass learned how to backflip that year, and he threw a back flip for the first time in a competition. Yeah, that year that was pretty cool. He mostly pulled it off. He kind of landed and put his knee in the ground and popped up and rode out. But he took, he took first in qualifying that year, and I was able to qualify second behind him.

I tended to not do much tricking. I wasn’t really a trick guy. I was more of a go big, like I was known for the guy that went big. I just find the biggest stuff on the mountain that, as an engineer, like geometry, works really well in my brain. So I would find the biggest thing I could find with a good landing and do that.

Jeff Barber 19:41
Biggest, as in, like, the most vertical drop, or, like, what was big to you?

Lance Canfield 19:48
Yeah, the biggest drop. And the if the landing was way out there, then I would go off the cliff, fast, go way out there. The first year, everyone was just jumping off the. Biggest move was probably a 10 foot cliff. Really wasn’t that big by today’s standards, but it was a like the everybody would come off of it kind of slow, and it was just a bomb hole where everyone landed, but out there about 15 feet, it rolled down again. Okay, and so I got the bright idea to hit it super fast and gap out, and I was the first one to jump, like, kind of fast off of the big cliff, so that people were cheering after that one.

Jeff Barber 20:32
Were there big crowds by that point, like, by the third or fourth year?

Lance Canfield 20:37
The first couple years, it was pretty much just friends and family and a handful of locals that would come out, and they heard about this crazy thing. It was like, they’re going to ride bikes out there. I’m going to watch that. Yeah, it’s going to be carnage, yeah. But yeah, by the third year, it started to get pretty crowded on the mountain, and they didn’t really have spectator zones at that point. Okay, so people were underneath the cliffs. They were in the landings, like photographers that didn’t know where the person was going to ride to. Yeah, we’re literally in the line. Wow. It’s like, Get off my line. But they had to stop the competition in 2003 and they’re yelling up, like, like, on the loudspeaker, onto the mountain, like, get off the mountain. Like, get out from underneath the cliffs. Like, calling people out by name, like, you have to move. Yeah, wow. And so yeah, 2004 they had flagged out zones for for for riders or for spectators to watch. So that’s where all of that came from. It was a trial and error process, yeah, for all spectator zones.

Jeff Barber 21:50
Well, it sounds like you were doing a lot of this kind of free ride, jumping kind of stuff on your own, like, well before competing in rampage, would you though, like, like, for the competition, would you get nervous? Like, were you trying to do bigger stuff than you had done before, or was it more just like, This is my thing that I do, and I’m just going to do it, like, in front of people.

Lance Canfield 22:13
I felt relatively confident in my abilities to be able to ride this stuff, but it was bigger than anything else I had been riding. You know, jumping off roofs was about as close as it got to the size. But all of a sudden, in 2004 like I jumped off a 40 foot cliff five times during the weekend. Wow, the same the the super T drop, like he super T showed me that one in competition in 2003 and I was like, that’s a big drop. Now, yeah, I’m going to do that one for next year. Wow. So I planned for that one, and, yeah, it was definitely a lot bigger than what I’d been doing. I was certainly nervous. I think everyone there is nervous. Like whenever you go to a rampage. You can feel the energy in the canyon. You know, the riders are nervous when they’re dropping in. Like, yeah, we’re not all, we’re not all the superheroes that we’re seeing up there throwing backflips off 40 foot cliffs. Like, like, it was nerve wracking. And I’ve told people a few times that, you know, it was a lot like going to war you. You had a good 5050, chance of coming back home broken? Oh my goodness, yeah, those aren’t good odds. But that was no, that was my track record. I came home broken two out of four years.

Jeff Barber 23:32
Wow. Clearly, everybody there is riding at the limit. And, I mean, that’s obviously, that’s what makes it a spectacle and makes people want to watch it every year. At the time that you were riding, were you just riding, essentially, what was a downhill bike? Or were you building, sort of like more dedicated free ride bikes? Because I know, I know that used to be a thing. Free ride bikes were different from downhill bikes. So what? What were the bikes that you were using to compete on?

Lance Canfield 24:04
At that time, I always competed on bikes that I designed. So the first year I was on a it was our second generation. It was like, after the big fat, fatty fat, we decided 12 was too much, so we knocked down to 10 inches of travel. We called it the Fatty Fat.

Jeff Barber 24:21
So slightly less fat.

Lance Canfield 24:23
Yeah, slightly less fat. But it was a lot of travel. It was a big bike, and it worked really well for free ride. But honestly, designing those bikes, every one of them, was designed to be a race bike, okay, an advantage on a racetrack. That’s what I was trying for. Downhill racing, right? Yes, downhill racing. I never built a bike truly specific for free ride until about 2008 and I built the lucky that was an eight inch travel, traditional wheel path, not a pulley wheel bike. Okay, they’re easier to pop a wheelie on. Now to get the front end up pulling my mic is really difficult to get the front end up on. So coming off of a cliff at slow speeds, some of my worst wrecks at rampage were that like trying to get off of a cliff and the front end just drops away from you and you crash on your head. Yeah. Wow. So traditional wheel path easier to pop a wheelie, easier to compress and pop off of the lip, jump off the lip, more nimble. Okay, better in corners, more agile. But it didn’t save you the same way that a pulley wheel bike will like. If you case a jump on a pulley wheel bike, the wheel just gets out of the way and you just continue forward, and you almost don’t even know that you cased it like I hit the bender sender, which is a about 30 feet down and 70 feet out. I’m sure you’ve seen footage of that one, but the first time I hit it, I knuckled the landing, knuckled the top of the lip. And I didn’t even know that I cased it, because I was on on a pulley wheel bike, yeah, wow. I didn’t even know until I saw the footage, and I was like, Oh, I I case that, like, that could have been really bad on a normal bike.

Jeff Barber 26:04
Yeah, interesting. Are there, like, dedicated freeride bikes anymore, or have the downhill bikes kind of moved more in that direction, where you can pop on them and be a little bit more playful?

Lance Canfield 26:19
I don’t think that there’s a whole lot in the dedicated free ride bike kind of realm these days. Cam zinc spike, his new company, that thing looks like it’s probably a pretty proper free ride bike. Okay, it’s got small wheels, yeah, 29 ers aren’t the best for a free ride bike. They’re big. They’re unwieldy. They don’t spin and flip and do all the little tricks and stuff as well as a small wheel bike, in my opinion, at 27 five is still probably the most relevant in free ride, because it’s small enough to be whippable and jumpable and but it’s big enough that it can still roll over some things if you make mistakes. Yeah, okay, 26 was a little small. It would hang up on things pretty badly.

Jeff Barber 27:05
Interesting. So Canfield bikes use a patented suspension design known as Canfield balance formula, or CBF for short, that you designed along with your brother, Chris. So what makes the design different from others on the market?

Lance Canfield 27:22
Trying to keep it somewhat simple, I guess, the center of curvature, it stays positioned directly on top of the chain ring, okay, never moving. Never moving from there, okay, which is true center of the suspension. That is good because the wheel path and the tension segment of the chain rotate around the exact same spot. It allows the wheel to move freely independently of the chain tension. Okay, even if you’re pedaling, if you’re hitting bumps, if you’re breaking the wheel is always free to move conform to the terrain freely, okay, without the tension that a lot of companies design into their bikes, the chain tension causes the bike to have a little bit more anti squat, a firmness to the pedaling. It creates a bit of a platform, so to speak, which feels great in a parking lot and on smooth train, but as soon as you’re hitting bumps, it causes the bike to feel nervous. Just sure that you’ve probably ridden a bike that feels nervous going downhill but feels very sprightly climbing. Yeah, you know that’s kind of the trade off that all other companies do. The CBF patent allows the center of curvature to be very tightly focused directly on top of the chain ring, so that it never ever moves away throughout all of the travel. So no matter where you are in travel, it’s always going to pedal exactly the same, focusing all of that pedaling energy directly into the chain ring and propelling you forward, not moving your suspension up and down, none of that.

Jeff Barber 29:03
So getting back to that idea of, like the chain tension that a lot of other designs experience a lot of. For some people, what they’re doing is they’re using, like an O chain device, right? Are we talking about the same thing where you can, you can try to mitigate that, but the CBF, it does that by default, right? Like, you don’t need to worry about running an O chain, or, like, having a hub that’s gonna be like, yeah, higher engagement, or any of that stuff, right? Right?

Lance Canfield 29:33
Yes, that’s, that’s exactly it. The O chain is, I guess, a band aid for bikes that have pedal kick. As you compress the bike, the cranks will rotate counterclockwise, right and they’ll knock your feet. And so that’s it’s translating that bump force into your feet and causing the bike to feel nervous and you to like, maybe hit your brake. Because they’re like, you’re like, Ah, I’m getting out of control, right? What just happens where a cvf suspension doesn’t do that, it just openly, freely contours to the ground, and it makes you feel like you have more travel than you really do on shorter travel bikes, especially, but it gives you a lot of confidence on longer travel bikes.

Jeff Barber 30:23
Is CBF better suited for certain types of riding or travel ranges? I mean, looking at the Canfield lineup, I think is the shortest travel bike that you have it on? Is, is that the tilt with like, 130 is it? 130 rear? 141 38 Yep. 138 right? So, yeah. I mean, does Does it suit these longer travel bikes better, or is there, is there like a short travel application as well?

Lance Canfield 30:53
CBF works on any travel bike, any anything from long to short. Long travel bikes are the hardest ones to design that will pedal Well, that’s always been the hardest design wise to do. Yeah, and as you go shorter in travel, it becomes much easier to design. So cvf has been flushed out in the long travel modes to get it to where it’s at, and then the trickle down is that with shorter travel bikes, you feel like you have a little bit more travel than you really do on those shorter bikes.

Jeff Barber 31:34
So why is that? That you that you feel that…

Lance Canfield 31:37
It’s because the suspension is open to move freely, without regard to the pedaling or the braking. Okay, so it feels like you have more travel if, if your chain tension like if it gets tight as your wheel goes through the travel, that’s going to kick your pedals, and that’s going to make you feel like you’re running through your travel quicker than you really are, where ours is just open and smooth. It relies on the progression rate to resist bottom out right, and progression rate to create support at the sag point. It doesn’t require the chain tension to help create support for the rider.

Jeff Barber 32:24
Okay, yeah, and in addition to Canfield, there’s other bikes that use CBF suspension. I have not tested it on one of your bikes, but I have ridden a bike with CBF from revel the rascal. And I mean, it feels great, as it was one of my favorite bikes that I tested this year. And I’m wondering, does it work well for more like recreational riders like myself, or is there also an advantage for racers like what? How would you kind of subjectively describe, sort of like the ride feel and the performance of CBF. Is it designed more for like feeling good, or is it designed more for going fast and winning races?

Lance Canfield 33:09
Well, it does both. So it does work really, really well for anyone from a beginner all the way to a pro level rider, because of the confidence that it inspires the smoothness and the control that it it creates. One of my design goals every bike that we build is to have the bike feel very intuitive. Jump on the bike. It doesn’t feel like you need to do anything radical to set it up. It just works really well. Why does it? Yeah, it breaks, breaks smoothly. It pedals efficiently. It, you know, resists bottom out the right amount. It supports you so you don’t feel like you’re sagging too much or too little. If you get on a bike and you’re immediately comfortable with the bike, that creates a lot of confidence.

Jeff Barber 33:56
Yeah, it feels like you’re cheating. That’s exactly how I would describe my experiences. It’s intuitive. I didn’t feel like I had to know how to tune the suspension and set everything up. I mean, like you said, you get on it and it feels right and but that makes me wonder if, if I was a pro, would I be like, this is, like, dumbing it down, or like this. You know, bikes that have, like, a racy suspension design, a lot of those they they don’t feel fun to ride, right? I mean, they’re like, all business, and there’s definitely, like, a different ride feel to it. So yeah, how do you get, like, both of those characteristics out of a single design?

Lance Canfield 34:39
Well, you talk about a pro level racer and dumbing it down? Well, that’s that’s just an advantage on the racetrack. That’s what it’s giving you. It’s giving you confidence on the racetrack. It’s giving you a smooth suspension travel feel that gives you more traction. It it. The corners, under braking, everywhere, like it gives you more confidence. And why would you not do that? Right? You have a certain way that you like to set your bike up. You can still do those things, like a lot of really fast riders run their suspension really stiff, and CBF allows you to still do that, and it still pedals exactly the same. You can have your bike run too much sag, and it’ll still pedal, great. You can have very little sag. It’ll still pedal great. It, it stays perfectly focused on that top of the chain ring position, yeah, all the time, no matter where you are in travel. So it it allows you to tweak the characteristics of the bike performance to the way that you like to ride, but it doesn’t force you to do one certain thing. You don’t have to set up your sag exactly at 30% you can have more. You can have less. You can do whatever you want to do with setup, and it’ll still ride incredibly well and very intuitively.

Jeff Barber 36:06
Best of both worlds, I guess. And, and again, like I can vouch for that description of it, where it doesn’t seem to hinge so much on all those variables, at least getting that ride, feel that, that people want and and also, I guess what you’re saying too, is that, like, if it feels good, it’s gonna make you a faster rider. It’s gonna, you know, perform better, because what you’re feeling is what’s actually happening.

Lance Canfield 36:33
Exactly, yeah, racing is mostly mental. It’s it’s not, at least downhill racing is mostly mental. In my mind. It’s knowing the track well enough to be able to go 100% all the way down the track, because you know every single rock on the track, every route, you know where everything is, and exactly where to go and where to put your tires, and the pressure that you need to put on the tires so that you get grip, but don’t slide out, you know, and all of those things are mental, knowing the track, knowing your bike is set up correctly, knowing that every little detail has been accounted for before you hit the track. And physical attributes certainly play a part. Being able to pedal hard in the right spots, but knowing where you have to pedal hard is more important than being able to actually pedal hard.

Jeff Barber 37:29
I guess when you when you feel good, you ride good. And those are words to live by. So Canfield has been a proponent of shorter cranks and crank arms, specifically for a while now. Why is that like? How did you first kind of come to that realization?

Lance Canfield 37:49
In the beginning, you know, my brother came off the racetrack and he had pedal striked and sent himself over the bars, and he was so mad. He was just like, I hate this. It sucks. Like, hit my pedals and then I fly over the bars I was doing so well, you know, it’s frustrating when you have these mistakes on the track. And it was like, we can design something that’s going to help with that. You know, that’s where our cramp on ultimate pedals came from.

Jeff Barber 38:18
Oh, okay, so you started with the pedals. Do a thinner pedal.

Lance Canfield 38:23
Yeah, a thin pedal allowed us to not snag the pedal on stuff as well, and it gave you a lot more balance, like you’re closer to the spindle height, then you probably have seen the new set of pedals that came out that have like a hang down to them, yeah, yeah, put your body weight below the spindle, yeah, center, which creates a lot of stability. And that’s the goal with those super thin pedals, is to get more stability out of the pedals. But pedal strikes become less and less the thinner the pedals are. Our pedals have a six millimeter thick leading edge, okay, so nearly impossible to snag on anything.

Jeff Barber 39:03
What are we talking? How much additional clearance did that give you over, like, the the normal pedals, or the pedals that you guys were running before that?

Lance Canfield 39:13
It’s a few millimeters like, yeah, the old ones were, like, 17 to 19 millimeters thick, okay, and ours are, ours were 11, okay, which is the thinnest that you can make with a full length spindle and solid construction, like downhill, worthy construction on a pedal.

Jeff Barber 39:32
So we’re talking like on either side, then you’re talking like maybe three millimeters. But I guess I mean, that probably makes a huge difference when you’re riding at the limit like that.

Lance Canfield 39:44
It makes a huge difference. Millimeters make all the difference in the world when you’re talking about a bike. And that’s a lot of the design changes that have increased the comfort level and the safety level of bikes in the last 10. Years come from like three to six millimeters kind of differences. Yeah, yeah. Cranks were another addition to that. They provided a lot more clearance, like five millimeters per size, shorter, right, right? So if 160 fives is all you can get all of a sudden, at 160 makes a huge difference. I run 150 fives on my downhill bike, and, like, at six feet tall, like, that’s pretty ideal for me. Wow, I could easily run, yeah, it’s short, but for downhill bike, it’s amazing. And, yeah, the crank length is one of the things that dictates your rollout gear, like, how much one rotation on the cranks is, how far you go on the pavement, right? Yeah. So front chain ring, rear chain ring, the crank length and the wheel size. Your crank length dictates that as well. Okay, so if you go 10 millimeters shorter on your crank length, you can go two teeth smaller on your front chain ring. Okay, gotcha so more clearance on your chain ring, more clearance on your cranks, and you still have the exact same rollout.

Jeff Barber 41:09
So what size chain ring were you / are you running on your downhill bike?

Lance Canfield 41:14
I still run a 34. I still run a pretty tall gear, because I still like to go really fast. And trails are getting more buffed out and faster. So it’s still a reasonable gear, 34 but we used to run, you know, 36, 38.

Jeff Barber 41:30
So you are thinking about the rollout, sort of that initial peddling with the shorter cranks. What about? Because you were also saying during the race, like peddling can make a huge difference, like, you know, flatter sections or transition sections. So yes, does Are there any disadvantages then to those shorter cranks, or is it all kind of just taken care of, as long as you’ve got the right gearing?

Lance Canfield 41:56
The one disadvantage that you could argue is that a longer crank gives you more leverage. So if you come to a complete stop in a corner or close to a complete stop and you need to just stomp those pedals and get going again as fast as possible, that’s where a longer crank is going to help you. Imagine a start of a BMX race, right if you need to win the race straight out of the gate, then a longer crank may help you everywhere else. The shorter crank, in my opinion, is far better. It allows you to pedal through rocky spots where other people are not able to because their feet are going to be smacking rocks. You know, it’s way safer to be able to not snag your pedals and fly over the bars land on your head, right? So it it keeps your heart rate lower by being able to spin a smaller circle. Okay? You can imagine taking, like, really big steps up, like a boot pack, to climb up to the top of a ski run or something in the back country, right? You never find a boot pack that has big, wide space steps that they’re always little, tiny steps, right, right? Yeah, it’s your heart rate low, and it’s just easier. It’s easier to make a small step than it is a big step. And one of the reasons why it’s easier is because your muscles fire stronger in that smaller area when you start reaching outside of, like it’s your legs happy zone, like making those big steps you don’t have near the power, it drops off really quickly. So yeah, it allows you to put down a more powerful pedal stroke. Some people find that they can run the exact same chain ring size with the shorter cranks, because they’re able to put their power down more efficiently.

Jeff Barber 43:53
Well, I think a lot of riders are finding that they really benefit from shorter cranks, especially if they are not six feet tall like you. But it sounds like even tall riders can have an advantage to these shorter cranks. I mean, like on a trail bike, what would you choose to run like, as far as a crank length?

Lance Canfield 44:15
I run 160 fives on mine at six feet.

Jeff Barber 44:19
Okay, that’s a little shorter.

Lance Canfield 44:21
Yeah, just a little bit shorter than what traditionally like 171 75 are what you normally find on most trail bikes, straight from OEM, right? Yeah, which, in my opinion, 170s are. They’re not great for anybody that’s, you know, under six feet like that. That’s just a huge handicap. Honestly, I don’t know why that hasn’t changed already.

Jeff Barber 44:46
Yeah, well, also, so then, does that allow you to adjust the geometry of your bikes? Like, are you taking into account the shorter crank lengths and maybe going with like, a lower bottom bracket? Is there an. Advantage to that or bottom brackets already kind of in a good place.

Lance Canfield 45:04
You can go lower on the bottom bracket design wise. But I haven’t done that specifically, just because some people, they still want to run those longer cranks. They they have it in their head that they have to have that longer crank. They’ll leverage. Leverage is everything, right? So I don’t want to tell anybody you have to run short cranks, yeah, even though there’s so many advantages, it’s really hard to argue.

Jeff Barber 45:30
Yeah, you’re making a good case.

Lance Canfield 45:32
Studies, even in road biking, where short cranks are way more efficient and they can put down power way better, even on the climbing stages, short cranks are better interesting. There’s plenty of studies out there to squirrel on on that.

Jeff Barber 45:50
You’ve got me convinced now too. Because, I mean, I’m, I’m six foot three, and, yeah, I’ve never really felt the need or anything to even try anything shorter. You know, the stock stuff tends to feel fine to me, but it sounds like there are a lot of advantages for everybody.

Lance Canfield 46:10
So you’re really the exception to the rule.

Jeff Barber 46:12
Oh, so I shouldn’t be on 165?

Lance Canfield 46:14
No, I would try it. I mean, there’s a lot of benefits to it.

Jeff Barber 46:20
Okay, well, I was gonna say I don’t know if you know which cranks are on the test spike that I’ve got in, but I’ve got the the yellow screamy in for tests right now, hardtail, they came with some Canfield cranks. I guess I’ll have to measure them and see which size they are.

Lance Canfield 46:36
They’re written on the backside of the arm, so okay, right near the pedal, you can see what size they are, and they’re easy to swap out. So we could send you a couple different sizes, and you can quite quickly just swap them out and try different crank lengths, and you can get your own feel for what length you like and where that tipping point is of like, Okay, those are too short, yeah, you know. But typically people only take a ride before they’re they get past like, Oh, this feels a little different. And then it’s like, oh, this just feels normal, right? And then, and then, when you switch back to a long crank, then the long cranks feel really awkward. That’s usually how it goes,

Jeff Barber 47:19
I bet, right? When you start, you know, having more pedal strikes and all that stuff like, you just get used to, like, a certain, certain setup. And then it can be tough to go back.

Lance Canfield 47:32
One of the biggest things about short cranks that we’re finding is that it really benefits older riders. We’re having a, there’s a huge segment of older riders that are ripping still like and they’re, you know, they’re fighting all the age problems of achy everything, right, right, their knees and their hips and their ankles all hurt after a ride. Short cranks help with that so drastically. Okay, yeah, we’re finding that is a big reason why a lot of people are switching to shorter cranks. Yeah, whether they’re short or they’re achy, those are the two biggest reasons people really love our cranks and are switching over, besides the obvious of pedal strikes.

Jeff Barber 48:17
Gotcha cool. One of the things I wanted to ask you about, as a smaller brand, how has Canfield been affected by the industry supply fluctuations over the past few years?

Lance Canfield 48:30
That’s an interesting question. There’s, I think, every bike company, every component company, everyone has been affected in one way or another. We saw this rise in in people buying bikes. In the beginning of COVID The first year was like, you couldn’t keep anything in stock. You sell things as fast as you could sell it. It was amazing. It was like the opposite of what I expected

Jeff Barber 48:58
The first couple weeks, we were like, oh, shoot, like, nobody’s gonna buy anything, and the world is doomed.

Lance Canfield 49:04
Yeah, those first couple weeks were really scary. We had just purchased a property, a new warehouse, we had just moved the company. I had just invested every penny I had into production. And then, and then COVID hit, and I was quite nervous there for the first beginning of it. And those first couple of weeks, you know, we had a lot of conversations on, what are we going to do, you know? And ultimately we just decided, like, well, we’re we’re invested, like, either we succeed or we just, like, quit. And like, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to quit. Yeah. Like, so we charged full steam ahead, and all of a sudden, sales just started to flip the opposite direction of what we thought was going to happen. We were selling everything we could, yeah. And then it got to a point where everybody was out of stock of everything, and we were just scram. Willing to try to find parts, because we were kind of operating in a just in time type of ordering situation. It’s like, oh, we can call Fox and just get a fork, you know, right? Fox didn’t have forks, yeah, and we couldn’t find a 12 speed chain to save our lives, and wheels were, like, completely unavailable. So we started going all sorts of different directions. At one point, we ordered custom Hadley hubs, and we had some spank downhill rims. And so we had a local place in Colorado lace up downhill wheels for us so that we had wheels to be able to put on our downhill bikes to complete a build. At a certain point, we sold bikes that didn’t have a drive train. It’s like, it’s a complete bike minus drive train. If you can find the drive train, put on your bike, buy it up. Yeah, we went all sorts of different directions to to be able to get the parts that we needed, to continue to sell bikes and lead times, all of a sudden, went crazy. Yeah, it wasn’t a three month lead time anymore. It was a if you were lucky, if you had a one year lead time. And a lot of companies were giving us two years and even up to three years of lead time to be able to get product. Wow. And so everyone in the industry started ordering tons, like huge orders, because they were like, well, I’ve got a two year lead time. I need two years worth of product in this order, right?

Jeff Barber 51:27
And based on the current demand, which was, like, much higher than it had been previous years, right?

Lance Canfield 51:34
Mm hmm, yeah, much higher. And so, yeah, this high demand and then these long lead times led to over ordering, and then the demand all of a sudden just dropped. Yeah. One day it was just like, hey, the demand’s gone. Uh oh.

Jeff Barber 51:51
It wasn’t gradual at all for you. I mean, it was like, almost just like a light switch got turned off?

Lance Canfield 51:56
It was kind of like that, yeah, within about a month, we saw, like a big change. It was like, oh, what’s going on. And then it just continued from there. And so people started to receive these orders, these large orders that they had placed. A lot of the big companies, the big three, you know, had massive orders in that were interfering with the little guys being able to place orders and get product in a timely fashion. Yeah, and the warehouse is filled up, but the demand had dried up, right? And so we’re still seeing results of that, where these big companies still have massive amounts of inventory and they’re still blowing out stuff where we made smart decisions on how much we ordered. We we’d never really had too many things that were in Overstock, too much of anything we we had the right amount, we had the amount that we needed to sustain our company for the next year and grow and do what we needed to do. But these big companies had so much overstock that they discounted everything to the point where, you know, the consumer, at a certain point is just going to buy the cheap thing, because so cheap. How can I not buy that? And then they have a new bike, and it may not be the best bike, but it’s a new bike, and they have it, and they’re not going to buy a bike, a boutique bike, at that point, you know.

Jeff Barber 53:25
Right, especially when you’re comparing prices and, you know, yeah, you’re like, Well, I can get this one a lot, a lot cheaper.

Lance Canfield 53:31
So we had us, and pretty much every other company on the planet, no matter how big or small they had to try to compete with those low prices. So everyone is on sale, like just bottom basement. And it’s, it’s not like we were making great margins in the first place, right? It’s like we were making margins that allowed us to pay our staff Well, and, you know, pay our bills and grow the company a little bit and plan for next year and have money in the bank to be able to pay for production. Because, you know, small companies, we don’t have credit with these manufacturers where we pay for the product up front, yeah, so, you know, that was that’s really difficult for us to compete in a marketplace when, yeah, they’re just blowing out all this overstock. And it, it’s, it’s not because we made a bad decision, it’s because these gigantic corporations still have massive Overstock, and they’re continuing to just blow it out at bargain.

Jeff Barber 54:37
Do you have a sense for like, how much they still have, like, like, how much longer do you think this is going to go on before for we finally kind of clear everything out, and stuff starts getting back to normal?

Lance Canfield 54:50
Well, Bicycle Retailer, in their latest magazine had a graph on that, and there’s still a decent amount of overstock. Like, I. Pretty good amount. You can see it ever so slightly coming down. Yeah, and you can see the sales look like they they’re fairly flat. But the amount of of inventory versus the amount of sales is still, is still way off. You know, we’re hoping that through this next season, 2025 hopefully that will they’ll work through that overstock of inventory, and we’ll get back to normal, hopefully for 2026 being optimistic, I hope that that’s the case. I think it will be. But you know, the time will tell. Can’t really predict the future, just make your best guesses and plan accordingly. And I think a lot of companies have just gone on just life support. It’s like minimal staff try to eliminate expenses wherever they can, do whatever they can to basically wait out the storm and wait until things get back to normal, so that we can try to, you know, start growing again, and that growth benefits the customer as much as it benefits us, because we can develop new products like it’s, yeah, difficult to spend a lot of resources on developing things when There’s not a lot of spare resources,

Jeff Barber 56:21
You definitely have to be an optimist, it sounds like in the bike industry, and at times that gets the industry into trouble when you’re overly optimistic. But yeah, good to hear that there is still that hope and that, you know, it’s going to get better, and we’re always looking forward to the next thing. So speaking of the next thing, yeah, we’re not going, yeah. What’s next for Canfield? Then what? What mountain bike developments or trends or future products? What’s got you excited right now?

Lance Canfield 56:53
Well, the thing that has me the most excited is that our customers and people just voted the tilt. That’s right, of the year? Yeah, that definitely Stokes the fire under me.

Jeff Barber 57:04
Yeah. And a lot of people are probably surprised, right again, because Camfield is like a smaller brand, and I would, I would have been surprised, and would have been kind of skeptical, like, I don’t know if that’s right, you know, maybe you know something was going on with the voting, but I can say that, like our previous Features Editor, Matt Miller tested, at least, he tested the Tilt, I believe, and maybe another Canfield bike. And then another of our contributors, Chris Scheiffer, tested one, and both of them just, they love the Canfield Tilt. They love CBF suspension, and so, yeah, that’s, I think it’s a recognition of that, that this is actually different, and it’s something that’s yeah, that a lot of people maybe should take a look at.

Lance Canfield 57:49
Yeah, those guys did love the bike. You know, we were super grateful that they wrote such raving review about it in their in their reviews, you know, Matt ended up actually buying lithium, right? Yeah, afterwards enough to actually buy his personal bike from us, yeah. So that was I, I love it when I hear stories like that, you know, just like you really did like it, I’m so happy I did my job, right?

Jeff Barber 58:18
Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. And so yeah, what about feature products? Or are there, are there trends or things that you’re seeing in the industry that have you excited about coming up with new stuff?

Lance Canfield 58:30
The trend of changing standards does not ever have me thrilled, so I’m excited that we have some pretty good standards that are already on the board, and hopefully things are kind of settling out to no more use those standards, and then, you know, develop, develop new bikes, and I’m excited about, hopefully not having standards come out from left field like we’ve seen in the last 10 years.

Jeff Barber 58:58
Yeah, do you think that’ll change? Like, do you think that these component, companies and different have they gotten the message, or do they not care? And that’s just what they do.

Lance Canfield 59:08
I think there’s a lot of good standards on the table right now, and there’s a lot to there’s still multiple standards in many ways. You know, yeah, chain line spacing and wheel hub standards and yeah, but you know, head tubes are mostly 4456 so it makes it a lot easier for us to just do 4456 on all of our bikes, and that way we have one headset that fits everything. Yeah, it’s easier from an inventory standpoint and sales standpoint. On our side, I like boost spacing, it works quite well, and the chain ring offsets to accommodate super boost. And, you know, I think super boost plus was, like, it’s a millimeter and a half difference really mean, okay, that one doesn’t really make. Make a ton of sense to me, but super boost is reasonable because it does give you a wider spoke flange spacing, a tougher wheel, considerably tougher. Just read a or watched a YouTube video on how much stronger a 157 wheel is, and I was quite shocked at how much stronger it was surprised, excited about that, potentially exploring that a little bit more. As far as products that we’re doing, we have a titanium version of the Nimble nine coming out, okay, so a tried and true geometry that is awesome, really fun bike, and shaves about a pound and a half off of our steel bike, which is pretty considerable. We have a lot of customers that they’re on nimble dines as their everyday bike, and they absolutely love them. So I’m excited to release the titanium bike. It’s gorgeous. I’ve got some samples, and I’ve been riding it down here in Sedona and doing photos. And yeah, it’s it’s everything that we had hoped for. The tilt and lithium have been in their cycle for about four years now, which is a little bit long, but that is part of the COVID problems, is why it’s continued for the four years. However, we do have new stuff coming on on that front, some new design changes and some things, I think that a lot of people are going to be really excited about a couple of great features that are big improvements on adjustability from what it was. I’ve always been a designer that designs things fairly simply, in the regard that I don’t want to give people a lot of adjustments that allow them to make an adjustment that will allow them to make it feel bad, right?

Jeff Barber 1:01:55
Okay, yeah, limited adjustments, only the pre-approved ones.

Lance Canfield 1:01:59
Yes. And so I’ve given a few pre approved adjustments to the new bike. Of course, everyone’s on udH these days, so that that had to happen, so a few things like that. But that will be launched here about a month or so from now. We’ll be okay. We’ll be launching that, so you’ll be able to see all the details on that. And I think those changes, in addition to bike of the year thing, I think that, hopefully that will point a lot of people to us and and help us survive through this next year, and get, you know, even more things out on the market.

Jeff Barber 1:02:39
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Well, yeah, we’re excited to see what you come up with next. You know, you’ve had such a long career in the bike industry, and, you know, starting out as a racer, and, you know, designing bikes and building this brand. And so, yeah, it’s been really great to talk to you hear your story. And yeah, we can’t wait to see what’s next.

Lance Canfield 1:03:00
I appreciate it, Jeff. Thank you so much. And, yeah, just real quickly, I’d like to thank all of our customers and the people that are listening to this podcast, and just can feel curious, and you know, like you, Jeff, like short crank curious and trying to see all these like, hopefully you’re seeing the things that we’ve done in the past and the innovations that we have stimulated, whether it’s 20 Niners that were actually fun to ride, 2013 the first hardtails on the market that were fun and awesome to ride. They didn’t drive like a bus. Thin pedals, short cranks, you know, CBF, suspension, focusing things in so that the rider experience is better and more intuitive and just gives you an advantage that you can be proud of to see that head head to badge with a skull.

Jeff Barber 1:03:56
Well, you can find out more about some of the bikes and products we talked about at canefield bikes DotCom. We’ll have that link for you in the show notes. That’s all we’ve got this time. We’ll talk to you again next time you.

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The article He competed in the first Rampage, and today his bike brand is beloved by riders appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Today, professional freeride mountain biker Cam Zink officially launched his bike brand and, along with it, his first bike: The Zink Bikes Vacay. In a press release, the 2023 Red Bull Rampage winner said, “Nobody was making the bikes I wanted, so I took it upon myself to make my dream bikes. The industry has been homogenized where everything looks like a rendition of everything else. What would you design if you didn’t need to sell it? Or money wasn’t an option? Let’s do what’s right and support the metrics after.”

The Zink Bikes Vacay is said to offer a “blend of freeride style and trail efficiency” with 150mm of rear suspension travel. At the time of launch, frames and framesets are available for pre-order, though not complete bikes.

With short, 420mm chainstays (426mm on size large frames), the Vacay hints at a playful ride that excels at carving and jumping. In fact, the bike’s suspension design boasts something called “Lift Technology” that promises to make it easier for riders to manual, bunny hop, wheelie, and jump. Buyers can choose to run mixed wheels or matched 27.5″ wheels.

Rounding out the feature set, the Zink Bikes Vacay includes adjustable geometry via flip chips and an angle-adjust headset, plus support for long-travel dropper posts with up to 220mm of travel. Zink is said to perform quality checks on every frame and hand signs each one before it ships.

The price for an aluminum frame (sans shock) starts at $1,690, and each frame comes with a lifetime warranty against defects in materials or workmanship. Pre-orders are now open, with bikes set to ship in May 2025.

Check out the Zink Bikes website, which just launched today, to get more details.

The article There wasn’t a bike with “freeride style and trail efficiency,” so Cam Zink designed his own appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Winchester, Wisconsin, has a population of roughly 500 permanent residents and over 3,000 seasonal residents. Those who visit it are drawn to its recreational opportunities: Winchester has nearly 60 lakes and over 6,000 acres of public land.

And now, mountain bike trails are one of Winchester’s biggest draws.

Over 1,300 acres of Winchester’s public land is occupied by the WinMan Trails, a year-round multi-sport trail system that offers 23+ miles of singletrack. Best of all, it’s a free public trail system that’s managed by a non-profit organization that strives to provide high-quality outdoor adventure opportunities to its users.

To find out more, Singletracks spoke to Isaac Cowart, the Executive Director of WinMan Trails, Inc., the 501(c)3 non-profit organization that manages the trails; Jeremy Johnson and Joel Kleimola, the two full-time trail builders WinMan has on staff; and Rick Gering, the man whose idea of building trails on family land led to the creation of the WinMan Trails.

Originally, Gering decided to build a few miles of trails for his family and friends to enjoy.

In the early 2010s, Gering, who had recently retired, decided to purchase 160 acres for himself and his son to hunt on. Before long, he and his family also started using the land for snowshoeing and skiing during the winter months.

Then, Gering bought a mountain bike and started pedaling the logging roads on the property. That led to the idea of building mountain bike trails since both Gering’s son and daughter enjoyed riding, too.

Gering reached out to a friend in nearby Minocqua to see if he knew anyone who could build trails. That friend put him in touch with Travis Bellman, a trail builder who had been working on the Raven Trail in Minocqua. Bellman, along with Gering, Robert Polic, and Gene Oestreich, built a short demonstration loop using a mini-excavator. These trails, possibly the first machine-built trails in Wisconsin according to both Cowart and Gering, were different from any trails that existed at the time.

Within a few years, Gering had expanded his vision, and the concept of the WinMan Trails was born.

As Gering puts it, “We were just building trails and having fun.” So much fun, in fact, that Gering purchased another 200 acres of adjacent property with a parking lot that became the trailhead. Gering decided to keep building trails to show others what was possible, and people began traveling there to ride.  

WinMan, whose name is derived from its location between the towns of Winchester and Manitowish Waters, first opened its trails to the public in 2013. In just two short years, the popularity of the trails grew quickly. This led to the creation of WinMan Trails, Inc., a non-profit organization that manages the land and all future trail building and maintenance projects on the property. The organization currently has five full-time staff members, including Cowart, Johnson, and Kleimola, as well as Sam Wolter, the Director of Community Engagement, and Brad Kusz, the Property Manager.

A land-use agreement gave WinMan access to even more land for trails.

Shortly after WinMan Trails, Inc. was formed, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) bought a large parcel of land next to the property. Gering quickly realized that the DNR land had great terrain for trails. As a bonus, the DNR forest director liked what WinMan was doing and appreciated the sustainability of the trails Bellman had built. 

WinMan Trails, Inc. and the DNR worked out a land-use agreement in 2018 that gave WinMan access to almost 1,000 more acres of land. Today, WinMan has five distinct trail systems, including 23 miles of machine-built, one-way mountain bike trails, 10 miles of groomed fat bike trails, 13 miles of cross-country ski trails, nine miles of snowshoeing, seven miles of hiking and trail running, a skills park and pump track, and a sledding hill.

WinMan’s in-house trail builders have created some amazing singletrack.

The area in which the WinMan Trails are located is unique, according to Cowart. There is only 105 feet of vertical elevation in the area, and the land itself can differ dramatically depending on the location. “The area where we are located was formed by glaciers over 5,000 years ago. Four miles away from us is sandy soil, but the unique topography where WinMan is situated provides as close to loamy soil as you can find.”

Johnson and Kleimola, WinMan’s in-house trail builders, have taken full advantage of the park’s topography to build some amazing trails. Johnson said that all the people who work on WinMan’s trails “are a group of friends who ride together. The passion is huge with the people we have here, and it shows in the quality of our trails.”

Unlike contracted trail builders, who often build trails to client-driven specifications, Johnson and Kleimola build trails based on what they like to ride and what the riders at WinMan say they want to ride. Johnson said that building trails in one location has forced them to broaden their styles. “We try to change up the size and shape of things” to make sure there are noticeable differences among all the trails.

For Johnson and Kleimola, who both worked for contracted trail builders before joining WinMan’s staff, there is a lot of satisfaction in the work they do because they get to see the results of it first-hand and get real-time feedback from the riders who use their trails. That feedback allows them to immediately fix and make changes to a trail when needed and ensures WinMan provides its visitors with the highest-quality trails possible.

Cowart describes WinMan as a feature-rich trail system with over 150 unique trail features, all having ride arounds. According to Cowart, WinMan frames itself as a place where the whole family can ride the trails together and have a good time regardless of their experience level. Additionally, he said that having full-time trail builders on staff means “there is always something new or improved every time you visit.”

The WinMan Trails are a major contributor to the region’s economy, and it is only getting bigger.

WinMan Trails has come a long way since its humble beginnings as a family playground. To date, $4.6 million has been invested in the park to make it a year-round outdoor recreation destination. That investment is paying off. A recent economic impact study found that there will be over 55,000 visits to the park by the end of 2024 and it will add over $4 million to the local economy by year’s end.  

But there is still more to come. WinMan Trails will be launching WinMan BaseCamp in 2025, offering on-site camping for both tents and RVs, tiny and large cabins for lodging, a bathhouse with showers and saunas, and community spaces. Both Cowart and Gering hope this project will encourage more visitors to stay overnight in the area.

WinMan’s trail builders will also have full summer calendars in 2025. They will build new trails connecting WinMan’s new BaseCamp to its existing trail system, resurface some of the older trails, and address drainage issues. They also hope to complete a gravity-focused downhill trail with larger features geared toward enduro-style riders.

Gering hopes WinMan will continue to provide free outdoor fun for generations to come.

When asked if he was surprised by the growth of WinMan since its inception, Gering was quick to say no. “The leadership from our staff and the support from our community and our donors has allowed WinMan to be so successful in such a short amount of time.”

To provide a great riding experience at no charge to its guests, WinMan fully relies on donations and other forms of revenue. Cowart says it has both sponsors and donors and does regular fundraising as well as holding events at the park. Cowart also mentioned that the park has a bar and apparel shop that generate income, too.

Gering said that WinMan’s future is bound only by donations. As long as people continue to financially support WinMan, it will continue to grow and keep providing free outdoor recreation in an area of pristine natural beauty.

The article This elegantly-crafted trail system in Wisconsin boasts 5 full-time staff members appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

We’re living in a golden age of mountain bike trail development, with hundreds of projects in progress all across North America. From short trail segments designed to introduce new riders to mountain biking to expansive trail systems set to revitalize the economies of entire regions, we’re witnessing inspiring trail projects, great and small, coming online. There’s never been a better time to be a mountain biker!

Singletracks is committed to covering new mountain bike trail openings across the USA and around the world. In 2024, we wrote about dozens of projects, and we wanted to find a way to highlight the best of the best. So, we gathered over 250 nominations from you, our readers, for the “best MTB trail of 2024.” After vetting the nominations, our editorial team discussed the merits of the various projects, selected a list of candidates across seven different categories, and then contacted local experts familiar with each of the projects. The result is the list you see below.

Frankly, we think that every trail project deserves a healthy dose of recognition. As we sifted through the hundreds of nominations, it quickly became clear that there would be no way to give adequate credit to many of the high-caliber trail projects that opened in 2024. Since we received the most submissions in the “flow/jump trail” and “tech trail” categories, we chose to add a “runner-up” for each of those two categories to spread the recognition around.

Without further ado, please enjoy the best new mountain bike trails of 2024:

Best flow/jump trail

Drop Shaft, Idaho Springs, Colorado

Drop Shaft is “the flagship bike-only, downhill trail” in the new Virginia Canyon Mountain Park trail system, according to Singletracks writer Matt Miller. At 2.6 miles long and with roughly 1,200 feet of elevation loss, this is likely the longest jump trail on the Colorado Front Range outside a bike park. To put this astonishing scale in perspective, Drop Shaft is almost precisely as long and as tall as the famed Rainmaker jump trail in Trestle Bike Park.

“Drop Shaft turned out to be a little more right of center on the beginner to advanced spectrum,” wrote Miller. “It is wide and flowy, with seamless rock kickers tucked away here and there, with drops and senders of all sizes, and many tabletop jumps.” The trail also includes several impressive wooden features, including a wall ride.

Drop Shaft was built by Flow Ride Concepts and McGill Trail Fabrication in collaboration with the Colorado Mountain Bike Association (COMBA). More trails are on the way in the Virginia Canyon Project. 

Get the full story: “A long-time renegade trail system in Colorado gets a big expansion as it goes mainstream“

Flow/jump trail: runner-up

Blue Ribbon, Bellingham, Washington

Blue Ribbon is a true masterpiece of a flow trail and is one of the latest additions to the iconic Galbraith Mountain trail system. “What we’re aiming for with this trail is to have a trail for everyone to create something that flows and that everyone can enjoy that flow,” said Nico Vink, lead trail builder on the project. “The most important [thing] to me is, like, the sequence and flow […] and intensity of features, so there’s no dead spots.”

This massive undertaking was a partnership between Transition Bikes and the Whatcom Mountain Bike Coalition (WMBC), and the trail was constructed by Vink, the WMBC, and Rocket Ramps. All told, this artfully-sculpted one-mile flow trail boasts 45 berms, 47 jumps, and 52 features with multiple options. Everyone who’s ridden the finished product has raved about the build, and it seems that Vink has accomplished his goal of building a flow trail that everyone can enjoy!

Best tech trail

Satan’s Ridge, New Hartford, Connecticut

Consider yourself warned: there are no B-lines on Connecticut’s newest mountain bike trail — known as Satan’s Ridge. This three-mile singletrack loop is filled with trail features inspired by a trip that local builders Luke Wayne and the Local 202 took to British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. Many of these gnarly obstacles consist of wooden bridges connecting the ample array of rock slabs and boulders into a somewhat rideable trail. However, there are often cliff drops in between, with the largest mandatory drop coming in at about five feet tall (with the ability to send it deeper into the landing).

Wayne emphasized that Satan’s Ridge isn’t “slow tech.” Instead, “it’s big, big moves, you know — rollers, adjustments, large exposure kind of tech. […] It’s big tech. I call it ‘chunder flow.’ There’s a lot of berms between, connecting the rollers and the drops and the bridges.”

“It’s like 10-foot-high skinny to rock slab to giant rock roller to berm to huck,” said Mick Ferraro, Director of Membership and Outreach for the New England Mountain Bike Association (NEMBA). “People go there […] and say it’s the hardest riding that they’ve ever done.”

Get the full story: “You’ll be shocked at how brutally-technical Connecticut’s newest MTB trail is“

Tech trail: runner-up

Meteoride, Flagstaff, Arizona

Meteoride is one of the first two downhill-only bike trails in Flagstaff. This raw, rocky tech line “is a hand-built natural surface technical trail that incorporates natural terrain features,” said Joe Hazel, Trail Coordinator for the Flagstaff Biking Organization (FBO). Meteoride is a realignment of the historic double black diamond downhill trail known as Ginger that was completed by volunteers and the Flagstaff Ranger District Trail Crew. The rebuilt trail has lent new life to this line, as the historic trail had fallen out of use due to its unsustainable grade even before the fire completely destroyed it.

“The new trail completed in April 2024 starts off with a filter or squirrel catcher composed of two steep rock rolls,” said Hazel. “It then contours across the large Ginger drainage on the south side of Dry Lake Hills with big grade reversals and several rock rolls and booters before ducking into the trees. It makes a technical turn on a stacked rock sequence informally called the ‘dragon’s back’ before then diving down into the ‘playground’ section characterized by a steep berm leading into a rock drop with a short gap to jump followed by a large rock slab roll (aka the ‘Tongue’) and finishing on some smaller features.” In total, this burly tech line drops 943 vertical feet over 1.5 miles.

Get the full story: “Flagstaff’s new downhill-only MTB trails were 18 years in the making“

Best backcountry trail

The Dragon, Newaygo, Michigan

The Dragon is an epic 45-mile bike-optimized singletrack loop around Hardy Dam Pond that was officially completed in 2024. While this is a fairly long-distance ride, it’s far from a “humdrum” cross country trail. “We’re talking purpose-built, feature-rich, natural surface… like berms, turns, rock features, everything. So when you ride it, it is, to me, 45 miles of an absolute dirt roller coaster,” said Dan Frayer, President of the WMMBA.

The 45-mile loop is divided into 11 different segments, each of which has unique characteristics. Some segments are easier and flowier, while others are rockier and more feature-rich. “Section seven, which was the last piece to get completed, has I don’t know how many tons of rock outcroppings… it’s rock-armored as far as you can see,” said Frayer. “Sections eight and nine are probably, to me, the most feature-rich… we’re talking professionally built stuff that you can get a little rowdy if you want.”

The Dragon forms the pinnacle of a trend we’ve noticed this year of new trail projects opening all across the Midwest. It was designed by Jeremy Wimpey of Applied Trails Research and constructed by Alex Stewart of Spectrum Trail Design.

Get the full story: “A 45-mile bike-optimized singletrack loop has been built around a lake in Michigan“

Best lift-served trail

Dreamland, Duluth, Minnesota

The best lift-served trail built in the USA is in… Minnesota? Yes, you read that right. Duluth’s municipally-owned ski resort, Spirit Mountain, has been spinning its lifts for mountain bikes since 2012. Originally known for steep, gnarly tech trails, the bike park keeps getting better and better, now boasting 23 trails arrayed on 700 vertical feet of hillside.

The latest addition is a manicured intermediate flow trail dubbed “Dreamland.” This sculpted jump line squeezes 21 jumps into 3,700 linear feet and 254 vertical feet of elevation loss. Flowy tabletops, most about 20 feet long (with some going as large as 28 feet), lead into massive berms to keep the speed high and flow alive.

Dreamland was built by Zenith Trail Contracting based on two guiding principles: progression and trail speed. “We were missing this aspect of progression,” said Jon Regenold, Director of Resort Services for Spirit Mountain Recreation Area. He said that Spirit didn’t need “a trail that you have to really dial in and figure out every single jump.” Rather, they wanted “a trail that you can trust the builder and then a trail [where] you can enhance your riding. If you are only a green looking to be a blue, or blue looking to be a black jumper, you’ve got that ability to step it up and work on it.”

Best bike park/skills park

Benton Bike Park, Benton, Arkansas

This list wouldn’t be complete without an entry from the trail development mecca of Arkansas. Just don’t confuse “Benton” for “Bentonville,” as the two are nowhere close.

The Benton Bike Park features a skills course, downhill trail, dual slalom, and multi-use perimeter trail. The park is naturally separated into two distinct zones by a drainage channel. In the lower park you’ll find the downhill trail with a second alternate line splitting off halfway down. The lower park also provides a beginner jump trail and an intermediate jump trail. The multi-use, cross-country trail around the perimeter is one mile long. 

Despite the relatively short mileage, there are still plenty of fun features to play on in the park. The upper park includes a dual slalom course; an advanced jump line “with fly-over the dual slalom, split wood drop, and two options at the bottom;” an “industrial/semi-architectural start hub;” and an intermediate jump line. The starting hub is visually impressive, as it is fabricated from four 40-foot shipping containers and one 20-foot container. Finally, there’s also a dedicated session zone near the base area with jump lines ranging from beginner to advanced.

The Benton Bike Park was built by Progressive Trail Designs and named the Arkansas “Outdoor Facility of the Year.”

Get the full story: “Visually-Stunning MTB Park Opening on Formerly Eroded Dump Site“

Best beginner trail

Rhythm & Berms, Tehaleh, Washington

The vision for Rhythm & Berms came before the construction of the rest of the Trek at Tehaleh trail system, of which Rhythm & Berms is now a small part. This sculpted beginner-friendly flow trail is the brainchild of Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance designer and builder Brian Tustison, who wanted to meet the demand from local riders for a flowy trail that’s accessible for a variety of skill levels.

“This 0.3-mile trail is designed to offer dynamic flow and excitement for riders of all levels,” said Vivika Stamolis, Marketing & Communications Manager for the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance. “Dropping 105 feet through lush, green forest, it features sweeping berms, small tabletops, and a series of rollers that add a ‘roller coaster’ speed to keep everyone smiling.”

“This quintessential green trail lets any rider, on any type of bike, enjoy the ride at their own pace,” Stamolis concluded.

Get the full story: “$1.3 million for 6 miles of top-tier trails: The newest county park in Washington is only open to mountain bikers“

Best adaptive trail

Double Bogey, Bolton, Vermont

The Driving Range trail system opened this year in Bolton, VT, with four miles of purpose-built trails that are all designed for adaptive mountain bikers. And just so you know — “adaptive” doesn’t mean “easy.”

To highlight the difficulty of trails that many adaptive riders are searching for, we’ve selected Double Bogey as the best adaptive trail of 2024. Double Bogey, built by L&D Trailworks, is one of the marquee double black diamond descents at the Driving Range. Dropping 345 vertical feet over 0.4 miles, it is “one of the most aesthetic trails you could ride,” Berne Broudy, President of Richmond Mountain Trails. “It has massive slabby rock walls. There’s really cool rock ramp features, technical rock ramps that roll into the next.”

“There’s one crux move. It’s a slightly off-camber rock ramp, where on the right-hand side, like, if you were to blow that berm, you would fall a very long way,” she continued. “It’s more mental coming into it, and then you swoop around a corner and go right into another steep little rock.”

Get the full story: “Is this the first fully-adaptive MTB trail network in the world?“

The article 9 of the best mountain bike trails that opened in the USA in 2024 appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

You don’t need to buy a new bike to feel like a new rider. Sometimes the best gifts are the ones that cost the least! These are some of the best-selling items Singletracks readers have been snatching up this holiday season, and all of them are priced under $50.

Our advice: check shipping cutoffs and order ASAP if you want these items before Christmas.

Toyo Y-350 Steel Toolbox

$44.00

Keep your bike tools organized and ready to grab at a moment’s notice. The Toyo Y-350 steel toolbox is sure to last for many years to come!

Buy from Backcountry

Enve Alloy Stem

$140.00 | $39.99 sale

Singletracks readers have been snapping up these Enve alloy stems! For 31.8mm bars, choose from 35, 42, and 50mm lengths. Go 35mm bars? Get this version that’s on sale for the same price.

Buy from Jenson USA

Smartwool Beanie

$25.00

I (Jeff) have worn a lot of beanies and this one from Smartwool is my favorite. It’s warm and isn’t scratchy, plus it fits under most helmets without adding too much bulk. Free 3-day shipping!

Buy from Smartwool

Scott Vivo Plus Helmet

$149.99 | $37.50 sale

The Scott Vivo Plus trail/all-mountain helmet features MIPS protection and extended rear coverage with an adjustable visor in three sizes. And if you’re looking for an XC/gravel helmet, the Scott Arx Plus is on sale for $20 (all three sizes of the Nitro Purple colorway are in stock as of time of publication.)

Buy from Scott Sports

Patagonia Black Hole 3L Cube

$39.00

Keep gear organized inside your pack or bag with the Patagoia Black Hole.

Buy from evo

Gore WINDSTOPPER® Stretch Gloves

$45.00

Keep your hands warm with this quality pair of Gorewear bike gloves. Available in hand sizes up to 3XL, these glove provide excellent protection while still delivering good control on the bars. Free 2-day shipping!

Buy from Gorewear

REI Camp Mug

$22.95 | $15.93 sale

Pick up a travel mug for early morning drives to the trailhead and camping weekends spent outdoors. Plus it makes for a great everyday mug too!

Buy from REI

Fanttik X9 Ace Mini Bike Tire Pump

$49.97 | $34.97 sale

Electric inflators are a hot item this year, and we’re not going back to carrying an old-fashioned mini-pump anytime soon.

Buy from Amazon

Swiftwick Pursuit Crew Sock

$22.00

Swiftwick Pursuit socks are our go-to for riding in any season, and the all-season Merino wool is warmer than most polyester wicking socks for winter rides. Free shipping!

Buy from Swiftwick

FIFTY-FIFTY Mountain Bike Fender (2-pack)

$15.99

Protect your suspension and bike finish with a set of fenders. These should fit most frames and forks and attach easily with zip ties. Read more.

Buy from Amazon

Maxxis Dissector 29×2.4

$82.00 | $35.00 sale

The Dissector is designed for gravity riding, and is a great choice either front or rear. The three compound version is available for $43 and both are the OEM, white-label version that looks great on any build. Read more.

Buy from Jenson USA

Bru Trek OVRLNDR French Press

$49.95

There’s nothing like a fresh, hot cup of coffee on a cold morning. This is the perfect gift for the outdoorsy coffee lover in your life.

Buy from Backcountry

Under Armor Technical Tee

$30.00 | $20.98 sale

You’ll get a ton of use out of this simple technical t-shirt that makes for a great base layer for riding and other activities.

Buy from Amazon

Tru-Tension Tyre Monkey

$14.99

The Tyre Monkey is designed to make it easier to remove stubborn tires from tight rims. Plus it’s a durable tool that won’t damage your tire or your rim.

Buy from Amazon

Digital Caliper

$26.99 | $19.98 sale

We’ve been surprised to see so many readers snatching these up, but then again we use ours all the time in the shop and around the house too.

Buy from Amazon

Nuun Sport Hydration

$26.49

Stock up on Nuun electrolytes and stay hydrated naturally with less than 1g of sugar per serving.

Buy from Amazon

Want to find the best price on your next mountain bike? Try our comparison shopping tool and don’t miss our Weekly MTB Deals for the biggest savings on mountain bikes, gear and more.

The article Under $50: The best-selling MTB gifts of the season appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

In a conversation earlier this year, professional trail builder Greg Mazu emphasized the importance of mountain bike trailhead amenities, which in some cases can end up costing as much or more to build than the trails themselves. “When we think about building these things, building new trails in our own backyards, what’s the trailhead look like? Is it inviting? Does it get other people out there?”

With that in mind, we want to know which trailhead facilities are important to you as a rider. And if you don’t need anything more than a place to park your vehicle off the side of the road, sound off in the comments below!

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

you? to mountain

Which mountain bike trailhead facilities are important to you?

• Plenty of parking spaces
• Trailhead kiosk with a map
• Restrooms
• Potable water
• Changing facility
• Good signage
• Community tools / pump
• Bike wash
• Vendors on site (food, bike repair, parts, accessories)
• Security
• Skills playground
• Picnic facilities
• Other (tell us in the comments below)

Submit

The article Which trailhead facilities are most important to you? appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

Tubeless mountain bike tires are great, and everything from rims to tape, and sealant to valves, keeps improving to make installation and maintenance easier every year. When it comes to periodically checking sealant levels, most of us just give our tires a shake to make sure there’s still some liquid sloshing around inside. For those who want a more precise measure, or just want to nerd out, there’s the $15 Muc-Off Hey Dipstick!

The CNC-machined tool is designed to measure how much tubeless sealant is left in a tire the old-fashioned way. Set your bike in a stand so the tire isn’t resting on the ground, and spin the wheel so the valve is in the 6 o’clock position. After giving the sealant a moment to settle, remove the valve core, or if you’re running Muc-Off Big Bore valves, open the ball valve fully, and insert the dipstick until it touches the inside bottom of the tire.

Though the measurement grooves on the dipstick don’t correspond to a specific volume of sealant, which will vary based on tire size, it does give you a relative measure of how much liquid sealant is inside the tire. Not only that, you can get a sense of whether your sealant is dark and dirty or thin and watery, either of which could suggest it’s time for a refresh. Muc-Off recommends using a permanent marker to note your ideal sealant level at the time of a refresh and to use that measure to gauge when it’s time to top off.

I tested the Hey Dipstick! on a number of different valves, and found it works just fine for standard Presta valves with removable cores, the new Clik valve, and naturally, the Muc-Off Big Bore valves shown here. Unfortunately, it won’t work with Reserve Fillmore valves, and though it can be used with a Stans Exo Core valve, you’ll need to remove the upper portion of the valve stack, which is a hassle.

Thicker tire sealants like Muc-Off’s own tend to show up better, and the Hey Dipstick! works just fine with thinner sealants like Stans, too. Remember to clean the dipstick well after each use, otherwise it can be hard to read the tool the next time.

Would a long toothpick or a wooden BBQ skewer work just as well? Probably. And the dipstick method isn’t the only way to check tire sealant levels. Syringes like this one from KOM Cycling allow you to add sealant, extract it to see exactly how much liquid remains down to the milliliter, and replace it without getting your hands dirty. If you don’t have a dipstick or a syringe, you can pull your tire off the rim to check the sealant level, but that’s a hassle, and it’s generally pretty messy.

Which is why most of us just end up giving our tires a shake before heading out the door.

The article This tire sealant dipstick isn’t quite as dumb as it sounds appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

The Leatt Hydradri 7.0 Clip shoes are a new, and welcome, entry to the world of clipless winter mountain bike shoes. It doesn’t feel like long ago there few options for decent winter shoes for mountain biking, and the Leatt shoes on test here pose a legitimate threat to others on the market.

Leatt HydraDri 7.0 Clip key specs

• Waterproof and breathable
• Price: $219
• Buy from Leatt retailers

What does a South African brand know about producing waterproof shoes? A thing or two, as it turns out. HydraDri is Leatt’s own 3-layer breathable, PFAS-free waterproof membrane, which they use across a range of jackets, pants, and even one-piece overalls for mountain biking. The 7.0 clip shoe is the latest addition, and is made in a clipless-pedal version, seen here, as well as a nearly identical flat-pedal version.

Features

Made for winter riding in foul weather, the Leatt HydraDri 7.0 Clip is both insulated, and waterproof, with Leatt’s HydrDri MAX 10k/10k membrane, and should be a solid companion for winter riding. The shoe features a water- and dirt-resistant gaiter around the outside, with a long water resistant zip closure, with a push snap closure at the top covered by a small flap.

The HydraDri membrane is part of the inner bootie, rather than the outer gaiter. The inner boot is fastened with a single speed-lace on each shoe, and has a fabric loop to help pull the shoe on, as the fit is meant to be snug.

The Clip shoe has a black upper with gum sole, and the flat version is black on black. Personally, I think the black/gum looks good, and the shoe itself looks inoffensive as winter boots go; a friend likened them to cross-country ski boots. They’re relatively low profile and yet well insulated, and should work equally well for mountain biking and gravel riding. All the seams on the shoe appear to be welded, and the shoes are nicely made overall.

The sole fits standard two-bolt cleats, and comes with cleat shims for a range of cleat fitments. The cleat channel is generously wide, for shedding mud or snow, and the sole has good tread, for hike-a-biking when necessary.

Leatt HydraDri 7.0 Clip shoe fit

Pulling on the HydraDri 7.0 Clip takes a minute; the fit of the inner bootie is pretty snug around the top. The loop on the back helps, but it attaches further down the back than is ideal, so the top of the shoe folds over on the inside every time and needs to be pulled back out. The speedlace closure is easy, but the lace feels overly long, and it can be tough to get it really tight, so riders who like to be locked in may not like this so much.

I usually fit a size 45 shoe, but the 44.5 on test here fits great, with just the right amount of space to be snug without feeling tight in any direction. While the speed lace doesn’t go overly tight, the fit helps the shoe feel pretty secure. The cuff at the top of the gaiter offers a looser fit, and doesn’t fit snugly around my ankle which means water could drain down inside if my pants cuff isn’t covering the top of the shoe. I do have skinny legs, but a tighter fit here would be appreciated. The snap closure at the top is also a little finicky, and can be tricky to get closed. Once the shoes are on, they’re comfy, but getting them on is a bit of a process.

On The Trail

The Leatt HydraDri 7.0 Clip shoes are easy to live with on the trails. Once they’re on, they’re very warm, and quite dry. I tend to struggle with cold feet, and having ridden with these at close to 0°C, paired with a good pair of merino socks, they kept my feet toasty past the point where most other shoes would fail me. As far as waterproofing goes, they do a good job of keeping the water out, and my only real complaint is that when riding fast, wet trails, the spray can come down the baggy ankle cuff. That said, my feet stayed warm, which is half the battle. When submerged fully in ankle-deep water, I’m happy to say that they didn’t leak on me.

The soles on the HydraDri 7.0 are plenty stiff. Though they’re hardly an XC race shoe, they’re good enough for winter mountain biking, gravel riding, and commuting. Power transfer is good, partly thanks to the stiff sole, and the snug fit. The fit in the heel could be better, since it feels like it doesn’t cup as well as it could, despite cinching the laces tightly. This is most noticeable when off the bike pushing up trail, and also when riding aggressively. Despite that, they are comfortable to wear for longer periods of time.

The cleat channel on the HydraDri 7.0 is plenty long and wide, even when running the cleats as far inboard as possible, and this makes finding the pedal easy enough. The sole provides a solid platform, even on smaller XC-type pedals, so even if you can’t clip in, they still provide some stability.

Longevity has been good so far, with no real wear and tear to note, and everything is still working as it should. They clean up well, and the welded seams hold up to abuse and make cleaning easy.

Pros and cons of Leatt HydraDri 7.0 Clip

Pros

• Waterproof
• Well insulated and warm
• Comfortable

Cons

• Ankle cuff is loose and can let water in
• Hard to cinch speed laces up tight enough

Bottom line

The Leatt HydraDri 7.0 is a solid contender for winter shoes. They have an aesthetic appeal that most don’t, and have a quality feel to them. They keep feet warmer and drier than some, though the fit around the ankle cuff is loose and getting them cinched up can be a little tricky. Despite those small complaints, they’re genuinely comfortable, and a welcome addition to my winter riding setup that I look forward to wearing all winter long.

Update December 16, 2024: Confirmed with Leatt that their HydraDri material is PFAS-free.

The article Leatt Hydradri 7.0 Clip winter MTB shoes are warm and dry [Review] appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.

The Boulder Valley Ranch (BVR) is a parcel of open space land located north of the City of Boulder and west of Boulder Reservoir, on the east side of Highway 36. This open space is home to a network of trails lacing a working agricultural area used for cattle grazing at certain times of the year.

The trails wind around high on a mesa and then descend a short, steep hill to the shores of the reservoir below. While this isn’t the dramatic terrain you might think of as quintessential “Boulder,” the views of the mountains are beautiful — and it’s home to the Boulder Mountainbike Alliance’s latest trail access win.

On November 21, 2024, for the first time in 26 years, 5 months, and 15 days, a trail in the BVR was opened to mountain bikes: the Cobalt Trail.

In the fall of 2024, Timberline Trail Craft, in conjunction with the Boulder Mountain Bike Alliance (BMA), worked to reroute and improve the Cobalt Trail with a few objectives in mind:

1. Make it accessible to adaptive mountain bikes.
2. Make it flowier and more sustainable so mountain bikes can have an enjoyable descent off the top of the mesa down to the reservoir below.
3. Improve sustainability for all trail users, whether they’re on tires or feet.

The end result is a flowy trail with a mellow grade that’s about four feet wide. The rebuilt trail tread features low berms and plenty of rollers and grade reversals to shed water.

Critical connectivity created by the Cobalt trail

Even though Cobalt is just one mile long, the rebuild makes Cobalt the best way to reach the Boulder Reservoir from the mesa above, providing critical connectivity through this area. While the Eagle trail already provided legal access, this old road grade was steep and filled with baby-head-size rocks — completely out of character with the other trails in the area. Cobalt’s new bike-optimized flow is a whole different story.

Riders can use a variety of trails to pedal from downtown Boulder to access the BVR via an underpass beneath Highway 36. At the underpass, Cobalt also connects to the North Sky trail.

For a longer ride, “you can go under the highway and do a loop with North Sky, which is almost four miles long,” said Wendy Sweet, Executive Director of the BMA. “It’s a little tricky to get back across the highway at Neva Road because there’s not an underpass, so you kind of have to play Frogger. But then you can do a bigger loop than just out-and-backs on either the west side or the east side of Highway 36.”

More trail connectivity is in the works thanks to the North Trail Study Area management plan, and riders can piece together even longer routes — now with less road riding than ever before.

While the trails are great for beginner mountain bikers, this interconnected network of trails, paths, and roads is also perfect for multi-surface gravel rides. “The gravel bikes are out in force, for sure, in Boulder Valley Ranch, and it connects really well to the unpaved roads that they also use,” said Sweet.

History of the Boulder Valley Ranch Redesign Project

The rebuild of the Cobalt trail is just the first project in a larger effort known as the Boulder Valley Ranch Redesign Project. Work leading up to the BVR Redesign Project “really kicked off in 2004 when BMA started participating in other City of Boulder Open Space management plans, which led to this management plan, which BMA was able to help build because we have a Trails Program Director, Mike Rutter, on staff,” said Sweet. “It took a long time to get here, even if the end result doesn’t seem as exciting as other places offer.”

Through the BVR, the City of Boulder is striving to improve access and accessibility — especially for adaptive riders. “They realized they could make it more accessible by optimizing the trails for adaptive bikes, which also makes it more fun for regular bikes. And that’s just adding berms and grade reversals,” said Sweet. “It’s not a bike park by any means, and all the trails are green level, but just giving a little bit of flow and interest to trails that lacked that before.”

The City is also trying to “deal with some non-system trails and improve the trails were not very sustainable.”

Future improvements coming in the redesign project

The rebuild of the Cobalt trail was just the first step in the redesign project. The BMA is gearing up to rework the Degge and Hidden Valley trails in 2025. Following the rebuilds, both of these trails — which are currently closed to bikes — will also open to wheeled traffic.

In addition, the project also calls for the adoption of some of the non-system trails into the trail system, with modifications made in certain places to improve sustainability. While some non-system trails will be closed to reduce habitat fragmentation, the Redesign Project is culminating in a notable increase in mountain bike trail access in a network that hasn’t seen a new trail opened to bikes in a staggeringly long time.

The article For the first time in over 26 years, a new trail has opened to bikes in Boulder Valley Ranch appeared first on Singletracks Mountain Bike News.