Catagorising the Mountain Bike Simply.

[Wold Ranger]

Kit

No things are a lot Larier over hear M8, bikes are going heavier if anything with 40 poundish being recommended for free ride and the Alpine style challenges! Prices are having to go up to cope with the stress and strain with £2000 plus being the Norm and £3000 plus not out the way. Course this is a way away from the Retro theme, but drops and jumps are pretty standard over here now. We have a local trail park with close on 70 Km of North Shore wooden trails, take an XC hard tail on most of that, both U an it are going to break very quickly. The cheaper bikes with low end discs etc just wouldn't stand the hammer. Folks are getting lazier so the down hill/Fr scene is really huge here, a lot of folks have the money to buy the top end kit too.
Don't get me wrong I trail ride a lot and have a shed full of nice light Hard tails, thats my thing, but I'm considered a wacko locally, the current trend is for long travel All mountain Alpine style scoots.

 

[shogun]

Haha, 40+ lb bikes for UK trails... The forest carpenters MUST be busy building their ewok village trails over there then!

It goes without saying that NWD7 style trails really aren't the go on a basic hardtail I guess, but thats pretty self evident.
Out here we build B-lines.

 

[Wold Ranger]

Bykes

Yeah not my cup of T, but that's the way its going, MBUK has an article abt this, saying how things have changed so fast, some centres are even installing Ski lifts, it's that popular. If you hit a 70 foot plus drop off at 50 K plus You need a 40 pound plus bike and many of the trails have some of these now, you need real balls to ride em' at all!

 

[shogun]

Honestly though, spend a day in a bike shop and the bread and butter is still the standard low to mid range HTs. I think in maybe 5 years time it will be basic full suspension, the swing is going that way, but for now its much the same.

 

[Bear-Chan]

my mum bought be mbuk for xmas (ha ha - bless her!) - theres an article in there encouraging folk to actually get out and ride in the country!
i know im probably a rose-tinted old fart, but it does worry me a little. i know im horribly out of touch, but do people tend to only really ride at bike parks these days!? im sure theyre great fun, but what about proper mountains n outdoors stuff - thats half the experience for me.

 

[shogun]

My feeling is the visible people, as in the ones you see, are the bike park 25%. The other 75% are out there riding natural terrain and whatever their wheels touch; you just don't see them.

 

[jez-4-bikes-max]

I blame MBUK for everything

 

[cce]

dirt jumping and trials are not mountain biking. sports in their own right, yes, but not strictly mountain biking


they may have started out with mountain bikes, but they've moved onto more specialised kit now.