The First Mountain Bikes : Fat-Tyres and Clunkers

Mark Pawlak    mountainbikingholidays     mountain bike holidays, Mountain bikes, mountain biking, MTB, MTB gear

Mountain bikes are about as technical as bikes come. Frankly, in terms of innovation, some look light years ahead of road bikes.

The MTB Today

But don’t think they just turned up. The first mountain bikes are as old as the hills – well not that old – but let’s take a look back over the last 40 years and see how they developed.

There are a few familiar names here, so you’ll get to see that some MTB manufacturers really are old skool.

read more

Mountain bike gear: are tubeless rims the best for your ride?

Gabriel    mountainbikingholidays, Pro Tips     bike gear, Mountain bike gear, mountain biking, Mountainbike, Mountainbike holidays, MTB, MTB tyres, tubeless rims, tubular tyres

Reading around the blogosphere, I see there is a lot of research on mountain bike gear and discussions on tubeless rims and which tyres to ride when mountain biking. That’s an important question – if you are a seasoned downhiller you’ll be riding on different rubber than if you were an apprenticing single-track newbie. But before we grace the question of tyres, I believe a more important question is what do you put them on? Are tubeless rims the best for your ride?

Are you rocking tubeless rims? Image: Flickr/thazit

Tyres and tubes are made of rubber and filled with air. When you think about it, there is a lot of rubber rolling on the ground at any given moment. What if you were to remove the inner tube? Interesting, lets look at the tubeless options available.

read more

Mountain Biking in Laos: Highlands and Lowlands

Alice Cuninghame    mountainbikingholidays     holidays in Laos, Laos, Mountain Bike, mountain bike holidays, mountain biking, MTB, off-road

It may come as a surprise to many, but tiny Laos offers fantastic cycling for the adventurous. The rugged uplands to the north are great for mountain bikers looking for thrills, while the southern lowlands offer biking on the flat against a rural backdrop.

Views to ride for! Image:Luisah

Laos is mostly undeveloped, so any kind of travel there requires a willingness to rough it a little. Even its capital, Vientiane, feels like a quiet backwater. The rural areas are a step back in time to a simpler world. People live in small villages among their animals, farming largely for subsistence in the same way they have for generations.

Poverty and poor infrastructure means that most roads are unsealed, which makes for a bumpy and sometimes challenging ride, even in the flat south. The reward is stunning views and a warm welcome, in Asia’s most laid-back country.

read more

Hard or Soft: How Mountain Bikers Shop for Tail

Gabriel    mountainbikingholidays, Pro Tips     Adventure, Adventure Sports, cycling, Downhill, mountain biking, MTB, off-road

Mountain bike technology has come a long way over the past 20 years. Once, bike manufacturers created stiff and solid frames that would roar down hill before people really knew what they were doing (no helmets, no body armour). This video gives you an idea of how rocky and risky downhill descents were on a rigid frame.  Then they decided to put motorcycle suspension on these bikes. And an industry was born!

It began with front-suspension forks. Companies like Rock Shox and Manitou couldn’t keep them on the shelves. Then bike manufactures had the idea to make each wheel float independently of the frame. Full-suspension bikes became fashionable and the market was flooded with them.

Today, the industry still makes a number of sharp and snazzy dual-suspension bicycles that make the heart pound (probably because many of them look like combat helicopters). The next time you go shopping for a mountain bike, get one with a lock-out front suspension. However, before you dump over 3K on the latest “full-susser,” consider these tips so you don’t wind up buying more bike than you can ride:
read more

New Bikes: Buying a Mountain Bike

Luke    mountainbikingholidays     Downhill, full-suspension, Mountain Bike, Mountain bike gear, mountain biking, Mountainbike, mountainbiking, MTB, off-road

Back in May, I decided to replace my barely road worthy ‘mountain’ bike with a bike that can handle proper off-road riding. I hadn’t ridden off-road since I was a kid, which was well before mountain bikes had disk brakes or suspension so I went into this very green.  These are the main things I considered:

GT Agressor XC2, ticked all my boxes

Budget

Everyone has a different amount to spend; my magic number was £400 max. I knew the bike would get plenty of riding on the road to cycle to work, but having not ventured into the rough stuff for nearly 2 decades, I couldn’t justify spending more in case the off road riding never happened.

Suspension

When I last rode bumpy trails, suspension consisted of standing up to avoid a sore bottom! Now with the choice of full-suspension (front and rear), hard tail (just front suspension) or no suspension, I could choose to avoid the sore bottom but had a sore head trying to decide what to go for.

In the end, it came down to what I could afford: I wanted some suspension, but I could only afford a bottom of the range full-suspension bike, which would be very heavy – so as I would be doing plenty of hill climbing, I went for a hard tail.

read more

Mountain bike skills and avoiding the wipeout

Gabriel    mountainbikingholidays, Pro Tips     cycling, mountain biking, mountainbiking, MTB, off-road

Mountain biking is a balance. The thrill of the sport comes from balancing on the edge of colossal failure: that fine line between rocketing downhill full of endorphins, and the knowledge that one wrong move can stack you in the woods, break your bike and possibly your collar bone. No one wants to crash but sometimes it happens. Here are a few things to keep in mind to prevent a crash the next time you take the “knobbies” out to blast through the forest.

Try to avoid nosedive dismounts Image Flickr/ UltraRob

A: Anticipate your route.

Riding more means learning to read the terrain faster. When you stop looking at every single object that passes in front of you, you’ll begin to plan your attack more wisely. For instance, if you approach a wet patch of dirt and then have to climb a muddy pitch, think about hitting the puddle as fast as you can to make it as far up the pitch as possible. Stop thinking about the little things and look ahead.

B: Balance your body.

Good mountain bikers should always maintain a dynamic body position. Headed up a steep hill? Put your torso over the handle bars. Flying down a rocky descent? Put your back-side as far back as you can over your rear wheel. Hair-pin turns? Keep your inside pedal up and lean to the outside. The better balanced you are over the entire bike, the better your reaction will be when something unexpected comes along.

read more

If 26 were 29: Mountain bikes and choosing wheels

Gabriel    mountainbikingholidays, Pro Tips     26-Inch wheels, 29-Inch wheels, mountain bike holidays, mountain biking, mountain biking gear, MTB

There is a lot of debate over the size of mountain bike wheels. The current trend has seen people choosing wheels for their mountain bikes and taking the normal 26” standard wheel and increasing it to a diameter of 29” (to be clear, that is an average outside rim diameter with no tire on the wheel). There has been quite a fight as to which system is better on mountain bikes. The fact is they both are: it all depends on what kind of riding you are looking to do and what kind of cyclist you are.

Rollin with 29'ers

The arguments against “29ers” are very strong (industry doesn’t like change – especially if that means buying a new fork and frame to accommodate the bigger wheels), but when the chips (and the wheels) are down, the mountain biker should asses whether or not the switch to larger wheels is a good idea. Bigger wheels on the bike-market means more choice for the buyer, so accept the innovation. Here are a few things to consider when considering a 29-inch wheel purchase:

1. Weight:

Con: Larger rims constitute more weight. There is more metal and as a result it makes the mountain bike heavier. 26-inch wheels are thus essentially lighter.

Pro: Larger rims have more metal in them, but it’s a pretty insignificant weight difference. There are a number of manufacturers who produce tubeless 29-inch rims. Get rid of that inner tube and you get closer to your preferred riding weight.

read more