Happy Feet

You guys are in serious danger of adopting the grumpy old curmudgeon label

E mtbs are just another new technology that is coming along, like disc brakes and full suspension. Right now in Marin County there are probably some old guys in blue jeans and hiking boots chowing down on gorp and complaining about the armour clad maniacs who insist on jumping everything and can't slow down to enjoy the scenery.

One could even argue that those advances (braking, suspension) have had as dramatic impact on the environment as e bikes will, probably more, having encouraged more people to ride single-track trails that are constantly being developed in terrain that would have never been considered for development in the rigid/canti era.

E bikes may impact current trails but FS/disc is responsible for those trails even being there in the first place. From a naturalist/ecology POV, one would want all mtb use restricted, not just e-mtbs.

I am 50/50 on e-mtb. Of all genres, other than to extend a commuters range without getting all sweaty, I see a value to them for able bodied riders in downhill areas.

Near me are five downhill mtb trail systems. Each of them require a long uphill ride on an access road/doubletrack and then a number of gravity trails back to the bottom. Some people ride up because they want the exercise or don't have a spare driver. Manual bikes work for them because they want the uphill exercise as well as the downhill. But that downhill is severely limited by the amount of energy/time they can devote to uphill grinds, like 2-3kms nonstop steep uphill grades.

Others load bikes into trucks and drive up, unload and ride down. They want the downhill experience only. Those people coud use e-mtbs and eliminate the vehicle traffic altogether.

Responsibly used, they would be a win for the environment in terms of exhaust and noise pollution. Some may say e-mtb riders aren't responsible but if you look at the damage done to trails currently you would have to admit manual riders aren't either.

On the negative side they would increase the frequency of rides per session (because the uphill ride would be faster and easier.) so more wear and tear on trails, but that argument also goes against using vehicles to ferry bikes as well.

If I had too much money I might consider one myself, although I still seek the cardio from uphill riding so... not quite yet.

Kapusta

Give me a freaking break. Motors are a fundamentally different thing. And they are not anything new. Motorized dirt bikes have been around for decades. They just were not pretending to be bikes.

Happy Feet

You need to go look at a modern Trek (for example) full suspension e-mtb. They are as much a mountain bike as any other modern bike is. They look and function just like the manual ones only with a form fitting battery and hub. If you didn't know better you couldn't tell them apart on the trail.
When I ride my manual fat bike on the trails people constantly are shocked it isn't electric -they look the same.

Compare a new FS 1x 50T carbon DH bike to the old rigid steel bikes from the 1980s. Not remotely the same machines but we still call them mtbs.

Kapusta

You know this is a completely asinine argument, right?

A 1990 mtb and 2020 MTBs are actual bicycles. That is the “B” in MTB.

Happy Feet

and the e in e-mtb stands for electric. Both are bicycles.

Last year, before covid, I attended the Vancouver bicycle show. Over half of the exhibitors were e bike related. It wasn't the Vancouver motorcycle show.

They are here.. they live among us.

Kapusta

Same could be said of COVID.

prj71

Not surprising. E-bikes make sense only to the manufacturers. It's all about $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. The manufacturers aren't thinking about you when they are investing millions into e-bikes. They are thinking of all the lazies who don't want to actually exercise that they can sell to. As Kapusta pointed out...the majority of people buying these things are people that are capable of pedaling a normal bike.

Ya know...for considerably less money...A person could buy a regular bike and lower the gearing or get off and push the bike up the hill if the pedaling part is too hard. The main problem with e-bikes is that they do nothing for your health, strength or stamina. You might as well grab a bag of cheetos, sit on the sofa and watch TV for all the good it does you.

Happy Feet

Sigh... Explain how taking a chairlift to the top of a MTB park, or a pickup up an access road, so you can ride back down is any more "good" for you than riding an e-mtb up the same sort of slope. Explain how manufacturers that produce $10,000 mountain bikes are "thinking about you" and not investing in affluent consumers.

I'm really digging how some of you think there needs to be a justifiable reason to ride a bicycle in the woods. Like that ever was a factor in mountain biking. "Listen Mabel, I don't want to ride a bicycle on this trail - I need to. Well, First of all I have to make this trail... then I need to build a bike to ride on it that will not be very suitable for anything else... then I need to ride it. But, and this is a big but, only this type of bike and only this sort of way."

The people buying their bikes, just as you guys buy your bikes, don't care what you think about their motivations. When I'm at the bottom of the trail, and see healthy teenagers loading their bikes in the back of a pickup so they can drive up to the same runs I'm about to crank up to, I can think they are lazy all I want - but they don't care and they are having fun. It's just me with the sour outlook.

A few months ago I was in Merritt, cranking up a trail, and two e-bikers passed me. One exclaimed: "Oh, I thought you were on an ebike - way to go!" They were happy, they were friendly, they were having fun. So was I.

And, because I work with seniors in healthcare I am a little more careful these days about my judgments about the capabilities and motivations of others. We are all one little burst blood vessel or clogged artery away from either needing that "assistance" or giving up riding all together. I like bikes, I plan to keep riding for as long as I can. At work I have a wheelchair bicycle I ride residents around in. Talk about lazy! If I were allowed though, I'd put an e motor on it and take them off road.

tungsten

..

DMC707

********. Bull-manure

youre 49 years old by your own admission —- Im a current USAC cat 2 who is your same age who sees no threat to my hobby and nothing wrong with e-bikes.

I felt the same way you did 3 or 4 years ago but have now seen too many testimonials from able bodied men and women toignore

try it before talking **** —-manure

Reflector Guy

I need one of those! My mom is in a nursing home.... The kind where everyone has dementia or Alzheimer's disease. I could cycle her around the block on a bike like that.

prj71

I would call that coasting downhill. Not biking...You know...where you actually have to pedal.

I'm digging how some think there needs to be a justifiable reason to ride a bicycle with pedal assist. Isn't one of the main reasons most of us got into this hobby for physical fitness?

prj71

I've already tried it. There was mountain bike demo 2 years ago at a local trail. They had a Specialized Turbo Levo there (Mountain Bike) and a Specialized Turbo Vado (comfort road bike) there. I took both of them on 6 mile rides. Both of them required zero effort to pedal up the hills. Hills at this trail where I would normally be sucking a little wind while pedaling up them were effortless on the e-bike. Same goes for the roads in the area where I tried the Turbo Vado.

What was kinda uncomfortable on the e-mountain bike on the trail was that if you started pedaling in a corner the bike wanted to surge forward faster than I was comfortable with in the corner.

Happy Feet

That's where I work, long term care. After a cross country trip I did in 2016 to raise awareness about dementia we started this pilot program with two bikes (scheduled to add a third just before covid) and take residents around a local park with a lake. Very cool. It's a good way for them to get away for a while, into nature and to interact with the community.

Happy Feet

As I explained above, many people who mtb with technical downhill mtbs aren't doing so because they want to pedal them up hill. They want to coast down. That's why they ferry bikes up with trucks and resort parks like Whistler with chairlifts and gondolas are so popular.

As I also said. I usually ride alone so I have no one to ferry my bike up the hill in the back of a truck. If there were a point where I wanted to just do technical DH, and wanted to optimize the number of runs I could do, I might consider an e-mtb. Unless you are going to ban trucks going up access roads there is absolutely no difference. Do you stand at the bottom of runs and shake your finger at them, people loading bikes into trucks? I bet the answer is no because they would just tell you to F off and you would look like an idiot. Only on the internet, and only against a crowd you perceive to be marginalized. Thing is, once something becomes mainstream and cool, guys like you usually jump onboard and are all over it. Then you will be casting shade on people who want to buy inexpensive e-mtbs with 26" wheels.

Kapusta

The mental and logical gymnastics being performed in this thread to somehow try and equate a motorized bicycle with a non-motorized one is just hilarious.

It is also incredibly counterproductive for those trying to gain and maintain access for mountain bikes. It has been looking to me like there was a glimmer of hope to get mountain bikes allowed in certain wilderness areas. I think the E bike evangelists may put the nail in that coffin for good.

BTW the way, this thread is about mtb. Whatever peoples’ thoughts are about e bikes on the road or as commuters are not relevant here. This is strictly about trail riding and trail access. The issues are very different.

Happy Feet

a. Enclosed below are two images of the same model of mountain bike. No mental gymnastics needed to equate the two. In fact, the challenge would be in finding major differences other than the e function.

b. I highly doubt a discussion on a forum is going to alter the course of access for mountain bikes. This is just an attempt to limit any discussion by an appeal to "think of the children".

c. Evangelists are usually defined as holding a belief system and attempting to impose that on all others. No one is trying to say everyone should ride an e-mtb here but some are sure trying to say they have no place in mountain biking. Who's the evangelist?

d. Other than a passing sentence about seeing mtbing as an area where e might make sense, there has been no discussion about e-bikes on the road or commuting. Again another attempt to deflect. This thread is about the impact of mtbs on wilderness areas and e-mtbs are a part of that discussion.

Kapusta

So, if you can’t see a motor, then it does not exist?

If two things look similar they fundamentally the same?

Sorry, gymnastics was too generous a term. Thats just and stumble and face plant.

And I never said eMTBs have no place. They do, just like any other motorcycle.

Happy Feet

Ok, that's your opinion and you are entitled to it, even though I find the points you put forward to dance around the issue with gross generalizations and attempts to minimalize by ad hominem attack boring. I linked two bikes above, side by side for comparison. That's a stumble and a face plant? Not buying the clumsy smear. It's called an example. But.. yeah, ones a mountain bike - the others a motorcycle. Sure... If you can't even address that in a reasonable way what's the point of continuing further. It's fruitless to argue against strongly held emotionally based beliefs that ignore facts in favour of feeling.

I'll just leave others to read the thread and decide who's making the reasonable argument or stumbling over their prejudices and resorting to generalizations about entire user groups. FTR, I'm not any more pro e-mtb than I am pro manual mtb. I have no strongly held opinion either way. I currently still seek a cardio/strength component from biking so manual works for me. But I also realize what I want may not be what others are seeking and I don't think I have any more exclusive rights than they do.

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In regards to the topic, what has more impact on a wilderness area, as in the example I suggested: Continuous truck traffic up and down an access road or having e-mtbs ride up the same access road?

Below is a pic at the base of one local area I ride. the start of the DH trails is 2Km's up this logging road. On the weekends in particular, it's very busy. Some people, like me, ride up and down. Many others load their bikes in trucks and ferry them to the top. Then the driver turns around and drives down to the bottom. On the way up I would rather have people ride past me on e-mtbs than have to worry about dodging them as they coal roll me in their noisy diesel 4x4's. My safety on the road, the physical impact to the road, associated noise and air pollution, all would be lessened. Just the reduction in noise pollution would be major in terms of wildlife. Personally speaking, I would be fine with allowing e-mtbs and banning pickups but the manual mtb users, who probably look down on electric assist, would not go for the taking away of their "diesel" assist.

Further.

There are two main user groups that access that area, other than occasional logging. Vehicles (4x4's, atvs and dirt bikes) and mountain bikes. A third group might be hikers, trail runners and horse riders but their impact is minimal at best. If you removed the logging (obviously) and 4x4/mtb from the area, it would quickly revert to natural wilderness. The impact by those two user groups is dramatic. As long as you allow both, the area is impacted along a corridor that extends as far as the user groups build and ride trail systems, and with noise, even wider. No other groups have the same sort of impact. In that way, the OP article is true.

We may think that a bike, on a trail, isn't having a major impact. But you also have to look at the access route to that trails system, how bikes are transported, staging areas, visitor frequency due to popularity (look at Moab), expansion of trail systems once a main line is laid down etc...



20190608_105417[1] by dc460, on Flickr

Kapusta

Show me one place where I made an ad hominem attack on you.

Yes, for the reason I stated. What they look like is not the point. It is what they ARE. One has a motor, one does not.

I could post a picture of a glass of water next to a glass gin. According to your logic, they are the same thing. So I assume you will be fine when the bartender uses water instead of gin for your martini? Hey, why don't we arm our soldiers with replica guns. They they are cheaper and they LOOK exactly like ones that fire. Same thing, right?

Happy Feet

Bolding is my response.

Kapusta

I suggest looking up the definition on “ad hominem”, because those are definitely not examples of it.

Happy Feet

"...Finally, there is argumentum ad hominem. This occurs when you direct your argument to the prejudices and instincts of the crowd, of the mob, rather than dealing with the real issue(s)".
The Principles of Argumentation: https://www.csun.edu/~hcpas003/argument.html

I suppose I could have said "straw man" instead: "It is a serious error to use the "straw man" tactic--falsely portraying opposing facts or arguments as so foolish, stupid, lightweight or crazy that you can sweep them away with a rhetorical wave of the hand. It is also an error to rely totally on ethos to make your argument by using an "ad hominem" attack--painting anyone who opposes your argument as doing so in bad faith".
How to Refute Effectively. How to Do Refutation in Classical Format

That would cover this: "It has been looking to me like there was a glimmer of hope to get mountain bikes allowed in certain wilderness areas. I think the E bike evangelists may put the nail in that coffin for good".


But of all the things to discuss regarding my post; that's the extent of your reply? No answer as to how the two forms of transportation differ in terms of rider effort (truck/chairlift rides up hill vs e-mtb)? No comparison of various forms of environmental impact between the two? No argument about which creates more noise or air pollution or impacts wilderness areas more? I put several examples forward that deal directly with the thread topic that could be challenged or countered. Tell me how throwing a mtb in the back of a truck and driving up the access road so you can ride down the single track is better physically or environmentally than riding up the same access road on an e-mtb.

For reference, here's the real road being discussed at a real mtb trail system, similar to many other systems in the region: https://www.trailforks.com/trails/ve...-service-road/

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Personally, I think down the road it would be best to develop a hybrid system of main trails specifically designed to resist erosion for mixed e-mtb/manual mtb use and other more fragile trails designated as manual mtb only. Some what similar to front country and back country camping. Many people riding e-mtbs probably don't want to tackle back diamond runs anyway. This gives the general public off road access and dedicated pedallers some protection from over use erosion.

The erosion issue isn't just from the "e" aspect either. Many trails get trashed by becoming too popular or from poor riding habits. Mtb will probably become more popular now with the "e" component opening up access for many and the concern would be those newer riders not understanding or observing etiquette. Making front country trails designed to resist damage would be a good preemptive move. Banning e-mtbs will work about as well as banning mtbs has worked in the past. Once enough of their numbers build they will drive the agenda. My opinion is its better to set the agenda ahead of time by considering them in the equation.

DMC707

well done, sir

DMC707

"Just coasting downhill"

You should try one of the blue or black level downhill courses sometime if you ever get the chance (if you havent already )

Its a hoot and i have registered heart rates as high as 190 on a black (rarely get above 165 in any other discipline)