Fall is mountain bike season. Are you ready?
Steffen Root, Berkshire Bike and Board | The Berkshire Eagle | October 14, 2022
Fall is in the air, the leaves are at their peak, do you know what that means? It’s prime mountain bike season! Here’s what you need to know about mountain biking and where to ride.
The COVID-19 pandemic created a large demand for people to find safe ways to exercise, bringing a whole new population of people to cycling — a large portion of them purchasing mountain bikes. It may seem simple to buy a bike and go find trails, but as a long-time mountain biker, I know that there is so much information out there that it can be overwhelming. I hope to bring some clarity to all of the tech-speak. And for those who have found this fun sport and feel like you have plateaued, I want to help you get to the next level.
Types of mountain bikes
To begin, let’s start by breaking down the different types of mountain bikes. There is a sliding scale of bikes that, depending on the amount of suspension travel (how much the wheels go up and down) the bike has, dictates where the bike is best suited to ride. Bikes with larger amounts of wheel travel, ranging from seven inches and over, are designed to primarily go downhill. Think of bikes that closely resemble dirt bikes, where there is some sort of shuttling or chairlift involved to take you uphill and then you ride down. These bikes are called downhill or enduro bikes.
Bikes with four to six inches of travel are what I would call the sweet spot of mountain biking. These bikes are called “trail or all-mountain” bikes. They are engineered to be a balance of going up and going down. This is by far the largest category of mountain bikes sold and used.
Bikes with no travel in the rear (hardtails) and bikes with under 3 inches of travel are best suited for the rider looking for the utmost efficiency while going up, and less emphasis on going back down. These are called cross-country bikes.
There is one outlier in the mountain bike category which came about due to the desire to ride year-round in cold climates. The “fatbike” as it is affectionately called, has tires that look like oversized truck tires. They run low on air pressure, making them able to float on soft surfaces, like snow or sand. They have gained popularity in our region because they are great for extending the season making biking on packed snow surfaces possible. They are also great for taming rough terrain with their big tires, making them great for beginners.
Where to ride
Now that we have sorted out the types of bikes I would like to talk about all the great places you can ride your mountain bike. Being in the Western part of the state, we are lucky to have the highest concentration of state parks in Massachusetts. Every one of our state parks has phenomenal riding. Up north in Adams you have the Greylock Glen; in central Berkshires, there is Pittsfield and October State Forests; and down in south county, there is Beartown State Forest.
You may be asking yourself, “That is great and all, but how do I find these trails, and how do I not get lost?” Well, that is the beauty of living in the digital age: There is an app/website that has all the trails in the world in one place. It is called Trailforks. You can access their website, or better yet, download their app. By using the app you can navigate any trail system, cell phone reception or not, with your phone’s internal GPS system.
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