Welcome to part two of my geek out blog post! Today I’m going to be doing a bit of a comparison. As you may or may not know, there are quite a few different types of biking. Every different type of biking has a different kind of bike, style, and terrain that goes with it. In this post I’m going to cover the main ones that you should know about.
The first kind of biking, the kind that I do, is enduro. Enduro riding is where you ride your bike up the mountain then ride down technical trails, sometimes with more climbs thrown in there. In a racing scenario the starting uphill is not timed but the second you start the actual trail it it timed, every if there are uphill parts on the trail. In every enduro race there are multiple stages with different climbs and trails. You do not get timed in between the stages. Enduro is a pretty common type of riding, especially in places like the North Shore where there are little to no shuttle services. This forces riders to climb and ride in a more enduro way. The kinds of bikes that you use for enduro riding is pretty cool. Enduro bikes are very light and easy to use on uphill but they are also made to go fast and take big impacts on trails.
The next kind of biking is downhill. Downhill biking is actually pretty similar to enduro except for a few main differences. The biggest difference is that with downhill, you don’t climb. You get shuttles up or you can take chair lifts, if the mountain you are riding on has one. With races, there is no climb at the start, or on the trail, and you only get timed on the downhill. The downhill bikes are the strongest and heaviest of all the bikes. Downhill bikes are built for pure speed downhill.
The final kind of biking that I’m going to talk about is slope style. Slope style is very different from enduro and downhill. Slope style is a kind of biking where you only do tricks. The trails will normally just be a series of big jumps and drops where riders can get a lot of air time and do some very insane tricks. Instead of races there competitions where they are not timed, but they are given a score and rated by judges. The bikes are very small and are built so you can do bigger tricks, like backflips and tail whips, a whole lot easier.
There are still many kinds of biking that I didn’t cover, like cross country and free ride, and I’ll try and cover them as soon as I can. I love the fact that there are so many different kinds of riding so there really is something for everyone.
I was just wondering why do you enduro mountain bike instead of downhill or slope style?
Hey jackson, I was just wondering why do you enduro mountain bike instead of downhill or slope style? Also, I really enjoyed the photos connected to the certain style of riding, they really helped me visualize what it looks like/the bike looks like!