In the 1980s, mountain biking developed rapidly, and since the 1980s, mountain bikes, with their knobby tires, have become an indispensable and muddy part of the cycling landscape. If you're new to mountain biking, why ride a mountain bike when road bikes are thriving? This was a hint when mountain bikes first appeared in the UK. Here's a bike with an assertive, upright riding position, powerful brakes, sturdy wheels and tires, and gears that can climb walls.

Mountain bikes offer the freedom to explore trails and tracks, allowing you to escape civilization faster than walking, roll around town, and scoff at bumps, curbs, and other urban annoyances. Of course, they are still needed. The mountain bike scene may not be as vibrant as it was in the 90s, but the bikes are as versatile as ever—if not more so.

Why ride a mountain bike?

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Assuming you have a road bike and are happy riding it to work and on the road (although a mountain bike with smooth tires can make you a bomb-proof commuter if you have to contend with city streets), to truly get the most out of a mountain bike, you need to take it off the road. Here are four reasons why:

1. It's fun. Playing in the woods brings you back to childhood. Riding a bike takes you back to a time when cycling wasn't about training for mileage or goals, but about getting wet, sweaty, and covered in mud. You'll be scared silly a few times, you'll probably fall a few times, and you'll return with a huge grin on your face.

2. It's intense. Riding a mountain bike is never a flat, steady amble. Instead, you'll mix bursts of maximum effort to scale hills with sections where you can freewheel very easily when zooming downhill. When the two of us raced mountain bikes in our youth (he much more seriously than I), fitness expert Dave Smith recorded higher maximum heart rates in a race than he had ever been able to produce in the lab. These bursts of high intensity can be a very useful part of a fitness regimen.

3. It builds handling skills. Where did Peter Sagan get his incredible bike handling skills? Among other things, he combined road cycling and mountain biking as a teenager, winning the 2008 Junior Mountain Bike Cross-Country World Championships. While Sagan is exceptionally talented, even regular folk can benefit from learning to move around on a bike, navigate different surfaces, and keep the bike upright when it slides out from under you. Once you've mastered some fast off-road descents, you'll never be intimidated by a downhill again.

4. You can go to inaccessible places. If you love the countryside, there's no better way to get deeper into the hills than by bike. After exploring the forests of Wales and Scotland, the bridleways of the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District, or the ancient tracks of the Quantocks, head to a cafe and enjoy a generous slice of cake.

Main Parts of a Mountain Bike

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Mountain bikes are characterized by flat handlebars and knobby tires. The tires provide grip, while the bars offer control on rough terrain. So far, so obvious. But since mountain biking's birth in Northern California in the 1970s, that simple formula has led to a dozen variations to suit different uses and riding styles. But before that, let's look at other features of mountain bikes.

Material

More so than with road bikes, aluminum dominates the roost. Aluminum is not only tough and light, but it's also relatively easy to manufacture into the complex shapes needed for full-suspension bikes without blowing the budget into the stratosphere.

A decent aluminum hardtail—a mountain bike with a rigid frame and a suspension fork—will set you back around £500, but as with road bikes, that price quickly goes up to around £1,500. If you need suspension at both ends, expect to spend at least £1,000.

Carbon fiber is the second most common material. Carbon fiber hardtails start at around £1,500. Carbon full-suspension bikes will set you back from around £2,500.
There are still some steel and titanium mountain bikes available. Steel retains a certain retro charm, and the best steel tubing is built into lively, vibrant frames, valued by enthusiasts for their enthusiastic ride. Titanium is built into frames of similar quality, but is a bit lighter and has the added advantage of being corrosion-resistant.

Suspension

Suspension improves comfort and helps the wheels maintain contact with the ground. Most mountain bikes have a suspension fork, providing important front wheel traction and improved handling. Some also feature rear suspension for further cushioning and an improved ride.

The additional components required for suspension add weight and cost. The payoff is well worth it, but a bike with a good quality suspension fork costs more than one without, and a full-suspension bike even more so.

As a result, you should avoid cheap suspension bikes. The uncontrolled movement of a cheap fork can actually worsen a bike's handling, while cheap rear suspension adds little beyond weight and mechanical complexity.

Suspension travel significantly impacts a bike's performance. Cross-country race bikes tend to have around four inches of travel, trail and enduro bikes five to six inches, and downhill bikes up to eight inches.

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Brakes

Almost all modern mountain bikes have disc brakes. You'll find rim brakes on some cheaper bikes, but by the time you get to bikes over £400, disc brakes dominate. And rightly so. Discs are less bothered by mud and water and will continue to work even when the rim gets dirty.

Cheaper disc brakes are actuated by a cable from the brake lever, while more expensive disc brakes are actuated hydraulically. Hydraulics are more efficient and reliable and are worth the extra cost.

Wheels and Tires

Until a few years ago, all mountain bikes had 26-inch wheels, a size derived from the beach cruiser bikes that formed the basis of the original Marin County klunkers. In the early 2000s, bike builders began experimenting with larger sizes, based on the same 700C rim as road bikes, but shod with fatter tires. These "29-inch" wheels roll better over bumpy ground, making for a faster bike that is easier to ride, even for beginners.

However, it's hard to squeeze a lot of suspension travel between the large wheels and the frame, so an intermediate size (650B) has become common. A French wheel size, it was mostly unused until being revived for mid-sized mountain bike wheels. This size is sometimes called 27.5 inches, but for a two-inch tire, the diameter is closer to 27 inches. A useful bit of extra size and rolling ability.

Most bikes in the middle to high end have switched to one of the larger sizes, but 26-inch wheels are finding a new home with fantastic tires up to four inches wide on "fat bikes." More on those later.

Inspired by the fat bike trend, bikes with 650B and 29-inch wheels are also spawning fatter tires. Where tires used to be 2-2.3 inches wide, 29+ and 650B+ tires are now three inches wide.

Gears

Mountain bikes need a wide range of gears, from low gears for steep climbs to high ratios for swooping down fire roads. Traditionally, this was achieved with a triple chainset on many mountain bikes, combining three chainrings with seven, eight, nine, or even ten rear sprockets. However, in the quest for simplicity, some riders are opting for double or single chainring gear systems. These are paired with very wide-ranging sprocket sets, offering almost the same range of gears as a triple. For recreational riding, the highest gear is sacrificed, while racers will neglect the lowest ratios.

Pedals

For road cycling, there's Shimano vs. Campagnolo. For mountain biking, there are flat vs. clipless pedals. Shimano and others offer various designs of double-sided clipless pedals for mountain bikes, ranging from compact designs for racing and cross-country riding to pedals with a mechanism surrounded by a platform for added support with more flexible shoes.

However, many riders dislike the idea of being clipped into their bikes off-road. They want the reassurance of being able to get off the pedals quickly. Flat pedals provide a wide platform for your feet, and small steel studs bite into the rubber soles, doing a surprisingly good job of keeping the two attached.

In practice, both types work well, and the choice comes down to personal preference.

Types of Mountain Bikes

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Trail: The bike for what we used to call "going mountain biking." Typically with suspension at both ends, a more upright riding position, and more relaxed handling compared to race bikes, allowing riders to enjoy downhills while relaxing, but still making it fairly easy to get to the top. Wheels are sometimes 650B, sometimes 29 inches.

Cross-country Race: Long, low, and light, these are the greyhounds of the mountain bike world. For a long time, racers eschewed full suspension, but carbon fiber suspension bikes are so light that for many courses, the weight penalty is overcome by the downhill speed and handling advantages. Mostly with 29-inch wheels for speed.

Single-Speed: As the name suggests, single-speeds have only one gear. The idea is to strip the bike down to its bare essentials and focus purely on the ride, without thinking about being in the right or wrong gear. Single-speeds are often rigid, without even a suspension fork. In a sense, this is the mountain bike equivalent of a fixed-gear road bike, with a similar philosophy of mechanical simplicity.

Hardcore Hardtail: This broad category includes bikes with rigid frames, long-travel forks, and slack head angles, designed for steep, rough, and wet conditions.

Fat Bike: The last hurrah for 26-inch wheels, fat bikes have enormous tires, typically four inches wide but with five-inch tires available, run at low pressures for maximum traction regardless of the surface. Originally developed for riding in Alaskan snow, fat bikes have proliferated worldwide, often being simple bikes without suspension that can roll over almost anything.

Dirt Jump: Super-tough bikes with low-slung frames and sturdy, short-travel forks, built to withstand the rigors of aerial stunts by talented lunatics and the resulting landings.

Downhill: Bikes for pure gravity racing, with long-travel suspension at both ends to absorb almost anything as riders hurtle down steep hillsides against the clock. Downhill bikes also have very slack head angles for stable handling at speed.

Enduro: Bikes for Enduro competitions, a kind of mountain bike rally where riders are timed over technical sections and have a time limit to ride between them. Somewhere between a trail bike and a downhill bike, the bike is fast downhill but can still be ridden up to the start of the next technical section.

Where to Ride

Trail centers are the best place to start if you're new to off-road riding. Typically on Forestry Commission land, these areas have a network of marked trails and usually other facilities like parking, cafes, and bike washes. Trails are graded by difficulty, so you won't throw yourself down a triple-black run unintentionally.

In addition to dedicated trails, you have the right to ride your bike on bridleways and byways in England and Wales, even if they cross private land, and you can ride anywhere there's a trail in Scotland. However, you do not have the right to ride on public footpaths, so it's best to steer clear.