We come here today to praise the oft-forgotten, but never completely gone, hardtail mountain bike. Yes, even in a world of full-suspension, long travel, lift assisted mountain bikes, the hardtail is not only still here, it’s as relevant as ever.
I started this site to profess and share my love of hardtails. While there have been a couple of double-boingers that have caught my eye and have willingly slung my leg over, my love and my daily ride is a hardtail. I am figuratively pedaling my bike to the top of the mountain to proclaim all that is good about hardtails, why a hardtail should be your first (or second, or third) mountain bike, why riding a hardtail will make you faster on any bike, and more.
Let’s start with a treatise on full suspension bikes. As I mentioned above, I don’t hate them. The evolution of MTB technology and the ride quality of full-suspension bikes is like night and day from when they first appeared on the scene. They’ve opened up new trails and new styles of riding that the industry would like you to think are only possible with 5 to 6 inches of front and rear travel.
Much like the explosion of carbon fiber in the road bike scene in the aughts, if you open any mountain bike magazine nowadays, you would not be remiss to think that they’ve stopped making hardtails altogether.
Watch a mountain biking video on YouTube and it’s all downhill, slopestyle and enduro on long travel rigs followed by chest bumps and wizard staffs – the bro-ification of cycling.
The videos are inspiring to me. Yes, I’ve ridden bike parks in Colorado on downhill bikes – but I never would have been able to ride those trails if I didn’t have a solid grounding in bike handling from riding hardtails. However, when my wife – and I’m sure a lot of others outside the sport – see those videos, their first thought is “I could never do that!”. They would probably be right, but that’s not all that mountain biking is all about.
In an era when outdoor enthusiasts of all persuasions are seeing their access to the backcountry reduced, do we really need to persuade people from enjoying the outdoors? Not all skiing is hucking off the top of a mountain being trailed by an avalanche. Not all hikes are a thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. Some rivers actually DON’T have huge rapids and massive waterfalls. Not all rock faces have incredible overhangs.
For the large majority of us, mountain biking is not an extreme sport!
Flow trails get a lot of backlash from the “bro” crowd, but for those of us that want a challenging climb with a quick fun descent on the backside, they are one of the best things out there. Yes, I said it. I like climbing. I don’t feel the need to have my bike helicoptered to the top of a mountain just so I can ride down it.
All that said, let’s break it down:
- Dollar for dollar, you get more when you buy a hardtail. Suspension linkages (and the licensing thereof), shocks, associated tubing, bushings and the like just cost more money. When products managers have to buy all of that, they have to compromise elsewhere. You get cut-rate wheels, lower end components and EOM cockpit pieces. Names may not matter to you, but frequent and costly component updates might. Save money on the front end and spend your hard earned cash later on sweet upgrades like lighter wheels.
- Hardtails are lighter. Linkages, shocks and tubes add weight that you have to carry up the trail. While, yes, the best place to start reducing weight is in your own mid-section, lighter components are nice too.
- You’ll be a better rider. Believe it or not, kids, mountain bikes used to have no suspension AT ALL. When you ride a hardtail, you learn to move your body around to weight and unweight the bike and learn how to handle obstacles. If at some point you start riding full suspension, you’ll be faster and a better bike handler.
- Your energy goes up the hill, not into a shock. Yes, the full suspension bikes of 2016 are vastly more efficient than their predecessors, and a properly tuned DS bike can climb like it has an ‘un-natural connection to the trail‘, but going uphill on your more basic (or downhill-specific) models feels like trying to climb on a pogo stick. Not anyone’s idea of fun. Even a garden variety hardtail can climb like an excited mountain goat, and if you don’t like to climb, it’ll get you to the downhill section of the trail faster.
- Singletrack was designed for hardtails. Or hardtails were designed for singletrack. Either way, most of us aren’t doing black diamond bike park trails or wide open fire roads. I can best equate riding a hardtail on singletrack to making tight, twisty turns on skis. There’s little that is more fun.
- Hardtails distill the fun of mountain biking to its core. If hardtails are good, single-speed hardtails are great. If anything returns mountain biking to its cruiser and BMX roots, it’s a single-speed.
So, to conclude, this site will be dedicated to celebrating all things hardtail – bikes, trails, riders, races and so on. Contributions, ideas and comments are welcome.