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Comment by SavantIdiot | Hacker News Reader

I think the claim about de-emphasizing climbing is BS. I just looked at Trek, Giant and Specialized websites and -all- of their mtn bikes ditched the front derailleur and use small-rings in the front. If climbing was passe, why the crazy low gearing?

Bar-ends were add-ons for at least a decade (late-80's early 90's) before they became standard. They provide better control and stability because the radius/ulna are not crossed like they are in the standard position. I think they disappeared because there was too much risk of hooking another rider (think packs of riders shoulder-to-shoulder grinding uphill), and not enough climbing or stability benefit.

Or perhaps aesthetics play more a part of mtnbike design than functionality?

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Single front chainrings came about from having wider and wider ranges on the rear and suspension designs being made possible by ditching the front derailleur. Yes, there's some top end lost but the range is more the same than different than doubles or even triples.

As someone who has been mountain biking for over 25 years I would say the statement that uphill has been de-emphasized over downhill is absolutely correct. Enduro racing (where the uphills aren't even timed) is a nice example of that.

> uphill has been de-emphasized over downhill

Why is that? I used to do mountain biking and I loved the challenge of climbing a large hill more than the adrenaline of descending it, which I found a bit too risky to my liking :D ...

Good question. I grew up mountain biking (did my first race 31 years ago) and it was an eclectic mix of people who seemed to enjoy back country single track the most, which included both the climb up and the descent. I'm still in that camp - I don't enjoy 'shaped' (jumps, drops, banked corners etc...) trails as much as more natural looking ones.

To the extent that video sets trends, sending it off wicked drops makes for better video than grinding uphill.

Me too. Probably more people who mountain biked in the 80s and 90s or XC types. I'm still doing it, mostly on a modern fixed fork mountain bike.

Check out the xbiking subreddit. Dedicated to "adventure biking" which is the entirety of off-road riding that exists apart from fast downhill technical single track.

I think it’s because bikes have got so much better that downhills are now fun, rather than just sketchy and dangerous. For me it’s just evened things out so I now love doing both.

Personally, I'd say this is a point of view, or a framing, that is relative. IMO, it's not that climbing specifically has been de-emphasized, it's just that the downhill experience has been emphasized more. Glass half full, etc...

Downhill issues have gotten a ton of attention, because there were problems to solve. Suspensions and geometry are making bikes a lot more stable feeling on descent. Try renting a 29er with a longer wheel base and a six inch suspension, and go down one of those previously risky feeling hills, you'll be surprised how much less risky it seems now.

Uphill issues have gotten relatively less attention, because, perhaps, a climb is a climb. There's little that can be done to improve climbs. Except suspensions are pretty good at firming up on the fly. And dropper post seats are amazing at being able to switch from descent to climb instantly.

In other words, climbing on today's mountain bikes is better - slightly better - than it used to be. Going downhill today is much better than before.

I find this to be the case of cycling in general. I love to climb, way more than descending. I think it's because descending is easier, and what's easier sells more bikes.

In all fairness, the mountain bike was invented to go downhill on Mount Tamalpais in California.

Also, in my opinion, the tailgate pad has made it practical to run [downhill] shuttles using pickups. Prior to that, you had to get a roof rack + 4 trays = $600+. A Dakine pad is $125. Without the shuttle, you have to climb.

The movie Klunkerz is free on Amazon Prime right now and has a lot of interviews with the people who were there back then. It's worth a watch if you like bikes.

I think it's a bit more complicated too: they liked to go downhill, but they needed to get back up, and wanted to not have to maintain the bike after one trip down (repack), so bikes that could climb were desirable.

> Enduro racing (where the uphills aren't even timed) is a nice example of that.

Ah! Excellent example.

Question about single front chainrings... doesn't that decrease the clearance under the rear derailleur? I just looked at some of those new models and the derailleur droops scary low. I can see it getting banged up on rocks/rut walls a lot.

I think gp got it the wrong way round. Single front rings came in because front mechs were always a reliability weak spot as unlike the rear they must shift chain under tension. Also if you ditch them you can run narrow wide chain rings which hold the chain better on rough ground, and you get more clearance under the bottom bracket.

After we realized we didn't need 30 gears, new suspension designs also became possible.

You're right that rear mechs frequently die though.

It does, but at the same time as chainrings dropped from 3 to 2 to 1, the wheels grew from 26 to 27.5 to 29 inches (for the most sold bikes), so I imagine in the end perhaps the difference is not so big?

The rear derailleur is protected by the presence of the wheel. The bigger danger is getting the front gear caught on things and tipping over on logs or sharp drops. Moving to a smaller front gear gives more clearance for the more likely snags

This is an interesting question. I just went out to look at two bikes I've got, both Santa Cruz, one of them a 26" Nomad from ten years ago, and the other a new Hightower 29er.

I'm pretty sure the derailleur clearance is actually lower on the old 26" bike! The geometry of the derailleur has changed, and when it's on the biggest rear sprocket, the old Nomad derailleur's center of mass is below, lower than the large sprocket. On the new 29er, the derailleur is mostly above the bottom of the largest sprocket. It seems like derailleurs have improved in order to allow the larger sprockets that single front chainrings call for.

The idler (lower pulley) on the 29" is almost certainly further from the axle than on the 26", however the larger wheel means that clearance from the ground is about identical.

I don't think I've ever hit my derailleur on either bike for lack of clearance -- even though I have caught my pedal on a rock or branch multiple times. I have hit the derailleur during a crash, but mainly because the bike was flying around and smacking into things. I'm guessing because the derailleur is behind and inside the path of a pedaling foot, it's mostly protected.

Aside from the front chainring being more exposed than the rear derailleur, the rear derailleur also tucks away quite dramatically when you upshift. Nobody is in the biggest gear on the way down.

> Or perhaps aesthetics play more a part of mtnbike design than functionality?

Nailed it. This is true for almost all bicycle endeavors save actual professional racing. Even then, a pro rider that isn't Egan, Sagan, or Froome is going to ride what the factory says to ride. If they (Specialized, Cannondale, Canyon, Etc.) need to pimp a new product, those dudes will pimp the product. Money talks.

The few years when everyone was using curved and tapered main tubes was like shag rugs and paneling, IMHO.

I miss the big fat cannodale brazes, or the Tom Richie flourishes on the headtube and dropouts. But I don't miss needing massive rework to replace a rear derailleur dropout after every crash. :|

Disc brakes are exactly this. For racing they are stupid because you don’t need better brakes and spare wheels no longer fit. Only ineos seems to have held out because for stage racing and gt the costs are so much higher. Quickstep used discs first because in one day racing a puncture at the wrong time always meant you lost, so discs didn’t make a material difference.

Disc brakes have their use on road bikes in bad weather conditions. Descending at 90km/h on wet roads with rim brakes is not fun, especially on full carbon rims. I wish I had them in my race days.

Another use: on my oldests bmx race bike, he has a disc brake setup. It is like 300% easier to work on. Pull the axle, and the wheel falls out. No futzing with the caliper to get the wheel off the frame, not concerns about getting the wheel on the exact correct spot.

Isn't adjusting disc brakes a lot easier too? Adjusting rim brakes seems like a never-ending exercise, and the wheel needs to be perfectly true or it will rub. And changing the brake pads with that nut and stack of weird washers is tedious and error-prone. And the squeaks and squeals—I've tried so hard to get rid of them but they always come back.

I'm considering upgrading my hybrid road bike to one with disc brakes just so I never have to deal with rim brakes again. (I currently have a 2015 Trek FX which I otherwise like a lot.)

I grew up riding bicycles of various types with rim brakes. Same as you, always squealing!

In my 20's I learnt to ride motorbikes with associated disc brakes.

Then later a mountain bike with rim brakes. Nope, no way, never going there again.

Any bicycle I or my family has from now on is disc brakes. They are it, until I die or we find something better.

Better capability, easier servicing, more robust in terms of sidestepping rim warp. Better for the rider, better for the mechanic.

What I heard is the biggest issue ties in with mentioned (perhaps inadvertently): carbon rims. Asking them to be the braking device (with associated heat-sink requirements) can cause them to catastrophically delaminate. They can’t safely perform that double-duty like aluminium rims can.

(Edit: clarity)

This is easy to objectively disprove. Disc brakes offer better braking power, don't wear as quickly, and don't fade on long hills. They also keep the braking and structural parts of the wheel independent, so a dented rim doesn't prevent the brakes from working, and wear from braking doesn't structurally compromise the wheel.

There is a lot of fud about discs in the road-biking circles, but it doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

If you have rim brakes, and you like them, then great! Don't malign them because you dislike change though.

I wasn't saying anything about discs for general use. Specifically for racing, though, you are wrong: many pros are on the record as saying the braking makes little to no difference in a race and the cost of time lost when you can't get a wheel change is huge. It's already happened in multiple races.

> Disc brakes offer better braking power, don't wear as quickly, and don't fade on long hills

These things are true, but in my experience the limiting factor is almost always grip. I've never been unable to lock up both wheels on road tyres (this is definitely not true off road where the advantage is obvious). This is even more the case in the wet, where disc brakes are touted as even more of an advantage. I do think people often use the straw man of crap cantis or centrpulls on steel rims. On maintenance I think it's less clear cut — if you don't maintain discs regularly they can get sticky and there is _nothing_ more annoying than disc rub, and this is worse on the road than off-road where a bit of grime in discs is to be expected and tolerated (and no worse than mud fouling rim brakes).

> Don't malign them because you dislike change though.

You've jumped straight to accusing me of being a luddite. I actually don't like the _look_ of discs on road bikes but will get them on my next bike for the increased tyre clearance. But I do have them on all my mountain bikes...

I'm not trying to start a flame-war, or accuse you of being a luddite. I was just saying that you were: maligning disc brakes, and didn't like change.

The post you replied to was about change for change's (and profit's) sake, to which you responded that that was the case for disc brakes, along with calling them stupid for racing.

Again, if you prefer them, aesthetically or otherwise, that's fine. They're not stupid though, or are they a money grab.

This is true for pretty much all sports products. There might be a big tech leap that all manufacturers copy, then stagnation for years masked as incremental improvements that add up to some big change when they really don't.

Golf clubs are notorious for actually moving irons down the numbers to fool you into thinking brand new clubs are so much better. You go to a shop and hit your 6 iron on the golf simulator, then you hit a brand new 6 iron and see you hit it further, then you buy the new club thinking all your shots will go farther thanks to modern technology. What you don't realize is that what is called a 6 iron in your new set actually has the exact same specs as your old 4 iron, and might not really go any farther at all when you compare it to your old 4 iron.

It's the age old trap of selling beginners gear instead of practice (which makes manufacturers nothing).

Hiking products have this problem. They look good in the shop and tick boxes. But a lot of the features are just bad ideas. Weirdly shaped backpacks with small access points that are difficult to get things out of. Light weight zippers that fail easily. "Technical" fabrics that lack permanent water proofing. Expensive boots which will just increase fatigue for most people. With looped lace holes that just degrade.

On modern mountain bikes you want to be seated for climbs, thats why their geometry is so different from a bike made 10-15 years ago.

Also, first time you catch a bar end on a branch and get sent over the handle bars you will ditch them. (at least I did)

I believe you, but how does the geometry help on climbs, I can’t quite picture it?

In my experience you actually don’t need additional traction on the front tire during ascents. You want more traction on the back tire, so leaning forward is more likely to cause slipping. Wider bars makes balancing easier and frames designed to keep the back wheel on the ground (by distributing more weight to the back tire) make it easier to climb.

Back in the days of 26" hard-tails you definitely needed weight over the front wheel to keep it on the ground - there was a fine balancing act of keeping enough weight over the front to not lose control while keeping that back wheel from spinning out. Modern bike geometry is so so much better! (having tires 2.3+ inches wide helps with traction too!).

Yup, I needed to use a travel-adjust fork on my 26" full-suspension to get up steep inclines without looping. The 29er with today's geometry makes looping on a steep section so much less likely.

Pull on the bars in the direction of the rear tire/ground contact patch. This leads to more rear traction and makes a big difference in sketchy steep climbs.

Seated climbs are faster with a lower heartrate.

https://youtu.be/4zvP4DQgwQE?t=568

(1) bars are significantly wider. Like 30+ cms in some cases. This focuses on skeletal alignment vs. muscular; think wide push-up position vs. narrow. Putting bar ends on these bars would make for an odd posture.

(2) bikes are way longer than they used to be with much slacker head tube angles. this allows you to keep more traction on the uphills in a seated position; standing (which was always less efficient) is not required as much.

It does make the steering uphill a bit wobbly though.

Changing the balance point of the bike.

Older geometry frames tended to pop the front wheel, if the rider remained seated and wasn't using bar ends (or just leaning really far forward).

Modern frames are longer overall, with wider bars, so the balance point feels longer and it's easier to remain seated without lifting the front wheel.

Seated climbing is better when possible - the rear suspension can help provide traction, rider just needs to provide the engine.

There's also a significant trend in frame design towards steeper seattube angles. This shifts the center of mass forward, especially when pointed uphill which helps keep the front wheel from wandering.

Geometry matters. My 2020 35lb enduro bike with 170/160mm travel climbs at least as well than my 2002 28lb XC bike with 125/115mm travel. That's with a frontend that is almost 5 degrees slacker and probably 100mm longer reach. And flat pedals.

Been riding since 1988...bikes are absolutely better now than they've ever been.

Another thing to note is that with the introduction of the dropper post you can have geometry that is both friendly to climbing (rider seated directly above the chain-ring with full leg extension) and going downhill (rider out of seat and weight back above the rear wheel).

There is an important change in the angle in your hip, so leg vs torso. Modern MTB geometry puts you in a more upright position, and that opens the hip angle. This means for climbing you use more of your glutes and less your quadriceps. This is great, because glutes are the ultimate athletic muscle.

Of course, you have to get used to this position, which is markedly different to the road bike / track bike leaning ahead and closing your hip position. It also gives you great front-back balance and easier control on your bike. Easier to jump (or just shift weight), and you have the wide bars for greater leverage.

Seriously, if someone has not tried a MTB with a modern geometry, they definitely should, they will be blown away by how much better it is than the old ages. Add to this the dropper seatpost, and you have a winner!

Another reason you want to be seated on climbs is fewer issues from pogoing on the rear suspension. When everything was a hardtail, a quick uphill sprint out of the saddle made more sense.

That's not another reason, it's the same reason more detailed. Bar-ends had their heyday on top of rigid forks.

I'm a road biker and not a mountain biker but I do have bar ends on my urban bikes and bar ends are great for control and leverage, at least for me. But I don't get that. How is it any more likely to catch a bar end on a branch than it would be for wider, riser bars?

The issue isn't whether it'll hit a branch, it's whether it will let go once it happens. Get a branch inside your bar ends, and you're going down no matter what. Smack it with your regular bars, and you have a decent chance of recovering.

And the recovery is basically to turn your bars in the direction that helps the branch slide off the end, which would be steering toward the brush except that a quick torque at speed will counter-steer, taking you away from the brush.

No, at a minimum the bar has to be moved farther than the bar end length to get the branch loose. That leads to a much larger deviation in the wheel. Now add in that you are moving forward while this is happening. It all combines to make it much, much harder to come off the branch.

If you catch a branch with a bar end while moving you are going to eat some dirt.

I should've made it more explicit, but I was expanding on the case of not having bar ends.

Its funny you say that because the seated/not-seated climb was actually a debate in my cycling club long ago. The agreement was: road = seated, offroad = not seated. Heh, back then (1987?) I rode a cannondale with a 26" front and 24" rear wheel with a gear ratio so low that my cadence had to skyrocket or i'd fall over from lack of momentum, but I sure could climb!

With no rear suspension and tall gearing, it makes sense to stand. But when you have suspension in the back & a big rear sprocket, you get more grip & have more endurance seated.

The size of a chain ring doesn't matter, it's the gear ratio, which are larger than ever, making climbing significantly easier. Front Deraillers were ditched because they're (a) now rednundant to get huge ranges and (b) technically inferior (weight, tuning, etc).

Mountain bikers raarely (never?) group together in packs on climbs. Even in an XC race you might get one or two riders but even this is odd on a technical climb.

I think it's redundant with wider, riser bars, you can't cover the brakes which you should be at almost all times, and they look terrible.

The new SRAM Eagle drivetrains have insane gear ratios that we couldn’t have dreamed about even 10 years ago.

My new Mountain bike has a 5.4:1 gear ratio at its highest setting. Back when riser bars were popular we were happy to have gear ratios of 2:1.

> too much risk of hooking another rider

I don't think so. Freak accidents aside, I think it would have been well documented if that were the case.

Think about it, in any scenario where someone is being hit forcefully by a bar-end there's also another rider and a bike behind that bar-end. At speed, a bruise from bar-end is the least of their problems.

> Or perhaps aesthetics play more a part of mtnbike design than functionality?

Oh, hell yes.

There was a time from the mid-90's up through a some years ago when almost every mass-market bike had to have "suspension". What this meant in practice was a crappy useless fork suspension that did nothing but add weight and subtract from the overall quality of the bike. Ironically the category of "mountain bike" had the perception of toughness when it was anything but tough especially for street riding.

In the last decade or so, it seems more people are using bikes for real practical uses. They realize they don't want a 45lb "mountain bike" with flimsy doodads like fork suspension and cheap grip shifters. It's now possible to get a simple street bike in the mass-market with not too many frills that is good quality and will last longer and have easier maintenance than a "mountain bike".

> Think about it, in any scenario where someone is being hit forcefully by bar-end there's also another rider and a bike behind that bar-end. At speed, a bruise from bar-end is the least of their problems.

I think GP's point about hooking another rider might be about the bar end acting as a hook and getting caught in something, as opposed to just hitting.

So yeah, of course behind the bar end there's the rest of the bike and the rider, but what could be just two riders "touching" (and, granted, possibly falling), can turn into a worse situation if the bars of one bike catch something on the other bike (say a backpack strap) causing the first bike to steer abruptly and bringing both bikes down together.

Not sure how often this happens, but I wouldn't be surprised of this possibly happening when I see the way people ride bikes around my city, bunching up one against the other, turning unpredictably, etc.

Road bike handlebars have the same problems due to the brake hoods. That got a little safer when cables started routing under the handlebar tape instead of sticking up and slightly out.

The consequences of entangling might be a little higher on a mountain bike, but that depends on the situation. Mountain bikers aren't being crowded by semi trailers as often as road bikes, but road bikes aren't flying off embankments into trees very often.

I see that there are more than a couple of models of MTB bar-ends that look like brake hoods. That's probably pretty close to the best compromise you can do, without staging a major educational campaign about how human grip strength works (middle, ring and thumb do nearly all of the work)

Me and the kids race BMX bikes, and you’re actually far more likely to take a bar end to your own self, rather than another rider. You typically bang elbows more than you’re hitting a bar on a competitor.

I’ve actually seen a kid get impaled in the chest from his own bar end.

And the comment about aesthetics is 100% spot on with a majority of the bike crowd.

Got a Trek Xcaliber 8 this year and the 1x drivetrain turned out to be like godsend. I can climb much better, not much hassle while cleaning/mantaining the bike and it's a little less weight from it.

If any, 1x drivetrains would de-emphasize going on flat terrain - sometimes you feel like that 30x11 ratio falls too short for a flat road.

> too much risk of hooking another rider

As soon as you look at them, the potential for hooking should be obvious. In very average use you won't see many incidents because mountain bikes are often like SUVs and don't see much dirt. As soon as you push them closer to the extremes of close riders, or terrain, then they are an immediate liability.

I would posit that the (professional) riders driving the fashion are also some of those most likely to experience the issues. They'd still have a desire for ergonomics which drives whatever alternative was suggested.

A couple of things I can think of: bars are a lot wider than they used to be which make it impractical add bar ends to, and bar ends increase the likelihood of hooking vegetation on a descent.

> I think the claim about de-emphasizing climbing is BS.

I agree. Downhill is more popular than it was previously, but it hasn’t displaced regular biking. People doing shuttle runs and lift-served are a tiny minority.

Modern bikes climb better than ever. Bar ends were more of a holdover from road biking that quickly went away when everyone realized how undesirable they were on the mountain.

I’m not sure the low slack bikes in vogue now really do climb better tho. Head tube angle is a direct trade off between performance up and down hill.

Seat tube too. I have a fixed fork mountain bike with 67/74.5° head tube vs seat tube angles and a gravel bike with the classic 71/73° or what used to be classic on XC bikes. The gravel bike climbs really well with a higher gear but I wouldn't tank over bumpy terrain with it, the mountain bike is really stable on descents and on flats, climbs okay. Of course a MTB with 63/78° like the new Marin El Roy probably doesn't climb that well?

You should try some of the newer bike geometries. It's amazing what they can get away with.

I'd take a modern slack head tube geometry over an older bike for climbing any day. I've owned plenty of bikes through the years and I'm not going back.

> I think the claim about de-emphasizing climbing is BS.

Depends on what you use. Cross Country have much less compromise than enduros. On these, descent is the priority though, that's why you get slacker and slacker frames every year, heavy suspension systems and large tires that weigh the same as a dead elephant. The best sign that they're getting closer is that I'm feeling fine with going to the bike park in Whistler with my enduro, which I'd never have tried 10y ago.

Of course going up is always important and all these are not an entire sacrifice, powertrains are much better than they used to, locking sus actually works, and don't get me started with droppers!

But try to go up on a light hardtail retrobike sometimes, and then down. These were optimized for ups

Are powertrains really much better? I have retro shimsno lx on one bike and it’s really not much different to current slx in terms of shifting perf. Ratios not so good admittedly and triples look fugly!

Powertrains are much, much better.

- You can shift under load (usually)

- Shifts are a little faster

- Clutches give less chainslap

- Narrow-wide rings hold the chain freakishly well

Today, maybe, but in the late 90’s when bar ends were popular there was a huge shit from cross country to downhill. Thats when we say full suspension get popular, and ski hill lift assisted runs getting more common.

Now i see more people shifting back to cross country.

At least where I live.

> too much risk of hooking another rider

If this really was the case they should have made a backwards-steering bike like this instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx1V5KT1Lwo

With bikes with straight handlebars, if you graze a fence with the handlebar, the bike will steer INTO the fence, whereas if you have backwards handlebars the bike will auto-steer away from the fence or whatever you bump into.

A regular bike auto-steers away. The wheel pulls toward the obstacle, which counter-steers so that you will fall/turn away from the obstacle.

Reverse steering would just trip you into the obstacle.

A big factor is the geometry of modern bikes tend to have a steeper seat tube angle and longer top tube (longer reach). This allows the rider to climb comfortably and more efficiently in a seated position. I think bar ends are more helpful when standing on your pedals while climbing.

The new "crazy-low gearing" isn't crazy at all - new hub designs allow the smallest gear on the cassette to be 10 tooth instead of 11, so a correspondingly smaller front chainring can be used to get the same gear ratios as before.

I'm a casual rider of a mountain bike, almost always on streets. So I'm no expert. But this guy's reasoning doesn't make sense. I looked up what a "drop bar" is, and it goes DOWN; this lowers your posture profoundly and is NOT a substitute for an extension that goes UP from your handlebars.

Then the idea of only going downhill. Is this really a thing? That seems lame.

I get approving comments on my early-'90s Trek 920 every time I take it out. I was curious as to why, and a guy at a bike shop said that nobody makes an all-purpose bike like that anymore. To me the over-specialization is antithetical to the go-anywhere promise of a mountain bike.

Drop bars also have brake lever hoods that function sort of like bar ends. Most my road bike riding is done from the hoods. Both give you a neutral hand position.

Surly still makes a lot of all purpose bikes. The big brands also have a model or two, Trek has the 520 and the current 920 but they're drop bar models, also Giant with their Tough Road line. But they're not really that marketed since then one wouldn't need multiple bikes.

There are some great tyres out there now too. Pretty slick in the middle and knobbly on the sides, so both road and trail work.

I am mystified by standard gearing on newer bikes though. It may be due to my height or a dumb riding style, but I basically only use the top 4-5 gears.

They do make all purpose bikes, they're just called 'hybrids' now.

Giant Tough Road feels a lot like a modern take on a 90s mountain bike.

>Then the idea of only going downhill. Is this really a thing? That seems lame.

Going downhill is a lot (A LOT) of fun. Way more fun that going uphill (for most I would say). So many people just want to skip the uphill part and only go downhill.

I have an eMTB so going uphill for me is fun. But there's people who would never drive an eMTB so they use bike lifts ;)

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