When I was last into ‘mountain biking’ it was the early 90’s. I had a ’92 Stumpjumper, bikes were all about being long and racey, flat long stems, narrow bars etc.
Been away since then and getting back into it lately it seems to be the opposite, bike I’ve tried seem quite ‘upright’, bars are wide and well, they seem comfortable!
What happened while I was away? Is it just fashion or has design progressed I don’t have to suffer on an uncomfortable bike?! Or are racey bikes stil stretched, heads down arse up affairs?

Race bike;

Trail bike;

The genres of riding have developed. Back in the day (Bula hats for slalom gates, isn’t it? Wasn’t it?) XC racing was where it was at. We’ve diversified a little, but it’s still messing about on bikes!

(Bula hats for slalom gates, isn’t it? Wasn’t it?)

😆

Brilliant!… 8) (neat explanation too)

Is it just fashion or has design progressed

Design has progressed. Diversified and progressed. It’s been almost twenty years after all.

For me one of the best things in recent years has been slacker head angles. Even in 2002 a 4″ xc trail bike like a stumpjumper had 70-71 degrees that was way to nervy on steep stuff.

And one of the worst things has been hydroformed tubes. Looks cack IMO.

tangent, you had to be there, maaaaan! 😉

I was out from 98 till 05, so 6-7 years. The basics in that time most noticably top tubes got lower, disc brakes, suspension much better, some home mechanics are much easier (threadless headsets, Hollowtech BBs etc), clipless (clip in pedals) – not them old stirrup type things, gear shifters are much easier on the thumbs. up until a few years ago everything was reasonably straightforward re all the standards, anyone coming back into it would have a reasonable chance of slotting back in with just a few things to catch up on. Just recently in the last 12-24 months it seems to have gone a bit silly with multiple new wheel, headtube and god knows what else standards, it’s gone a bit crazy.

EDIT. Oh yeah, and going MTBing to the Alps isn’t just going on holiday with your bikes and riding up some bigger mountains anymore. You now buy a complete new bike (only to be ridden for one week), catch chairlifts up and ride down, having spent weeks beforehand pontificating on forums as to how hardcore you new alps bike needs to be.

it’s got better in almost every aspect.

My first time offroad was in 1997, I was riding a five year old borrowed Kona Fire Mountain and my two riding buddies were on a ‘dale (I think) and a Proflex respectively.

The Proflex was getting lots of admiring glances, being state of the art with full suss, elastomer springs and V brakes.

Fast forward seven years to 2004 and my then brand new Spesh Enduro had air sprung suspension at both ends, four pot Hope Mono hydraulics, 27 gears and Octalink cranks. All for about a grand cheaper than the Proflex…

Seven years on and most of the innovations in my Enduro are fundamentally unchanged today. The only two technical advances that my 2009 Wolf Ridge can boast about over the Enduro are adjustable compression damping at both ends and bolt through axles.

EDIT. Oh yeah, and going MTBing to the Alps isn’t just going on holiday with your bikes and riding up some bigger mountains anymore. You now buy a complete new bike (only to be ridden for one week), catch chairlifts up and ride down, having spent weeks beforehand pontificating on forums as to how hardcore you new alps bike needs to be.

Only if your name is Neville, your a 39 year IT consultant, and you usually ride a rigid 29er single speed round some fire roads.

tangent, you had to be there

Believe me, Tangent is still there. 😀

PJM1974, that would be my experience aswell, coming back into it in 2004, there was a massive leap forward from 1998. Everything since then has been tweeking, possibly with the exception of platform damping in rear shocks which has transformed suspension bikes I think.

jimjam, I was being a bit cheeky for the OP, but 15 years ago in the alps, you rarely saw mountain bikers and those of us who did it, minced around in the lower hills on 90’s XC bikes (if you remember what they were like). There are obvious reasons for why it was like this at the time. In June 1997 I was in a chairlift in Chamonix with a Japanese lad (we were going climbing), he had a bike with disc brakes, we looked at it in awe, but had no idea what was to come. Riding bikes in the alps using chairlifts is a very new thing.

Refinement.

… But basically we’re still just riding along.

I had to laugh when I started riding again… I got out of riding some time in the 90s, bored of it… Decided to start again, I think it was in 2008 and got a cheap used Carrera. Lots of people told me it was crap, the brakes were cheap, it was heavy, the wheels were rubbish, the forks were basic… But if you could have taken it back to when I got my previous bike, it’d have been one of the best bikes in the world Progress

Think it’s fair to say the riding’s changed around the bikes, or maybe the other way round, modern trail bikes are incredibly capable, so good most riders just don’t grasp how good they are. To me, it feels like in ye olden days, people made a bike and you tried to make it fit your riding, and to some extent it dictated it. These days, you can easily get a bike that’ll take on almost everything you’ll ever want to do, and that’ll enable you to do things that would have been unthinkable for most folks not so long ago. And that’s ace

Well said Northwind