Do Electric Mountain Bikes Belong on Trails?

Once upon a time, mountain bikers were the drunk uncle at the outdoor buffet: socially awkward, irreverent, “too noisy, too fast” outcasts on the dusty lam. Hikers called them out for harshing the backcountry mellow. Conservationists pegged bikes as trail wreckers.

Decades later, the two-wheeling punks have grown up — wiser, savvier and more organized. The International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA) has emptied countless tubs of elbow grease advocating for social and physical space on the trails to ensure we have places to ride.

But here we are again — same story, new bikes — this time weighing the validity of electric mountain bikes on these very same trail systems. Perhaps the most hesitant to accept this new wrinkle? Traditional, analog mountain bikers.

What Is an E-Mountain Bike?

For the uninitiated, eMTBs are pretty much what you’d think. Mountain bikes pimped with a (cleverly concealed) battery pack and motor, adding weight while still making daunting climbs a relative breeze. In America, there are three classifications of e-bikes.

Class 1: Pedal-assist motor that boosts your pedal speed, but caps at 20 mph.
Class 2: Throttle-assist that can accelerate the bike up to 20 mph without pedaling.
Class 3: Pedal-assist bike that caps your throttle speed at 28 mph.

Note: A fourth class exists, but any e-bike capable of speeds above 28 mph pushing out over 750 watts of power is technically considered a moped/motorcycle.

The parsing of power aside, e-MTBs sit squarely in the motorized space — a space mountain bikers lobbied hard to distance themselves from when they successfully splintered mechanized from motorized transportation on managed land.

Fighting for Real Estate

It all harkens back to legislation passed in 1964.

The original draft of the Wilderness Act was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to preserve wild land as untrammeled by man and “motorized transport.” Mind you, this was 10 years before the Marin County crew squeezed ballooning tires under their klunkers — fat tires were nowhere near the map. But once they were, riders were pedaling off into miles of wild terrain, out onto wilderness trails, and into confrontations with, well, everyone else.

Congress banned bikes in wilderness areas in 1977. But 1984 marked the boiling point on managed land when the travel classification was revisited and “motorized” was rolled back to include all “mechanized” transportation. For the first time, mountain bikes were legally tagged as outliers.

The change in stature drew a line in the dirt, and local land managers followed suit, lumping bikes with motorized vehicles on non-wilderness trails. It took heaps of advocacy and stacks of environmental studies, but IMBA steadily wrestled mountain bikes back onto many of our local trails.

Cannondale

Lowering a Barrier to Entry

But now comes along a motor. Neither a bike nor a motorcycle. For some, the two-wheeled electric-assist mountain bikes fall in that head-scratching space reserved for the duck-billed platypus. Naysayers denounce the Johnny-come-lately, waxing on about cheating, Strava doping, trail destruction and reckless riding. If these gripes resonate, you’re not the target audience.

“You’ve gotta remember how happy you were when you were introduced to mountain biking for the first time,” says Sam Benedict, global category leader at Specialized. “But let’s not be ‘that sport.’ Getting people out on the trails is a good thing!”

The industry sees e-MTBs as a leveler, enabling people of disparate ages and abilities to ride together. The assist lures otherwise wary riders into a sport perceived as “too hard.” The biggest proponents of e-MTBs? Resorts. A pedal full of watts lets flatlanders level up quickly at altitude. No surprise — the e-MTB offers the potential for more summer visitors and an increased bottom line during the skiing off-season.

And e-bikes are the fastest growing sector in the bike market — an industry that was valued at over $800 million in 2017, and has a predicted 6% growth each year through at least 2025. With brands big and small getting in the game, a flood of e-bikes has hit the market, creating a whole new class of mountain bikers. You might think all these new riders would equate to more power through voices in trail advocacy and be welcomed with open arms by IMBA, which has labored to educate the public about mountain bikes and preserve trail space. The reality has been a more cautious, steadily evolving approach.

“As the new fastest user group on non-motorized trails, the addition of e-MTBs to an already crowded, shared-use trail landscape has caused the user conflicts we could all predict. While we all know conflicts stem from a few bad actors, these challenges have been the spark for a renewed approach to trail etiquette. Not just for e-MTBs, but for all trail users,” IMBA executive director David Wiens wrote in an op/ed for Bicycle Retailer last spring. “IMBA emphasizes responsible Class 1 e-MTB riding through our work with Trails are Common Ground, a movement we helped catalyze to improve the experience of all trail users. We united expertise from hiking, trail running, equestrian use, mountain biking, adaptive riding, and motorized use to form the Trails are Common Ground coalition.”

This statement represents a big step forward from a few years ago, when Wiens stated: “First and foremost, we advocate for access for traditional, non-motorized mountain bikes. IMBA does not advocate for access for e-MTBs.” And Trails are Common Ground is worth checking out, as it features a number of guides related covering the different classes of e-bikes and where you can ride them.

Where does the government stand? National parks, BLM and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service generally permit e-bikes to go where other MTBs go, unless local administrators step in and issue additional specific advisories. The U.S. Forest Service rolled out new guidelines in 2022, allowing all e-bikes on motorized roads and trails, opening up 38% of all trails with more to come, potentially. But it’s often up to local jurisdictions. Pedaling in Delaware, an e-MTB is considered a bike. In Alabama? It’s a motorized bike. To say the least, riding an e-bike is … messy.

Canyon

Rolling into the Future

So what’s it going to take to enter the circle of trust? For Larry Pizzi, general manager at Alta Cycling Group and chairman of the e-bike subcommittee at People for Bikes, an industry coalition of bicycle suppliers and retailers, it’s going to take small wins. “It starts with classification, otherwise people will default to the worse case,” Pizzi says. The acceptance of distinct classes (armed with data) helped IMBA have a change of heart, and accept Class 1 e-MTBs on trails.

“Next, we need to demystify the e-bike and get demos in the hands of the land managers,” says Pizzi. “Armed with the right information, they’ll make informed decisions.” Most importantly, land managers need to see for themselves the environmental and social impact of e-MTBs.

Pizzi’s last point — and it’s a big one — is to lobby for a change in the classification of motorized to self-propelled. It’s an “if you can’t join them, reinvent yourself” approach that would pull e-MTBs away from the legal definition that’s currently keeping extra watts off managed land.

People are tribal creatures. We gravitate toward like-minded cliques that ferociously embrace imbued values. And nowhere in the outdoor world is this truer than in cycling. Perhaps no amount of physical data will sway the minds of purists. Because in the end, it’s a social science, not a hard science.

“We need to educate, and identify,” concludes Benedict. “By working with the government and local land managers, we can classify bikes and instill trail etiquette and stewardship. Together we can draw up sustainable plans and then encourage positive behavior — and change the social perception.”

You know, teach us how to share.

Related Topics