Mountain Bikes For All Occasions

Mitchell said the Suspension Mountain Bike boom began with three San Francisco men. In 1979 these men, prohibited by a new federal law from racing their motorcycles down fire trails, started pushing old one-speed bikes up hills and screaming back down. They soon added gears (pushing got old quickly), and sold a limited number of custom-built mountain bikes.

Suspension Mountain Bike, a California company, had picked up on the idea and begun mass-producing mountain bikes, but there weren't nearly enough to go around. "In the early days there was an unperceived high demand for mountain bikes," Mitchell said. "We couldn't get enough of them." True to economic law, the result was that consumers paid an inflated price for those original models. It took $ 750 to buy the same bike that today costs around $ 300.

Now dozens of manufacturers produce mountain bikes, and even though the initial craze has tapered off, steadily dropping prices have kept new customers buying the fat-tired bicycles.

Mitchell said the craze didn't necessarily translate into big gains for the bicycle retailer. "It's only a small increase for us," he said. "Customers are mostly substituting mountain bikes for road bikes."

But other bike shops, such as The Outdoorsman in Durango, are feeling a much greater impact. Manager John Glover said mountain bikes, which account for roughly 90 percent of his sales, "have been great for business."

The Outdoorsman's success is partly due to the spectacular terrain around Durango, and also to the area's role as a center of mountain-bike racing. The annual Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, which started in Durango as simply a road race, has grown into a three-day road- and mountain-bike competition. Durango has also attracted the NORBA (National Off-Road Bicycle Association) National Championship for the last two years, largely due to the efforts of a local promotional group, said Glover, a former director of the Iron Horse Classic.

The Front Range also has its share of bike enthusiasts. All six members of the 7-Eleven cycling team that won this year's Coors Classic, the country's premier bicycle race, either now live or have lived in Boulder. Both the Olympic Training Center for cyclists and the U.S. Cycling Federation call Colorado Springs home. And recreational cyclists here number in the thousands.

Mountain Biking