Trekking The Trails With Your Mountain Bike

Retailers said the Trek Mountain Bike fit right into Front Range lifestyles. "They're a hiking, camping people," Mitchell said, "who see the mountain bike as an extension of their interests."

"The mountain bike's greatest asset is its versatility," Glover said. "You can go anywhere" or over anything. No watching for glass, no dodging debris at the risk of swerving into oncoming traffic. "They're more casual," Mitchell said. "Their very name -- mountain bikes -- is commensurate with Colorado."

Riders of Trek Mountain Bike claim the seating position on the multispeed mountain bike is more natural than with the dropped-handlebar bikes that first became popular in the '70s. "You're not all humped over," said one, and better vision is the result. "On a 10-speed all you see is the road whizzing by beneath you."

Heavier-gauged frame tubing makes mountain bikes more durable and maintenance-free than their relatively delicate road counterparts.

Not all cyclists are thrilled with the bikes, however. Bikers who love speed settle for nothing less than ultralightweight racing bikes.

"I like to cruise on endorphins," said Richard Gieseler, president of the Bicycle Touring Club, the largest biking club in Colorado, with 1,000 members. "I tried a mountain bike once and thought, 'God, this is awful.'" Mountain bikes are anything but fast, and racers find it hard to slow down. "Whenever you get a bunch of (road) bikers together, there's someone who wants to be out in front," Gieseler said. "There seems to be a subtle element of competition, even when you're, quote, 'joyriding.'"

To each his own, say most cyclists, but some don't see any place for mountain bikers.

"They go screaming down trails with total disregard for anyone's life," exclaimed Nancy Dutko, coordinator of the Boulder Bicycle Program, a division of the city's transportation department. "Basically, with mountain bikers, if they can get away with it, they do it."

Boulder has closed all but five of its 16 designated trails to mountain bikes, and Mountain Parks, the 7,000-acre open space immediately to the west of the city, has sealed off almost all its trails to mountain bikers.

"There was a rather serious outbreak of citizen indignation," said Mountain Parks ranger Brian Peck. "I, myself, was almost hit twice while leading 7th and 8th graders on a nature walk."

Chris Ross, director of NORBA, the sanctioning organization for mountain bikes, headquartered in Chandler, Ariz., is not complacent about such land-access concerns. "It's really getting bad," he said. "We're trying to take affirmative action.

Mountain Biking