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6 Comments

  1. What about North Carolina? Pisgah certainly doesn’t have short downhills. Most of the rides I can think of are a 1,000+ foot slog followed by a pretty consistent downhill, with several of my favorite routes being between 2,000-3,000 feet of vertical. I’m sure there are some bigger descents out west, but isn’t that competitive? I think it deserves a mention.

    1. I actually just spent three months in North Carolina around Pisgah and DuPont. The ‘slogs’ are what I didn’t love… True, the downhills are mostly awesome, but the 6-mile gravel road climbs – not so much. I did grow to appreciate Pisgah, but personally I’d never want it to be my everyday riding network.

  2. Thank you for the West vs. East breakdown! As an MTBer in VT, one thing I have found is that there seems to be a West Coast lean in MTB manufacturing. Most of the major manufacturers are out West and it seems like way more bikes are designed to suit West Coast riding. After a lot of research and some great advice from Bootlegger Bikes in Jeffersonville, VT, I ended up going with a Spanish brand (Orbea), because they seem to design bikes with an eye towards being more capable in tight, twisty, technical terrain. I think a lot of folks back East may end up with bikes that were never really designed with our types of trails in mind; at least that is the impression I get from a lot of the bike review content out there.

    1. Great point – I’ve definitely found that my shorter travel 29″ bike is better suited for east coast riding. Another brand to look into is Devinci. They’re made in Quebec. I rode a Devinci Troy for awhile and loved it!

  3. Really underselling the east coast. Discounting the dope park scene in the northeast with quality parks all a relatively short drive from each other. I also don’t know what you mean when you speak of most trails being on “private land”. There are a ton of networks and unlike a lot of places in the west, MTB is not illegal and if it is it is not strongly enforced. West coast riding is dope too but this was too one-sided.

    1. I do think the mountain biking on the east coast is awesome. I’m from Vermont and the trails here are really rad. However, when you compare them to the bike parks and the sheer amount of miles of the west, I (personally) think that the west has far more to offer. That’s just my opinion, though.

      In regards to private land, most of the trail networks on the east coast are, indeed, on private land. Some of them are on State Land, but I’d argue the majority is definitely on privately owned land. For example, all of the trails in East Burke, Vermont (aka the Kingdom Trails) are on the private properties of various landowners.

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