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Try an e-bike before calling them cheating

As an avid sports enthusiast like so many of us here in the Roaring Fork Valley, the e-bike debate goes on. especially on our singletrack trails. Two years and 11 surgeries ago I too was against all e-bikes but now after all the research I’ve done I have come around to now liking what the e-bike offers. I constantly hear the phase “it’s cheating.” If it was a competition or a class 2 or 3 e-bike then I agree, but for the trails I’m referring to the class 1, which is pedal-assist. You have to pedal to gain any help from the electric motor. It enables people like myself who has a beat-up body or someone who is not that strong or someone who is older to be able to enjoy the same trails that they have been riding for many years. It’s a way to enjoy riding, go on longer rides and still get a workout. Remember when fat skis were cheating, or when the shaped ski came out and were called cheating? Well, look what everyone is riding today. Last fall on top of the Rim Trail on my 35-pound mountain bike I met a young rider on a new ultra-light mountain bike. I guess we could say cheating on that, but I didn’t. I was envious of his light bike and how he didn’t have to work as hard as me to get to same place. Class 1 mountain bikes do no more harm to a trail than mountain bikes, according to an article I read in a mountain bike magazine. To those out there calling it cheating, all I say is try one. You still get a workout, can ride farther and that hill you pushed your bike up? Well, now you can probably make it.

Ian Long

Snowmass Village