Video: Crossing the Rubicon on eMTBs & 4x4s with Mark Weir
Mark Weir, a veteran mountain bike racer and the godfather of enduro, has never been satisfied with the status quo. During a 20-year race career that has spanned downhill, cross-country, road and endurance racing, he became one of the first Americans to cross the pond and compete in French and Italian endurance races. He’s an eight-time winner of the Downieville (California) Downhill – a 17-mile, all-downhill singletrack racecourse with a 5,000-foot vertical drop – and he’s earned a top-10 spot in the National Off-Road Bicycle Association’s National Series on a six-inch travel bike.
Although Weir has given up racing, he hasn’t stopped thrill-seeking. One of his favorite annual trips is tackling the Rubicon Trail, a 22-mile-long route located in the Sierra Nevada that’s part road and part 4x4 trail. Situated about 80 miles east of Sacramento, the Rubicon is one of the most famous 4x4 routes in the world, and is especially challenging because it's almost nonstop rock. And back in the summer of 2018 he and his crew brought eBikes to the punishing terrain.
 | Adding eBikes to it changed everything. They make us way more mobile. eBikes have opened up whole new parts of the Rubicon. We’ve gone fishing in lakes we had never been to before, and we compete in hill climb challenges on sections of the trail that would be almost impossible on a regular bike. It’s so special to be able to cover that kind of ground with efficiency and with your friends, even if they’re not that fit. eBikes have created a whole new way to adventure. |
The accessibility eBikes create and their ease of use for riders of all levels has driven Weir to challenge people’s misconceptions about them, especially when it comes to trail access. Weir believes eBikes can be the catalyst that gets people to care about the need for bike-accessible trails and the importance of being good stewards of parks, forests and open land.
The famous sign as you roll down to the start of the Rubicon Trail.
Weir about to pass the famous sign with the crew in tow.
Thumb Stain
Jon Buckell rode his bike the whole time along with photog and film crew.
The 4-mile adventure took about 5 hours to get into the campsite.
Thumb Stain putting Big Blue to work.
Weir and Jon Buckell went for a ride above Loon Lake the first evening after getting to the campsites.
Fishing was successful! Thumb Stain made sure of that!
Thanks to Mark for bringing endless amounts of food and Camp Chef for the tools to cook, we ate like kings!
The Crew.
| eBikes bring a whole new group of people into the sport of cycling who can now become passionate about these causes. Some people don’t realize the constraints placed on mountain bikers like me when we try to ride on trails and public lands. Once you ride an eBike, you become a big fan and want more places to ride. I believe this will create power in numbers. We have to work with and educate the land managers and others who make the rules If we give them a feel for what an eBike is, then they won’t draw any wrong conclusions, and we can create more solutions instead of preventing cyclists from using trails. If we don’t give people – especially kids, who will one day be running the world – a reason to steward and respect the land, no one will care enough to save it. |
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The only thing I see is a bunch of buddies havin a good time 4x4in, BBQin and ridin. I see nothing wrong with this.
Its not propaganda, there not speeding up global warming any faster than you are. Everything in moderation right?
Go back to school, take statics, dynamics, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, differential equations, statistics, biology, organic chemistry, etc., then come back and tell us what a hoax climate change is.
How incredibly selfish of you to justify destructive behavior by denying reality.
One question to ask yourself. How many of the horrible effects and milestones predicted have actually come true.
Zero.
Not to mention the warmest periods in earths history have been very beneficial to life. 10,000 years ago Chicago was under a mile thick sheet of ice. It has warmed quite a bit since then. 9,900 years of it were without petroleum impacts and Marxist tools looking for a way to take control of human behavior.. Explain.
The glacier erratic that's sitting in a grass field just down the street from me instead of on top of the glacier that once covered the Puget Sound is probably better where it is now for us, than before.
Seriously, piss off with the politics already. Signed; your friendly, polite Pinkbike peers.
Funny thing is, if the Sierra Club huggers didn't box us in so much I could avoid virtually all the driving in the truck. But they would rather force people out to the remotest areas than conserve the petrol and associated impacts. Funny how hypocrisy works, eh?
You did make me realize I didn't write my thoughts correctly. I was actually wondering what person is more in the wrong, the rider breaking the law riding illegal trails on MTB, or the rider breaking the law riding illegal trails on EMTB? If you can pick just one you are a hypocrite.
as for "Mopeds and BBQ haulers"...I guess my point was that Wheelers and Ebikers don't need your kudos.
Also, that had to be the biggest trout I've ever seen caught at the Springs!
Barf
I get the inclusivity argument, and the fun argument, but saying eBikes "open up previously inaccessible areas" just doesn't make sense.
Can we all agree to not call a mountain bike an “analog” bike? Or “acoustic” as I’ve seen? It just sounds tacky
Never made any sense at all.
In fact if anything eBikes are limited by how many batteries you can take with you and if you even have access to the trail on a motor bike.
I have done many 100km + rides in the wild this year and an eBike would just limit my rides to shorter lenghts.
If batteries ever come to a point were they can take over 100km in boost mode without weighting a ton, than I will be at least slightly interested.
I'm just happy to see good guy Mark Weir healthy. He's had a tough couple years.
“Weir believes eBikes can be the catalyst that gets people to care about the need for bike-accessible trails and the importance of being good stewards of parks, forests and open land.“
If only I was as positive for Mark. The ebike people want to freeload off the work mountain bikers have done for the last 30 years and don’t want to put in any effort. The mountain bikers are vehemently against ebikes until it’s in their personal interest to ride one, then they look down their nose at the snowflakes who rode “acoustic bikes”. If ebikes do what the industry wants then to do it’s going to attract a whole horde of unwashed people with no appreciation for the sport or what it took to build out trail infrastructure. I don’t know about you but I love riding crowded, blown out trails full of angry people.
I don’t know how it works in socialist Europe but in America everyone is going to be way more inconsiderate than you think.
And the Sierra Club types are waiting in the wings to shut us all down as we fight over the crumbs.
Regarding ebikes. I have no issue with them. Although I will admit when some old dude(like me) in worse shape than me rolls up on a hill and drops me. I get a little pissed at first. Kinda rude in some way I can't figure out yet.
As applied here, ebikes are great. Keep them in areas already approved for motorized access and it's a win. But of course trying to market and sell them to the 4x4 crowd isn't enough, so paid shills make an attempt to connect non-existent dots and convince the general public that "the trails need more riders!".
Let's zoom out a bit. Who does 'more riders' even benefit? I'd make the case that any given area needs "enough" riders, and that's it. Enough in this case is the number at which trails can be built or maintained, and local advocacy partnerships can grant access. It's a much smaller number than people think. This constant idea that we 'need more riders' is industry nonsense. The idea that we need to make trails more accessible is also trash. Ask the people of the Colorado front range if they need more users on the trail..
I find it really sad that someone would fight over a dude pissing on a rock while the rest of the country is sold out to the highest bidder.
It doesn't matter what you ride, just be respectful to other people and the work they do.
Ask the pork industry they just paid enough to get rid of any legitimate inspections of our pork
The old law allowed federal inspectors to stand close to the lines. And the inspector had to look over at a speed of 1106 carcass and hour. That was already terrible.
Now the inspector will be an employee of the company and be standing far away from the line.
Basically no inspection being done now.
Yay corporate lobbiests.
It seems like any pedaling they did was up to them but not essential for Power. I don’t really care about them other than the envious/ pissed feeling when one of them drops my ass when I know I’m in better shape than them . It’s all good . BTW- I am very in tune with these bikes and recognizing them and unless you are very knowledgeable you’d never know it was an Ebike. No way the bitter silver tail Sierra Clubbers would either .
The argument that nobody has to do anything until all the critics are 100% carbon neutral, is a really silly argument. And phones? Really? Look up how far you can drive your petrol-filled car on a motorway for one year’s worth of phone charging. We are talking about meters.
Use your content filters.
100% pumping the sponsors, Good for him, but ebikes are for old men, and I've confirmed this by talking to many in the past 6 months. The only young ones I see use them to actually get up the hill faster, not make it easier on the old lungs.
Kinda missing the shoutout to the guy in the brown truck with the NY plates for crossing the country! That’s the real challenge in this story.
Is there room for your high horse, in that cave you’re living in?
(Edited for typo)
I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you
While I agree with @Upduro .
Moderation exists and we live in a modern world and have to deal somehow with that.
I'm with you with that "modern trend of extreme moral judgement"
Espacially those "climate alarmists" folks are all a bunch freaking hypoctites.
They do abslutely nothing to save the enviroment with their pointing fingers and judging others, and than feel so good about how they saved the planet lol.
People who really care about the enviroment are planting trees, preserving the wilds for the animals, or collecting the trash in their neighborhood.
You will never see climate alarmists do this kind of things, because they are only interested in their moral high ground and of course they know that.
Ok, first.
I don't care about the Jeep, or that article. My answer was related to Tobiusmaximums comment.
Second.
Why do bring up communism, China and capitalism?...WTF is wrong with you?
Third.
You are a good example my friend.
Pointing fingers at other countries, calling them evil and filthy, when it's the western countries who have filled those countries with their trash to beging with.
And that will may shock you, but most of the stuff we buy from china, or india ist just produced there by our own western companies. Not buying from china, or india only makes our companies switch to next cheaper poor country to turn into a western trash bin.
I can understand you to some point, that you want the US stuff actually produced in the US and I'm totally with you on that.
But that's not a matter of other countries, but of US companies. Your finger is pointing at the wrong people.
PSA to him: Stop before even less people like you.