14mph Uphill! Vital's First Ride on the New 2019 Trek Powerfly LT 27

Ya'll are so right- E-bikes are so LAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Any real MTBer will have a big lifted diesel truck and only shuttle every trail, so you can roll coal on all those skinny roadies too.
Go listen to gordo talk with Mike Ferrentino, https://www.vitalmtb.com/features/The-Inside-Line-Podcast-Mike-Ferrentino,2194

Just get a dirt bike if you want to motor around.

They want to sell people the worst of both worlds. Like why not get this if you're going to have a motor and want quiet?: https://www.ktm.com/us/e-ride/ Maybe I'll get that and mount some bicycle cranks to the sides, then pretend to pedal. According to ebiker logic it would have all the rights of a bicycle at that point and I can take it anywhere that hikers or mountain bikers go. Gives me all the rights. Roost all the Trek Powerfly riders in the face.

The alloy frame and handlebar display are eye sores. Angling the motor on the carbon did so much to make the frame's lines flow better. Shame they didn't do that for the alloy. Much prefer the position and compactness of the Shimano display; virtually no chance of it getting crushed if the bike happens to flip over, and it's small enough to avoid getting hit by knee pads.

I'm all for e-bikes if the rider has some sort of injury, disability, or any other legitimate reason that makes the e-bike his or her only option to get out there and rip some trails. But all I see on my local trails (which are closed to e-bikes) are completely healthy and young looking riders on e-bikes who are just too lazy to pedal uphill under their own power. And more often than not their trail etiquette is completely lacking... full Jerry mode.

Interesting article and clearly touches on some big issues facing both mountain bikers, but also web content creators.

First, there clearly are potential issues with E-bikes and traditional bikes sharing trails. The trickiest area is bidirectional singletrack, especially when one person is climbing and the other descending. At times on twisty/windy trails, it can be difficult to see the climbing person until the last minute. With E-bikes motoring up, the potential for collisions and other mishaps seems more likely. This may be why some regions have allowed E-mountain bikes on fireroads and dual tracks, but not on bi-directional singletrack.

E-bikes present the opportunity to avoid riding up the lifts, which would be appealing at times. Many downhill areas have great double track roads that would be ideal for this. Once up the mountain, I don't see sharing the singletrack downhill trails between traditional and E-bikes as a big problem. But tight singletrack, I'd rather see that remain non-motorized.

The other issues raised is whether this article is "paid advertising". It certainly reads like it is, which is disappointing. Similar to YouTube, in an effort to promote transparency author disclosures should be put on websites and articles. For example, if Trek paid for the author to go to Mammoth and ride the trails, this should be disclosed. If Trek paid additionally to have the article written and posted, it should be disclosed. This is standard in other industries now and allows the reader to make their own conclusions. Sites like DCrainmaker.com are very clear in these areas and are a reason his reviews are some of the most respected.

I agree with efverything you've said. For me, the simplest approach is motorized vs. non-motorized designations. If a land manager has said a trail/network is non-motorized then ebikes should NOT be allowed.

Regarding paid advertising, I'm fairly certain ALL bike press release camps involve the vendor flying out media and paying for accoms/food/lift tickets etc. in exchange for publication of a first ride/review. For long-term reviews, bikes are provided by vendor to publication so you can argue there is always a bias. I think Blister is an example of actually buying the equipment they review.

Blister doesn't buy the gear they review, they get it for free from the brand/manufacturer.

the first sentence of the article says "trek invited us to mammoth." i feel that's pretty transparent. like grambo mentioned, they hosted us. this is a long-time practice in any industry unveiling a new product for editorial consideration. additionally trek is NOT a current advertiser on our site. this may not be obvious unless you're really paying attention to the ads on our site. despite that lack of support from trek, we still used our own time and resources to attend their camp because we wanted to ride their new product (specifically the "updated products" also mentioned in the first sentence...the e-bike, something we don't really get excited about, was there, so why not ride it?). trek makes rad, relevant stuff, we want to ride. our staff are not (and have never been) paid by brands to write articles that get published under vital's editorial voice. brands do have the ability to create an account to post their own press releases on our site. if they want it promoted on the homepage, they can pay to do so. those posts are visibly marked with "promoted post". again, transparent. if you haven't read the vital-specific reviews on our site, dig on in. you'll find the respect is there for our reviews throughout the MTB community. we've lost advertisers over 2-star ratings in the past. can't say that doesn't hurt, but we're not giving a 2-star product 4 or 5 stars if it's garbage. if the product doesn't pass the test, it doesn't pass the test.

Those are very fair comments and suggest it wasn't the intent to write an article that is biased towards Trek.

However what was once "a long-time practice in any industry" is rapidly changing. Take physicians for example. Many were often invited to activities such as evening dinners hosted by pharmaceutical companies to learn about a new drug or flown to different locales by equipment manufacturers to see a new piece of technology that might be of value to their practice. Many physician employers have now outlawed such practices, and every dollar spent by industry on a physician in the United States by industry in publicly reported because of the "Sunshine Act". Some centers have even go so far to ban the smallest gifts such as a pen with the name of a drug on it, as even these have been shown to sway physician prescribing patterns.

There are examples in many different industries of individuals who have embraced transparency. I mentioned DCRainmaker in a prior post. On the technology side, Leo Laporte of TWiT (This Week in Tech) fame has a long standing policy of purchasing products that he reviews and not accepting any industry freebies.

Getting back to the article, the term "invite" is still pretty nebulous. It could mean i) Trek "invited" you to Mammoth, flew you out, put you up in a nice hotel, paid for your meals and in return you got to ride their bikes and write an article on it versus ii) inviting to come to Mammoth to be one of the first to trial their new bike, but you went on your own dime to do it. Pretty big difference...

i understand all of what you're saying and agree with the changing landscape. since you're new here (at least based on your sign-up date), dig into our past reviews. there are times when, despite being wined and dined at camps, products don't come away with glowing endorsements. our staff is experienced and they review the product, not the free beer. saying X is awesome because they treated us to a nice room at a resort wouldn't do us (or any editorial outlet) any good long-term because you would all see through it instantly. then we'd have no credibility, which means no audience. also, buying a product doesn't inherently mean you have perfect, unbiased intentions. we could buy any big-named products on the market, give them average or poor reviews (even when they didn't deserve that rating) and we'd probably get 50x the traffic and *respect* because people would think we didn't "sell out" and give big brand X a good review. i'm not saying that's what DC or TWiT does, not at all. they seem really fair and experienced. i just don't think buying the product means a fair review because plenty of people buy things that don't work well, yet continue to sing praises of the product b/c of personal preference or brand loyalties or just to be different or whatever. i know it's easy to look at vital, with brand advertisers, and say "oh, corpo site, they got paid for their reviews," but that's incredibly far from reality because we're just a small crew of people who like to ride bikes and see what works well and what doesn't.

Sigh. Here we go again. Bring on the ignorant hate.

I love it.... no problem with using a chairlift to get up Mammoth, but as soon as people want to use e-bikes on e-bike approved trails people lose their goddamned minds. Nothing like people telling other people how they should be able to enjoy their own mountain bike experience on land where it is ok to do so. Way to embrace personal freedom everyone. Well done.

Also, when arguing against this point, please try not to use slippery slope fallacies, missing the point fallacies, and false cause fallacies because that's all anti-ebike people seem to use.

Thanks for sharing Vital. I don't own an e-bike and don't really plan on owning one in the near future, but I would love a day out at Mammoth tooling around on one this capable. I'll have to plan in a demo/rental day on my next trip up there.

Really Vital? Are we doing this now?

I am a EBIKE hunter.Only hunting I do.So be careful.

@casman No disrespect but I actually don't think you are. You are thinking about a current circumstance in your own area and you are not considering that there a trails right around the world where there are no issues for riding ebikes and these will increase participation, advocacy and more trail creation.

The issue with electric mopeds is how it kills advocacy, not supports it, because motorized vehicles disguised as bicycles is a nightmare for land managers when they can no longer distinguish and can cause a blanket ban of mtb altogether. Mountain bike riding is absolutely booming in popularity as is. We definitely don't need additional people on trails who aren't even doing it for the right reasons. This article headlines with "14mph uphill", yet another big reason they can't share our trails. There's just no good aspects to this, get a motorcycle and have more fun if you want a motor. Electric moped is a lot like Trump, a dumb greedy pig who is taking everyone down with him but we have to put up with it for a couple more years.

Bang on post here.

In isolation, if Mammoth wants to have ebikes on their own trails and it's within their land use agreement (or they own the land outright) then who cares, go nuts. But instances like this just muddy the waters in the general public's mind and benefit the industry by trying to normalize ebikes as a bicycle when it is an electric moped. So now you have people thinking it is OK to ride their ebike on mountain bike trails where they may be prohibited. Nightmare scenario for a self-policing activity.

WTF, why are you posting this garbage on a mountain bike site? Make a different site for your moped crap.

Dude, get over it already. Why should riding bikes off road be so exclusive? The way you do it isn't the only way it can be done

Actually it is, since motor vehicles are not allowed on mountain bike or hiking trails. So there's that. Bicycle or motorcycle, choose one or one of each. Keep your moped shit off trails you have no right to ride. You know people are pretending to be cyclists on these and not sticking to atv trails.

If you read the article it clearly states that ebikes are allowed on the trails. So your argument is invalid.
Anyway, enough troll feeding. Good luck in your black and white world.

A trail in one resort with lazy money hungry land managers... I'm talking about the bigger picture.

These are not bikes. That's the whole point.

It's a PAID Advertisement most likely. $$$$$ talks.

@casman86 Exactly. If you're going to review this motorized crap put it on "Vital E-MTB". You've grossly mis-judged your audience.