First let’s clear this – by mountain biking I mean riding trails, singletracks at night. Not riding your bike home from work through the streets. Of course if you ride your bike at night, driving through the streets of your home town, you need a light at least to be seen by the cars passing you by. This is usual stuff, nothing strange here.
But in the last years with the improvement of lights (LED lights) which are getting more and more powerful and energy efficient and with the development of better batteries that can power these lights people have started to use lights for night mountainbiking.
But why would you want to do that? Why would you want to ride down a trail at night? Well, normally you wouldn’t. If you have enough time on your hands you will of course go and ride your bike during the day when visibility is best. But there are several moments and reasons why would you ride your mountainbike at night:
- If you work most of the day and when the days are short it will probably be dark when you get home and even have a chance to start thinking about jumping on your bike and making a run on your local trail. But with a bike light – no problem.
- Or maybe you have a family and before kids go to bed and you do all your chores it is already dark.
- Then there are crowds. Some trails are filled with people walking, picking up blueberries, playing with their dogs..whatever. It is dangerous and irresponsible to ride on these trails during the day. But when it gets dark all these people go home and you have that trail all for yourself.
- Sometimes the weather just gets too hot. You can take plenty of water and sweat your way to the top of the hill or you can wait and go at night when the temperatures are more acceptable.
- To me it happens all the time – we go riding a new trail that nobody knows far into the mountains and we get lost. It happens so often that we even have our own trademark saying: “Get lost with us!”. So you plan your trip, it should take 4-5 hours, you give yourself an extra hour of time before dark and the you get lost. And before you get back to you car it is already dark. But luckily you are packing a bike light and you don’t have to worry.
- And finally – it’s fun because it’s different. The trail looks different, the forest looks different…try it.
That’s it. Try it, you might like it :)!