Learn Courtesy & Mountain Biking Etiquette

Video Transcript

Howdy! Hi. How are you doing? Beautiful day today huh? It really is, enjoy your hike. Hi, I am Aaron Phillips for Expert Village. You just saw a typical trail interface and that is a hiker and a cyclist, a mountain biker meeting in the trail. Now, sometimes it is not a trail like this wide, it is a single track and you want to think as a mountain biker you are kind of low on a torten pole as far users are concerned. Mountain bikers want to make sure that they are yielding to other trail users; that includes hikers, you know joggers, and particularly horses. Everybody has to yield to equestrian users. You want to dismount, you want to put a foot down and make sure that the hiker or other trail user understands that you are in control and you are there to be congenial and warm and nice and to be an ambassador for the sport. Alright, some mountain bikers like to travel with a little bell like this. You want to be able to alert trail users of your presence, particularly if a hiker is in front of you going downhill and you are going downhill behind them you are going to come up on them with a lot of speed, you are going a lot quicker than them. They are going three miles an hour, two miles an hour and you are going anywhere from ten to twenty miles an hour depending on your speed and the kind of terrain. So you want to make sure to let them know you are there. A bell is really a good way to do that. Otherwise just verbally announce your presence and say you know, rider up or rider behind you or hi there, or something to get peoples attention. And when you are passing them pass on the left, that is just the universal side on which to pass. It doesn't matter if you are out on the trial with other users, you are in a race, on your left is where you want to pass and there is where you want to say, when you get close to somebody and you are about to pass and if it is a hiker, and it looks like they are getting out of your way, try to pass them and say on your left. If they end up dodging onto the left, just watch out for them because sometimes this does happen. If you say on your left to somebody and they are not familiar with that phrasing or that kind of, just that announcement they might move to their left because they are thinking go left. So just be careful, I have heard of numerous examples of people hitting hikers because they said on their left and the hiker immediately dodges to the left. So it is just about slowing down, giving people room and let's demonstrate this kind of trail interface for you so that you get a sense of what it is all about.

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