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Mountain biking in Whistler

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Some friends just came back from a BC tour. Loved it but shocked by the prices. Downhill mountain biking in Whistler $200 for each day bike hire $135 lift pass, $400 guide = over $1700 for a days biking for 4. Wowsers!!!
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Yep - Whistler has commercialised MTBing to ever higher levels. Rental costs don't really surprise me given a decent DH bike probably runs $5000 minimum and you can snap $200 of parts by binning it once.
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Morzine MTB prices are around $120 a day for hire, from what i've seen online. Not the $200 at Whistler, but bike hire doesn't come cheap!
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@BobinCH, a lot cheaper round here (Oberstdorf). Looks like about €55 for a Scott fully e-bike. With that I guess you don't have to pay for a lift pass.
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Wow. I checked, the CDN dollar is way down vs ours (1=.78 ) but still.

My take-out lunch was $29 last week, in Seattle. The people who made it are making 30% per hour than one year ago, and it still isn't enough to live on. But as a result of this and of course a couple other things, prices are up on almost everything, almost everywhere.

Had no idea a rental MTB would be five grand!

At least your friends had fun. Did they see bears at Whistler as we sometimes do? That could make up for a few excess shekels.
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Dave of the Marmottes wrote:
Yep - Whistler has commercialised MTBing to ever higher levels. Rental costs don't really surprise me given a decent DH bike probably runs $5000 minimum and you can snap $200 of parts by binning it once.


DH bikes are no cheaper to buy in CH or France but rental costs much cheaper. You can rent a top of the range Orange DH bike for 90chf per day at Mountain Air. And a day lift pass is around 39chf. Sounds like a hire shop cartel price fix to me.
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Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Maybe post it directly into the "Next Season is going to be lot more Expensive!" thread? wink
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Ischgl (brundl Sports). mountain bikes € 45-75 per day depending on how competitive/suicidal you are, e-bikes €55-75 per day again depending upon your skill/commitment level. All are pretty tasty Scott bikes.
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Yeah you'd probably find most things are cheaper outside The Village. I can't be bothered to google it, but you'll find decent downhill bikes for hire in Pemberton or Squamish for less than Whistler, for sure.
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Its actually not quite $200, about a mere $150 a day for premium bike with armour/helmet package (or $130 for a standard one, plus you can reduce both I think if you have an Epic card) - I checked yesterday as my son wanted to go to the Whistler bikepark next week with his friends.
With lift ticket (which is actually ~$85 a day - no idea where your friends got charged $135! Madeye-Smiley ), and bike rental, etc it is still crazy expensive so I suggested we'd go and ride up to lord of the squirrels for free instead! Madeye-Smiley

WB sell off those dh bikes in their pre season sale, and I'm fairly sure they get a decent discount on them, so guess they don't have that much of a capital cost to recover, but guess there is still quite a cost in running the rental shops, maintenance, etc...

Am pondering whether to go and watch the Redbull Joyride today, but definitely no bike park- odd as it might seem, I get pretty bored of it pretty quickly


Last edited by Ski the Net with snowHeads on Sun 14-08-22 6:37; edited 3 times in total
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Ok, so CDN150 including armour and stuff, which is CFH111.
20% more. I'm not sure that's significant without comparing all the small print - sounds similar to me.
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Scooter in Seattle wrote:

Had no idea a rental MTB would be five grand!


Though I'm guessing that WB don't have to pay GT retail for their fleet of bikes, you don't get a lot of bike for $5k these days - especially not $5k Canadian wink
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BobinCH wrote:
Dave of the Marmottes wrote:
Yep - Whistler has commercialised MTBing to ever higher levels. Rental costs don't really surprise me given a decent DH bike probably runs $5000 minimum and you can snap $200 of parts by binning it once.


DH bikes are no cheaper to buy in CH or France but rental costs much cheaper. You can rent a top of the range Orange DH bike for 90chf per day at Mountain Air. And a day lift pass is around 39chf. Sounds like a hire shop cartel price fix to me.

The Swiss bike shops must have gotten their bikes at a real good bargain! Puzzled

DH bikes live a very tough life. Parts break all the time. Shops need to repair or replace them. And I don’t suppose Swiss labour are cheap? Toofy Grin
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You know it makes sense.
@philwig, And the riding is better there
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
St Anton 65-75€ per day for top end enduro bikes. There in 2 weeks, can’t wait to thrash a Scott hire bike for a couple of days lift served.
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
They did say the Bike Park was superb and blew away anything they’ve tried in Europe - super smooth, watered every day, lots of big features and jumps. Lift queues were a pain hence they took the guide to beat the queues.
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When you are consistently named best mountain bike park in the world you can charge a little over the going rate for rentals.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
I think its also been Krankworks or some kind of majorly big festival there, so its been extremely busy
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@Markymark29, what is lift served in St.A? Do they have prepared trails? Have not heard about this before.
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I have joked that mountain biking is becoming the new golf. An expensive sport for middle classes.... DH biking in particular isn't that accessible. (Expensive full-suss bikes, body armour, lift pass).

In skiing it is the punters who use uplift and the experienced people go touring. Oddly in biking it's the other way round : uplift is the niche end of the sport.
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@Haggis_Trap, I see plenty of folks on bikes that aren't anywhere near or never will be talented enough to benefit from the small fortune they've spent on them. Keeps the R&D going though for the shredders.
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Haggis_Trap wrote:


In skiing it is the punters who use uplift and the experienced people go touring. Oddly in biking it's the other way round : uplift is the niche end of the sport.


Puzzled
I don't ride downhill in the park much mostly because I choose not to (and need the exercise!) I dont feel the need to drive an hour or so to pay money to go riding when some of probably the best trails on the planet are almost literally right outside my door. Nothing to do with experience.
Uplift based biking is only niche in that there are a lot of places to go riding if you are willing to ride uphill or shuttle; not so many with lifts.


Last edited by Then you can post your own questions or snow reports... on Wed 17-08-22 23:49; edited 1 time in total
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
Mother hucker wrote:
@Haggis_Trap, I see plenty of folks on bikes that aren't anywhere near or never will be talented enough to benefit from the small fortune they've spent on them. Keeps the R&D going though for the shredders.


You must have seen me riding then?! wink
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Mother hucker wrote:
@Haggis_Trap, I see plenty of folks on bikes that aren't anywhere near or never will be talented enough to benefit from the small fortune they've spent on them. Keeps the R&D going though for the shredders.

I’ve seen plenty of punters on road bikes fitting that description too. But what’s your point?
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abc wrote:
Mother hucker wrote:
@Haggis_Trap, I see plenty of folks on bikes that aren't anywhere near or never will be talented enough to benefit from the small fortune they've spent on them. Keeps the R&D going though for the shredders.

I’ve seen plenty of punters on road bikes fitting that description too. But what’s your point?


I'd say it's true of plenty of things. Most people have a laptop that's completely overkill for their needs. Nobody needs a car that does silly speeds or has crazy acceleration. 99% of people don't need their speced out goretex jacket.

To be fair to cyclists it's a sport where you can buy performance. They may not be in a position to maximise the performance of their kit, but if it gives them even a 1-2% performance maybe they can justify the cost. (Fwiw my opinion is many would be way better off spending the money on a coach and training a bit better but that takes considerably more work!)

Quote:

I have joked that mountain biking is becoming the new golf


Not so many broken collar bones in golf Very Happy Our saying was mountain biking, how good skiers get injured.
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Quote:

mountain biking, how good skiers get injured

True. I swapped places on a plane once with a guy who was a coach to one of the East ski teams and who had a hurty leg which he needed to stick out into the aisle.

I'll stick to mountain whistling in Byker.
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Steilhang wrote:
@Markymark29, what is lift served in St.A? Do they have prepared trails? Have not heard about this before.


I believe they have one trail, which is legal only when lift-served as bikes are forbidden on the Schotterstraße up to it… But I hear there are good Wanderwege to poach if one is so inclined (Lech too) wink
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Goes to show that MTB hire is pretty good value compared to skiing wherever you go! 10x value of the product for 3x more on rental fees.
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You know it makes sense.
abc wrote:
Mother hucker wrote:
@Haggis_Trap, I see plenty of folks on bikes that aren't anywhere near or never will be talented enough to benefit from the small fortune they've spent on them. Keeps the R&D going though for the shredders.

I’ve seen plenty of punters on road bikes fitting that description too. But what’s your point?


cementing Haggis traps point that MTB is becoming the new golf for wealthier middle aged folks. Clear enough?
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And the new skiing when climate change kills that one dead.

Skiing is way better in that the BS to action ration is matchless.
You can boast about how expensive your gear is, and no one need ever know about that little snowplough hiding in your turns.

But fancy gear is nothing new in cycling. When I was a sprog old people would have fantastically expensive machines, but they were old so they didn't ride particularly hard. I'm not sure I ever felt that it wasn't maybe a compensation for getting old and slow, that you could afford nicer gear? I mean, isn't that a good thing? I don't think we hated the old folk, we more admired their gear as something to aspire to, preferably before we too were old I suppose.
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
You need to see the local supermarket parking lot or outside the coffee shop here to truly appreciate the expensiveness of biking!
I guess this a Whistler thread, so will compare it to that and put my neck out there and say even there doesn't come close in opulent bike wealth flaunting Madeye-Smiley

On top of the large array of very expensive mountain bikes (many far more expensive looking than the car or truck they arrive on!), it is a very popular road bike stop off, and those can even make the mountain bikes seem cheap! Shocked

Squamish could probably compete, but it's more distributed and doesn't seem to have the big road bike contingent.


Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Thu 18-08-22 22:36; edited 1 time in total
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To be fair on the lower mainland riding community however, whilst you could theoretically ride the trails on a cheap (and by cheap I mean < $ a few thousand Madeye-Smiley) bike, you'd only survive and/or have any fun if you were one of those super gnar old-school riders with seemingly infinite talent who used to ride it on a penny farthing back in the day @philwig described Madeye-Smiley
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Mother hucker wrote:
cementing Haggis traps point that all forms of recreational cycling is becoming the new golf for wealthier middle aged folks.

FIFY
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Few days ago I rode up the Col du Granon me on my uber expensive S-Works Roubaix with a mate's 38year old son riding a Decathlon Triban RC 120 (review here ) €500 bike that his dad had bought as a spare and to use on the turbo.

For sure it weighed a lot, but for the money, you can't complain, and Simon said it was very comfortable to ride as he let loose on the final 4km dropping me Laughing

Basically you could buy 20 Triban's for the cost of mine, but would I want to change Shocked

That said I think that they'll sell really well in Scotland Laughing

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Weathercam wrote:

That said I think that they'll sell really well in Scotland Laughing


What the f-&k is that meant to mean ?
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Haggis_Trap wrote:
Weathercam wrote:

That said I think that they'll sell really well in Scotland Laughing


What the f-&k is that meant to mean ?



Laughing Laughing
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Weathercam wrote:

Laughing Laughing


Aye, jokes on you.
Care to expand a little further?
Otherwise obvious assumption is you are being a tw@t... Laughing
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Cycling makes for a really interesting economic study - the price enthusiasts are willing to pay for each incremental or perceived incremental improvement would be a very interesting graph around dimishing returns of investment (Triban owner which to be fair doesn't get much mileage around home not least cos I'm a bit scared of road traffic as well as being lazy)
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Dave of the Marmottes wrote:
Cycling makes for a really interesting economic study -


Yup. I am big fan of "decent" bikes.
The £1-2K bike will be much better than the £500 one.

However : once you go up price points it becomes law of diminishing returns. Modern bikes, road or MTB, are all simply so much better these days than they used to be. (disk brakes, sensible geometry, thru axel skewers, 2x10 or 1x12 etc)

Mountain biking in particular has seen a revolution in technology, and as result trail building, over last decade. Golden era.
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boarder2020 wrote:
... Most people have a laptop that's completely overkill for their needs. Nobody needs a car that does silly speeds or has crazy acceleration. 99% of people don't need their speced out goretex jacket. ... To be fair to cyclists it's a sport where you can buy performance. ... maybe they can justify the cost.
If think most people don't buy these things for the reasons you're assuming there.

My car does silly speeds and has crazy acceleration. It exists to demonstrate I'm no longer poor, not to compete with boy racers.
"Performance" is only relevant because it costs a lot of money to own it: it's not what you're really buying.

I think skiing and cycling are both a bit different, but that's an easy example to illustrate the basic point.
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