How to Start Downhill Mountain Biking on a Budget

Want to get into gravity/downhill mountain biking but can’t justify a purchase that typically requires you to reveal your credit history?

Yeah, me neither. But, like you, that doesn’t stop me from daydreaming about big sends and deep loam.

I didn’t know diddly about downhill riding when I went to my first Red Bull Rampage. Then after just a few hours of watching it all happen, I was hooked. How could I stoke the brooding, dark fire, and gaudy, eruptive psych of the pros? How could I find the elusive validation that seems to reverberate from those who ride this magnetizing, terrifying style?

Well, the answer looked obvious: Do it. Learning through primary experience was clearly the way. But with a steep learning curve and a substantive equipment threshold, the big question was equally obvious: How?

I thought about my other bikes and partials. There are the $100 finds on Facebook Marketplace I’d Frankensteined together with donations of throwaway parts from friends, then pridefully ridden with a poisonous view toward top-end gear. During my entire adult life, mostly lived as a dirtbag rock climber, I’d shunned pricey gear. I considered it elitist and distracting.

Forget the stuff you have, I thought, go do cool things; that’s what counts.

how to start gravity riding — Do it because it moves you, not because anyone cares. Andreu Lacondeguy wows the crowd; (photo/Sam Anderson)

Now, to do the cool thing at all, I’d need the right stuff. And for the first time in my life, I couldn’t cheapen or fake it.

So I did what any other over-stoked, under-resourced, PBR-swilling, downhill mountain biking aspirant would do: I opened my computer and got on the internet.

Here are the results.

First Take: Cost and Complexity Demand Passion

Let’s be realistic. You’re not going to get into a sport where the main equipment costs as much as a solid used car without some buy-in cash. And to get psyched about spending that cash, a little inspiration can help.

Maybe you’ve already got that covered. If not, I suggest watching some videos and/or putting on some music. Where do you want to ride? How do you want to ride? And who do you want to ride like? We’ve all got our ways of getting hyped on a sport, but you owe it to yourself to figure out what it’s going to look like on you.

Basically, I used psych as a survival tactic for two tasks:

Justifying the amount of money I was about to spend on downhill mountain biking
Compiling the mechanical knowledge I would need in order to choose the right bike and learn how it worked

Anyone who’s made a major purchase knows the adrenal stimulation that comes along with it. At some point, it’s more than a few bucks. But we’ve covered that, so I’ll move on to the other reason you’ll want the psych: the complexity of finding the right fully suspended bike.

Despite being simple machines by definition, bicycles are complicated. And modern suspended mountain bikes are the most complicated of all. For the average newcomer, developing the acumen to even know what you’re looking at can feel exhausting — let alone figuring out what’s going to work for you or how it’s going to work. Even if it’s just tuning the suspension of a used bike, there’s still a lot to learn.

I found that to maintain traction, I needed some creative inspiration.

Riding is more fun than wrenching — remember that. So you’re gonna want to mix in plenty of slasher stoke content along your path. (Don’t forget this. It’s also important to keep yourself from becoming insufferable.)