EUSA SkiBike Meeting - Part 2, The Bad Bits

At the start of part 1 I asked a few questions:

• Is the sport producing mass produced bikes suitable and reliable enough to go into the future?
• Will the bikes themselves be sassy enough to make the younger BMX rider or ageing rocker desire to give them a go?
• Will we, as a sport, fit into the lift company’s slot of taking our money in exchange for a day’s lift pass and create no more cost to the lift company than that of a skier?

Will we, as a sport, fit into the lift company's slot? - source Thierry Avrillon

Sorry guys and girls, without pointing fingers at anyone manufacturer or group, sadly I feel we are failing in almost all of the above questions. It was very evident from the assembled skibikes on view and I include the majority of home builds in this as well, that we are really in first generation design mode, having not yet worked out the solution of design to fit harmoniously in with the skiers and lift systems as well as the basic needs of getting around the mountain.
As soon as you see skibike front skis being taken off to ensure the bike fits into a 6 man gondola you know there’s a problem. When you see 10 skibikers in a group taking up 10 gondolas in a row, then you know skiers will get fed up waiting and the lift company’s eyebrows being lifted. When you see standard bike frames labelled as a commercial skibike, then after all these years, why have we moved forward so little in our design thinking?

Why have we moved forward so little with our design thinking?

So why is this the case? Yes there are economics, the standard bike frame is made in huge numbers and skibikes are not, but unless we as a group come up with a solution that lets the ski lift company benefit from our presence ( by taking our hard earned cash for no more effort than a skier or boarder  ) then the sport is probably doomed to failure.
The current designs we have simply do not benefit the lift companies, but in most ways have a cost attached by increasing the man power required to get us to the top of the mountain. We will need to sharpen our design aims fairly quickly, or once numbers start building of bikes on the mountain, then be prepared to lose our right to be there, lift companies do not want extra hassle in increasing numbers. Certainly in my view, that scenario is rapidly approaching.

So why aren't the current designs morphing towards something better suited. From speaking to most of the designers and builders it would seem that two quite disparate historical design routes were taken. One from Skibob history, where contrary to North America, ski-bobbing in the 60’s was incredibly popular in Europe, these are highly tuned and engineered pieces of equipment that do a dedicated job, that of going about as fast as bullet being fired down the mountain doing the occasional turn. When the local champion ski bobber, talks of beating professional GS racers such as Hermann Maier by 1.5 seconds, down a GS course, then these things are exceptionally fast. So we see bikes such as the SledgeHammer with its leading edge forks and dedicated fine carving attributes.

SledgeHammer - fine carving attributes - source SledgeHammer

The other route is that of the Bull Skate and to a lesser extent, Lenz skibikes, where Snow Parks and jumping and tricks and all things exciting like flips are the design brief. Long travel to soak up the landings and quite heavy construction to take the impacts.

Yes these bikes do the things they are designed for, but how many people frequent only the Snow Parks and on an average can you carve down all the slopes, the answer is very few and no the majority time is spent sliding sideways on narrow paths and avoiding other skiers. I feel the manufacturers are missing the true large potential market, that of the average skier / skibiker who simply want to ride around the resort, this is the real market, not the niche Park skier or dedicated carver/racer.

So let’s look at a classic skibike that is changing and looking to the future. The Lenz Launch was the star of the manufacturer’s line ups for me,  if the high foot peg heights came down, put it on a diet, lose the long travel forks and suspension and lose the high price, then we might be just seeing a glimpse of the future. Lenz has been probably around as long as most and probably altered his designs year by year, the most,  you can see this is probably a bike that is slowly morphing by incremental design, to a point where it is starting to fit into its skiing and ski lift surroundings. I can remember the first Lenz designs that were big, bulky and had that real MotoX bike look, with its long seat. Look at the Lenz Launch now, much slimmer, much much smaller, tiny bike seat and starting to lose the long unnecessary suspension travel.

If the number of skibikers grow, we are going to have to change our designs

So here it is, the blunt truth guys and girls, if the number of skibikers continue to grow, we are going to have to change our designs to be able to participate in the lift system of the future. If we don’t then I think it’s probably not unreasonable of the lift companies to simply say no. We have to be able to load the bikes forward facing on chairlifts, either beside or as some do, between their legs. Already that is possible as with the three companions one skibike with, we load four riders onto a four man lift. We have to get a minimum of three riders and skibikes in a six man bubble gondola, get the design right and it is possible, again we load four bikes or two bikes and three skiers into one six man gondola. This is just simple good engineering design, it’s not difficult, but unless we get these key points right, then don’t expect to be welcomed by the ski companies, many of who are trying to cut manpower and costs back.