Shit, how the hell do I get out of here? I’m up to my knees in mud, in the middle of nowhere in Patagonia. Somehow, I’ve strayed off the trail and tried to force my way back through the undergrowth. Panic is starting to creep in.

My horse and I already have 200 kilometres of Patagonian wilderness behind us. At the start of 2026, I swapped my bike for two horses and, just seven months after my first riding lesson, set off for one of the toughest horse races in the world: ten days self-supported through Patagonia. Across bogs and rivers, past glaciers, over the Plateau of Death, through dense forests and along sheer cliffs.

And as I stood there in the mud, trying to get my horse out again, a fairly absurd thought crossed my mind: Shit, this feels like mountain biking. Or at least like the part of riding I’d been missing more and more lately, without even realising it had disappeared.

That is exactly what this issue is about. We haven’t reinvented mountain biking for it: quite the opposite. We asked ourselves why we started riding in the first place. Whether we’ve become trapped in our own biking habits and routines. Whether our hobby has become too expensive and elitist. And why the end of the Enduro World Cup could, of all things, be the biggest opportunity the sport has had in years.

Because the most dangerous changes are often not the dramatic ones, but the gradual ones. Habits and comfort zones that feel so normal we barely notice them creeping up on us, until one day reality hits us and we wonder: How did I end up here? And when did I forget what this was all about for me in the first place?

Sometimes you need some distance to see it. For me, that meant 200 kilometres through the Patagonian wilderness on horseback. Sometimes you need a wake-up call. For enduro racing, that wake-up call is the UCI’s announcement that it is ending the Enduro World Cup.

The issue behind all this is bigger than one racing discipline, or even mountain biking itself. More and more elements of our lives are becoming organised, staged, curated and optimised to remove as much friction as possible. We know what to expect before we’ve even set off.

Mountain biking is no different. Perfectly constructed trails, shuttle schedules, setup guides, trail apps, and bloody good bikes that do more and more of the work for us. Much of that is brilliant. The danger comes when, without even noticing, we go from being adventurers to becoming consumers of trails. Patagonia, of all places, showed me just how far we can drift from that.

Out there in the middle of nowhere, nobody could come to my rescue and tell me what to do next. I was responsible for myself and for my horse. For the route, my decisions and their consequences. For whether we carried on or turned back, tried to cross a bog or looked for another way around, and whether my horse ate and drank enough to be ready to go again the next morning.

No excuses. Plenty of fear and doubt, though; sometimes bordering on despair. But that was exactly what made it so damn good. It was raw, completely exposed to the wilderness, and without a safety net. I had to stay incredibly alert, improvise and learn to take full responsibility for every step.

The challenge wasn’t the problem. It was the adventure. And that is exactly what we risk losing. Over the past few years, we’ve perfected our sport. Bikes can do things today that would have seemed absurd 15 years ago. Suspension is better, brakes are more powerful, tires have more grip and trails are more professionally built. Apps tell us where to go, setup guides tell us what pressures to run. Thanks to YouTube, Trailforks and Instagram, we often know a trail before we’ve even ridden it for the first time.

We optimise our kit, our route, the weather window and the risk. Most of that is progress. But progress has an interesting side effect: the better we get at eliminating the unpredictable, the less room we leave for adventure. Control is comfortable. But adventure begins where control ends. An adventure with a guaranteed outcome isn’t an adventure at all.

And now for the bit that might sting a little for some die-hard mountain bikers: these days, it is often the eMTB, of all things, that seems to encourage more of a spirit of exploration than the analogue mountain bike. Ouch.

But that’s exactly the point: the technology isn’t the problem. It’s what we do with it. That became clear to us on California’s Pacific coast, where we explored new trails with two readers, on a journey which was about far more than just a new bike from Specialized.

While we’re increasingly riding the same familiar loops, trail centres and bike parks on analogue bikes, the eMTB brings back that “I’ll just drop down there because I can always get back up with the motor” sense of freedom. It tempts you to turn off and explore somewhere new. To ride up the forest road when you have no idea where it ends. To plan a loop, you’d think twice about starting this late in the day on a regular bike. It used to be different. Back then, it was fine to “consume” fewer trails, or we simply took more time. Our stories on the Gravity Card and the overnighter revolve around exactly the same question: how much comfort is good for our sport, and how little do you actually need for an adventure?

Why does any of this matter? Because mountain biking can be so much more than chasing adrenaline and doing a few laps through the woods. It confronts us with our fears, forces us to make decisions, lets us fail, learn and push beyond what we thought we could do. At its best, you come back from a ride not just as a better mountain biker, but slightly different from the person who set off. And that’s exactly why uncertainty – and the challenge that comes with it – is priceless.

In the article “Expensive – Complicated – Dangerous – Awesome”, Moritz turns the question around: have we made mountain biking so expensive, complicated and dangerous that we’re putting off the very people we want to get excited about it? Bikes that cost as much as cars, a jungle of high-tech instead of simplicity, and an injury risk that can end with a rescue helicopter. So what is mountain biking now? Too sanitised, or already way too extreme? And how do we make our sport more accessible without stripping away the very challenges that make it so damn good?

Our trail bike group test arrives at exactly the same question in its own way. From lively, agile trail bikes to mini enduros, from analogue bikes to full-power eMTBs, this 12-bike test field barely fits into a single category anymore. What even counts as a trail bike these days?
Who cares? Lower weight doesn’t automatically make a bike a good climber, lots of travel doesn’t guarantee better downhill performance, and a short rear end doesn’t necessarily make a bike more fun. Far more interesting than any label is the question: what does a bike allow you to do? And this group test gives you some very clear answers.

Nils takes things one step further and looks at something money can’t buy: flow – that fine line where challenge and ability are perfectly balanced. And he asks: what actually happens when your bike simply does everything, and your usual trails no longer challenge you?

Who says you always have to travel further afield to find new challenges? Vero Sandler does exactly the opposite. She stays in one place and keeps changing it until there’s something new to discover again. Instead of chasing the next fastest time, she chases new lines and new ideas. Lars visited her in Wales to find out what happens when you swap the stopwatch for a shovel.

Different stories, same question: have we forgotten why we started in the first place? That’s exactly why the end of the Enduro World Cup strikes a nerve. Instead of instinctively building the next World Cup around the same old formula, this is where we should start: what was it that made enduro so special in the first place?

We’ve become damn good at optimising mountain biking. We just need to make sure we don’t optimise away the very thing that made us fall in love with it.

This isn’t about turning back the clock. Things weren’t better in every way back then. Our bikes can get better, our trails safer and our sport more accessible. But not everything uncomfortable needs to disappear. A little uncertainty. Responsibility. Fear. Failure. Figuring things out as you go. Not knowing what’s around the next corner. That’s the stuff adventures are made of. Have we forgotten? Then now is a pretty good time to remember.
Enjoy the issue!

Robin,
Founder of ENDURO

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Words: Robin Schmitt Photos: Diverse