2021 Gift Guide for mountain bikers of all ages

Kids rides, good reads, bright lights and cool cams

Canadian Cycling Magazine November 24, 2021

Looking for the perfect gift for the mountain biker in your life? Look no further. From youth bikes and rad books to high tech gear and gadgets, here’s our 2021 gift guide:

2021 Gift Guide

Give a gift that a child will never forget: a bike! The Specialized Riprock 24 bicycle ($729, specialized.com) will have a young rider, about age 8 to 11, taking on trails and roads. To manage bumps, there’s the SR Suntour XCT fork with 70 mm of travel and 2.8”-wide tires. The 8-speed cassette will help the rider get up and over all types of terrain.

The Shred Girls series continues. These books – featuring the adventures of Lindsay, Jen and Ali – mix great storytelling and bikes. In the third and latest installment, Jen’s Bumpy Ride ($10, shred-girls.com), Jen is faced with a big decision. She only has a little bit of time to think about it as she and her friends take on their first bikepacking trip.

The Lazer Impala MIPS mountain bike helmet ($200, lazersport.ca) features 22 vents to keep a rider cool. In a crash, the MIPS layer helps to address rotational forces that can affect the head and brain. A well-designed camera/light mount secures an accessory to the top while maintaining the helmet’s comfort.

For the rider who needs to light up a trail – like, really light it up – there’s the Magicshine Monteer 8000s Galaxy headlight ($599, livetoplaysports.com). The 8000 in the name is the massive number of lumens the Monteer can pump out, making almost every ripple in the trail visible at night. It has a maximum runtime of 32 hours on eco mode and 1.5 hours at the full 8,000 lumens. At 72 x 42 x 44 mm, it’s pretty compact. It only adds 431 g to a bike.

The Garmin Rally XC200 pedals ($1,560, garmin.com) are a versatile upgrade. They use standard Shimano SPD cleats. The pedals are easy to swap between your cross country, gravel and cyclocross bikes, ensuring that you can get power data from all your rides. If you have a magnetic or fluid trainer, the numbers that these pedals transmit will let you engage more with an app such as Zwift.

A Bontrager XR Trail Comp MTB grip set ($25) uses a finned texture to conform well to your hands. As an eco bonus, the grip core is made with recycled plastic from abandoned fishing nets.

The GoPro Hero 10 Black camera ($780, ogc.ca), can capture the thrills of your rides with a 5.3K resolution at a rate of 60 frames per second. You can snap photos at 23 megapixels. It’s waterproof to 10 m, but you and your bike shouldn’t be that deep underwater. To get that content off the camera and out into the (virtual) world, GoPro has its Quik app for editing and a cloud backup.