>>1344799There's two types of riding: Lift-accessed (can mean chairlift, vehicle, etc) downhill, and everything else.
Downhill bikes are made specifically for downhill with gearing not good for going uphill etc. That's an important distinction.
As for everything else, xc-trail-enduro is a spectrum. So it's not really separate categories. It's different types of bikes, NOT different types of riding or trails. Different bikes for different preferences (which includes, but not limited to, riding style and how technical and hilly the trails are and how long distance the rides are).
The names xc, trail, and enduro/AM just refer to different ranges of the spectrum based on how slack the geometry is and how much travel there is. It's not hard cutoffs, it just makes it easy so, for example, instead of saying "I want a mountain bike with kinda slack but not super slack geometry and around 130-145mm travel" you can just say "I want a trail bike".
It's not different categories, it's just names applied to ranges of the spectrum to make talking about bikes easier (and of course manufacturers capitalize on it to sell more bikes)
>>1344802AM and enduro are the same
>>1345497This thread is about mountain bikes
