>>856801depends on price range.
How much are you willing to spend? 500? 1000? 2000?
What is your experience level with mountain biking?
>What is your experience level with maintaining bikes? >Do you want to race it? >Do you want to take it far from civilization (and maintenance)? From there we can talk about brands.
For your first bike you should buy from a shop and trust a brand, but when you get experienced you should learn to find parts on craigslist or at garage sales. I once built a roadbike for $300 off of garage sale parts the vendors were unsure of the worth of, and sold it for around $2000.
As for my experience level regarding it, my mother was in the olympics for it and I was pushed into it from a young age.
I had like 5 bikes as a teenager, all built off of parts my mother got from sponsorship and my dad picked up when he saw them being sold at a steal.
Because I was around it so much I just took it for granted. I have a lot of bikes I did not pay for(they let me keep them all), so I cant really appreciate it I guess.
I should really go sometime soon though. Seems like something to get back into.
