Mountain bikers have been riding at night since the earliest days of the sport and today, most riders have at least tried night riding once. We mined the Singletracks trail check-in data to see what insights we could gain into night riding and put together this quick infographic to share our findings.

Of course, having data like this just raises more questions for us. Like: Are night rides 2 hours, 15 minutes long (on average) because that’s about how long most light system batteries last on high? Or, are light companies designing their products around the average night ride times?

We were also surprised to see that riders in the sunbelt states tend to do less riding at night (as a % of their overall rides) compared to riders who live much farther north. I suspect part of the reason is that many rides in places like Utah and California are logged by MTB tourists who have all day to ride and little need to squeeze in a night ride. Also, summer days tend to last longer in northern locations which means a ride that starts at 8 or 9pm might not even require a light! [We chose to identify “night rides” as those that start between 8pm and 5am, though depending on location and season, this may or may not be the case.]

What surprises you about the night riding data presented above?