The Greatest Mountain Bike Shorts for Girls of 2024

There’s nothing extra annoying than a pair of ill-fitting bike shorts. You need to have the ability to concentrate on the trip, not struggle together with your shorts. Woman shredders used to should make do with a pair of shrunken males’s shorts, however these days are lengthy gone.

We’re pleased to report that there’s now all kinds of mountain bike shorts made particularly for ladies. We’ve been driving trails throughout the U.S., together with a lot of miles in Oregon and Colorado, with take a look at notes from expert riders, newbies, {and professional} mountain bikers.

And whereas there isn’t a single pair of shorts that works for each physique and driving fashion, we’ve included a wide range of choices. Under, you’ll discover the perfect shorts and chamois that can make hitting the paths that rather more enjoyable. Get able to swimsuit up and trip out.

For extra details about girls’s mountain bike shorts and the assorted design options to contemplate, try our purchaser’s information and FAQ. Additionally, take a look at our comparability chart to steer your decision-making. In any other case, we divided this listing into helpful classes so you may simply discover the perfect girls’s mountain bike shorts in your wants.

Editor’s Notice: We up to date our Girls’s Mountain Bike Shorts information on June 25, 2024, with the addition of a number of new fashions, together with the Curious Creatures Ramble Scramble and Marilyn Shorts, in addition to the reasonably priced Flylow Lola Shorts.

The Greatest Girls’s Mountain Bike Shorts of 2024

Better of the Relaxation

Girls’s Bike Shorts Comparability Chart

 How We Examined Girls’s Mountain Bike Shorts

The GearJunkie testing workforce is made up of newbie to professional highway cyclists, bikepackers, mountain bikers, and racers. We’ve ridden cross-country and steep alpine trails all around the West, together with in competitions, whereas bikepacking throughout the Rockies, and on self-supported journeys just like the 142-mile Kokopelli Path.

Girls’s mountain bike shorts are important for staying comfy whereas in movement and loading the bikes, hanging out with mates, or establishing camp after protecting miles. Over time, we’ve examined many alternative mountain bike shorts, and this listing includes the perfect of the perfect.

To level, Senior Editor Morgan Tilton has examined mountain bike shorts for near 320 miles of rides with 47,000 toes of ascent/descent in 2023 alone. Apart from testing bike gear, she helps handle the gear-testing flock.

Whereas testing girls’s mountain bike shorts within the subject, we assessed sturdiness, general match, ease of motion, safety, material really feel, breathability, and performance. We’ve examined shorts whereas pedaling in blustery wind, intense solar, rain, and hail storms from close-to-town singletrack to distant backcountry tundra.

Past our workforce’s expertise, we additionally thought of the preferred, extremely rated, acclaimed, and bestselling shorts available on the market, in addition to a broad vary of worth factors, options, and kinds to satisfy the wants of varied forms of bikers. When you’ve one way or the other managed to make it this far however are looking for males’s mountain bike shorts, we’ve examined and reviewed these, too.

Purchaser’s Information: Tips on how to Select Girls’s Mountain Bike Shorts

Chamois

One of many first items of recommendation we give first-time riders is to exit and buy a pair of shorts with an excellent chamois or a padded liner quick to go together with your saggy shorts. It’s the only most essential (and sometimes ignored) piece of substances that can make or break your trip. In spite of everything, we’re speaking about your butt right here! You recognize what we’re speaking about for those who’ve ever skilled a saddle sore. And for those who haven’t, let’s attempt to hold it that approach with a few of our favourite shorts.

Pronounced SHAM-mee, the chamois is the pad that’s sewn right into a biking quick to guard the groin space and sit bones in opposition to the saddle. The chamois is constructed with a pad that has cushioned foam with a variety of densities — some designs supply extra cushion than others. Usually, the supplies additionally wick moisture and are gentle. Carrying a chamois as a substitute of normal underwear additionally eliminates seams, which may rub and trigger chafing.

In mountain bike shorts, the chamois will be built-in into the shorts, however extra usually, the chamois is built-in into a brief, tight-fitting liner worn beneath the outside bike shorts. Some saggy shorts are offered with a chamois liner, which is good to have included within the buy. As a rule, nonetheless, these are sometimes not the perfect. They’re higher than nothing, in fact, however the best-performing chamois are sometimes an aftermarket buy. A few of our favorites are the Shredly YOGACHAM and the Velocio Path Mesh Bib Liner.

Materials

As the value goes up on mountain bike shorts, a part of that tag is protecting the improve to extra premium supplies. No matter worth, practically all mountain bike shorts are made from a mix of polyester or nylon and elastane or spandex that has a little bit of stretch and is meant to dry rapidly.

For instance, the Norrøna Fjora Flex and Norrøna Fjora Heavy Obligation have a troublesome, stretchy material comprised of an artificial mix that gives wind and water resistance, plus it options 50% recycled fibers and a PFC-free DWR. The Shredly Limitless 11″ feels softer and lighter — it’s made with a recycled polyester-spandex mix and prices much less.

The Wild Rye Freel is constructed with a WR Duraflex Nylon (88% nylon, 12% spandex), which is hard in opposition to reachy trailside branches. Comparatively, the Wild Rye Kaweah is made with the WR Bomber Stretch Poly (90% polyester, 10% spandex), a mix that’s nonetheless sturdy however not as robust and at a lower cost level.

Waistband

A variety of waistband designs exist, and they’re distinctive for every quick. What’s most essential is that the waistband doesn’t fold over or pop open or pinch your decrease abdomen whilst you lean ahead in your bike. It’s additionally good to have a waistband with adjustability so you may forgo a belt and tighten your shorts as wanted, particularly if the trip is especially lengthy, sweaty, or wet.

Some fashionable mountain bike shorts include broad, stretchy waistbands to softly and comfortably hug your waist — just like your favourite pair of yoga pants. The Shredly Limitless 11″ shorts are an important instance, and the stretch waist is likely one of the essential causes we like them a lot. Equally, the Curious Creatures Marilyn Shorts have a excessive waist and a easy zipper on the aspect. The broad waistband is tremendous comfy and supplies a flattering match.

Many ladies’s mountain bike shorts have extra conventional waistbands and closures. The Wild Rye Freel shorts, for instance, have a double-snap, zip closure, and large, stretchy width, plus belt loops for those who resolve to go that route. The Velocio Ultralight Path Shorts are comparable, plus they arrive with a stretchy efficiency belt as an added bonus.

For probably the most adjustability, many fashions have adjustable options constructed into the waistband so you may customise the match inside a small vary. Velcro tabs are probably the most widespread methods to do that. Each the Flylow Lola Shorts and the Membership Trip Eden have this fashion of adjustment — each even have belt loops on case that’s your choice. Equally, the Norrøna Fjora Flex each have double-snap closures with a zipper and built-in Velcro adjustment tabs.

Pockets

Pockets will be useful for a spot to rapidly stuff your trip gloves on a snack break or to heat up your fingers whereas tailgating. Different pockets secured with a zipper is usually a great spot to carry a cellphone or bank card, whereas pockets with a snap closure is usually a good place for a snack bar.

Some mountain bike quick designs include minimal pockets just like the Curious Creatures Marilyn, which solely has a single zippered pocket. Different shorts supply tons of pocket choices just like the Curious Creatures Ramble Scramble or the Membership Trip Eden, which have two again pockets, two aspect pockets, and a further pocket with a zipper closure. The wealth of conventional pockets on these shorts is especially purposeful and helpful off the bike.

Most shorts supply one thing in between, with a median of three pockets, just like the Wild Rye Kaweah, which has two hand pockets and one low-down zippered pocket.

In a well-constructed improve, the Shredly Limitless 11″ now incorporates a zippered pocket, and the location is increased on the thigh to assist take away the jostle of a cellphone whilst you pedal. In distinction, many zippered pockets on different shorts are down decrease on the leg and inevitably swing round whilst you trip.

Inseam Size 

The most effective inseam size comes down to private choice, the kind of driving you do, the weather you’ll be driving in, and your fashion. When you’re occurring an extended trip in sunny, uncovered (as in, no tree protection or shade) terrain, take into account sporting longer shorts to guard the tops of your legs from getting sunburned.

Longer shorts also can defend the aspect of the legs from thick brush, tree branches, or bugs for those who’re driving in a buggy space or on a wild, unkempt path. When you’re bikepacking or alpine driving on steep slopes and getting on and off your bike, the longer material also can assist defend your legs from getting scraped up. An extended inseam additionally sometimes performs higher with knee pads and helps to stop pad hole — a spot between the underside of the shorts and the highest of the pad — and is mostly most well-liked by these doing extra aggressive driving.

Shorter inseams go away extra of the thigh uncovered, which can be most well-liked by many girls for fashion functions. The inseam lengths of the ladies’s mountain bike shorts in our information vary from 6 inches to fifteen inches, with 9 to 12 inches being the candy spot for many path rides.

Then, with finely tailor-made inseams to varied feminine physique shapes, Shredly provides an adjusted inseam size for every design and every measurement inside that design. As an illustration, the Limitless 11″ Brief, featured amongst our high picks, has an inseam that varies barely throughout the sizes for a proportional match:

• Dimension 0: 10″
• Dimension 8: 11″
• Dimension 16: 11.5″

Match and Dimension Vary

Most manufacturers supply a measurement run from no less than measurement 0 to measurement 18.

Velocio provides a fair broader measurement vary (XXS-3XL). Extra particularly, the Velocio XXS matches a 22- to 24-inch waist and 31.5- to 33.5-inch hip measurement. In distinction, Wild Rye, for example, begins at a measurement 0, which inserts a 25.5-inch waist and 36.5-inch hip.

Shredly additionally provides a higher number of sizes with a 00 to 24 measurement run (XS-3XL), which begins at a 24-inch waist and 33-inch hips and goes as much as a 43-inch waist and 52-inch hips. Kitsbow’s shorts additionally supply a wider measurement vary with waist sizes from 26 to 37 inches. 

You’ll want to double-check the scale chart for every pair of shorts you take into account shopping for, and to measure your self earlier than making an order or cease by a retailer to attempt on a pair first. Mountain bike quick sizes and the exact measurements for every measurement will not be common and sometimes differ throughout manufacturers.

Worth

Most girls’s mountain bike shorts hover round $100. That features Wild Rye Kaweah ($99), Membership Trip Eden Shorts ($100), and Shredly Limitless 11″ ($108) in our information.

Mountain bike shorts with a extra premium building that’s even harder in opposition to the weather and a beatdown embody the Wild Rye Freel Shorts ($139) and Velocio Ultralight Path Brief ($159).

It may be difficult to search out great-fitting, well-made mountain bike shorts under $100, however the Flylow Lola Brief ($95) impressed us sufficient to develop into our favourite budget-friendly mannequin.

FAQ