Person Mountain Biking Emoji

A person riding a mountain bike, typically shown climbing or traversing a dirt trail. Most platforms draw the rider standing on the pedals in a ready stance, helmet on, posture aggressive. 🚵 is the off-road specialist. For pavement cycling, users reach for 🚴 Person Biking instead.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as 'Mountain Bicyclist,' a separate codepoint from 🚴 since day one. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Renamed to 'Person Mountain Biking' in Emoji 4.0 (2016) when gendered ZWJ variants 🚵‍♂️ and 🚵‍♀️ joined. Five skin-tone modifiers.

Mountain biking as a sport is much younger than 🚵 suggests. It was invented in the 1970s on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California, by a group of teens modifying pre-war balloon-tire bikes to bomb down fire roads. The first documented race was Repack on October 21, 1976.

🚵 is rarely used metaphorically. Unlike 🚴, which doubles for commuting and triathlon content, 🚵 stays literal: dirt trails, singletrack, downhill parks, enduro, and gravel rides when they tilt technical enough to read as MTB rather than road-adjacent.

Where it shows up: - Strava and Trailforks ride posts - Red Bull Rampage, UCI Mountain Bike World Cup, and Enduro World Series coverage - Bike park content (Whistler, Squamish, Bentonville, Moab) - Trail building and advocacy posts - 'Type 2 fun' captions for sufferfests that were worth it

Gravel cyclists have a minor identity war going about whether 🚵 or 🚴 represents them better. Gravel is closer in culture to road, but 🚵 often wins for technical routes or bike-packing content.

Mountain biking started on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California, in the late 1960s. A group of teenagers called the Larkspur Canyon Gang rode 1930s and 1940s balloon-tire 'clunkers' on fire roads, the first real off-road bike culture.

The sport's most mythologized event is Repack, a downhill race on a fire road west of Fairfax, first run on October 21, 1976. Ten local riders showed up. The road dropped 1,300 feet in 2.1 miles. Alan Bonds won because he was the only one who did not crash. The name 'Repack' came from the need to repack coaster brakes with grease after each ride; the heat from braking would vaporize the old grease entirely.

The sport's founding fathers are Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze, Tom Ritchey, Charlie Kelly, and Keith Bontrager. Breeze built the first purpose-designed mountain bike frames, 'Breezers,' between 1977 and 1978.

Mountain biking reached the Olympics in Atlanta 1996, only cross-country (XC) format. Italy's Paola Pezzo won the first women's gold; Netherlands' Bart Brentjens took men's. Downhill, the discipline that birthed the whole sport, is still not an Olympic event.

The 🚵 emoji was approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as 'Mountain Bicyclist,' as a separate codepoint from 🚴 from the start. Both were among the original SoftBank emoji absorbed into Unicode.

1. 2010Approved in Unicode 6.0 as 'Mountain Bicyclist,' a separate codepoint from 🚴 Bicyclist
2. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0 with color emoji presentation
3. 2016Gender variants 🚵‍♂️ and 🚵‍♀️ added in Emoji 4.0; base renamed to 'Person Mountain Biking'↗
4. 2020Samsung, Google, and Microsoft refresh 🚵 with more realistic MTB geometry (shorter chainstays, dropped post) to match modern bike silhouettes

Mountain biking has been male-dominated both historically and in current participation, but women's MTB has grown significantly since the 2010s. Riders like Rachel Atherton, Tahnée Seagrave, Kate Courtney, and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot carry huge followings. Women-specific clinics and events (Sturdy Dirty, The Canadian Open, MTB Summer Camp for women) have driven the growth. 🚵‍♀️ sees growing use, especially in race coverage and trail-advocacy posts. Base 🚵 originally rendered male on most platforms.

• •Mountain biking was invented on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The sport is not even 60 years old.
• •The first organized mountain bike race was Repack on October 21, 1976, a 2.1-mile downhill fire road dropping 1,300 feet. 10 riders showed up. Alan Bonds won because he was the only one who did not crash.
• •'Repack' is named after the ritual of repacking coaster brakes with grease post-race. Braking down the mountain vaporized the previous grease entirely, leaving the hub dry.
• •The first purpose-built mountain bikes were the Breezer frames built by Joe Breeze between 1977 and 1978. Before Breezers, riders used modified pre-war Schwinn balloon-tire cruisers.
• •Mountain biking debuted at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics, only in cross-country format. Italy's Paola Pezzo won the first women's gold; Netherlands' Bart Brentjens took men's.
• •Whistler Bike Park opened in 1999 and accelerated the mainstreaming of lift-assisted downhill. It records over 100,000 unique rider visits per summer.
• •Squamish alone has over 300 kilometers of MTB trails, named by Mountain Bike magazine as one of the top 25 wildest places to ride in the world.
• •🚵 has been a separate codepoint (U+1F6B5) from 🚴 (U+1F6B4) since Unicode 6.0 in 2010. They were never combined; the distinction between road and mountain cycling was baked in from day one.