February hasn’t been an easy month. Check out this morning’s post for details. So when the weekend was sunny, warm, and snowy our thoughts turned to fat biking on local trails. Thanks Sarah for the nudge! It’s a thing lots of people are curious about. People love to ask questions about our bikes. And it’s not often a thing you get to do in warm-ish weather. I think it was -2 when we set out.
We started out on the trails that run along the river by the golf course near our house. We ran into a guy on a mountain bike who was just coming home from a 50 km ride in the snow. We chatted bikes for a bit and he took our photo. Thanks cyclist stranger!
The trails where there was a lot of traffic were wide and flat and the snow was pretty packed. We could ride along and easily get out of the way for the occasional dog walker we ran into.
But our first obstacle wasn’t far away. The bridge was out at our usual storm drain crossing.
We considered crossing by carrying the bikes–despite their size they’re pretty light–but we were both worried about the ice on the rocks. It looked slippy, also cold and wet if you fell. So instead we went up and over above the drain. That was an adventure. We both fell but no one got hurt. Just then two cyclists arrived from the other direction. One of them went across–he had a mountain bike–and the other fat biker rider like us went up and over.
That’s part of the fun of riding these bikes, figuring out what you can and can’t do. Also, ducking for tree branches.
Here’s a skinny bridge we could have ridden over I suspect. But we both got off and walked our bikes across.
It’s after this stretch that things got interesting. Off the well trodden path, we were riding in some pretty narrow single track. And these bikes have pretty wide tires. More problematically if you stop at all it’s hard to get started again.
The snow off to the sides was soft and very deep. I think we each fell a couple of times into the deep stuff and then settled into walking our bikes for a bit. Eventually the path widened and there was more hard packed snow to ride on.
After a couple of hours of snowy trail riding, we exited the path and rode home on the roads. Last night we were both feeling a little worse for wear. The bikes are fun to ride but it’s very much a full body workout. We agreed that we need to work on not stopping! Also, less falling! And we need to practice starting again when we do stop. Also, less tire pressure would have been good for the softer sections.
It’s a ton of fun. If you want to give it a try and you’re near us they rent them in Horseshoe Valley. That’s where Sarah and I rented them for the first time. We blogged about it here. Later we went with Susan as a social outing for our bike rally team. Susan blogged about that trip. We’ve rented them at Tremblant and blogged it here. I’ve also rented a fat bike at Wildwood Conservation area and blogged about that too.
Got any questions? Send them out way!
