Travel Story | Fat Fun with Fat Bikes
“Fat bikes are great,” they said. “Fat bikes are so much fun,” they said. “Fat bikes are so good for riding on the snow,” they said.
With these arguments ringing in our ears, we wanted to get in on the fat bike action. We set our sights high, and that meant we frequently fell – but luckily not that far.
The general population is generally pretty astounded to see a cyclist in winter. But ride by on a fat bike and their eyes will practically pop out of their sockets! For this, and for some other reasons, we decided to conduct our adventure in private. The ride’s goal was to be a mountain peak that had neither a cable car nor a manned hut at the top. And the price of this was hours of power-sapping climbing, half-frozen toes, and numb fingers.
“No one said it was going to be easy,” was the defense I gave our group as their spirits sank for the first time that day. By this point we’d spent more than an hour lugging the nearly 15-kilogram bikes through the forest. Struggling through the variably icy and deep snow, our progress had not been rapid. As soon as you caught your back wheel on a branch or an overhanging tree, you were then subjected to an involuntary snow shower. The group consisted of me, Andi, Daniel, Pirmin and Tyler – a colourful bunch of riders from across the globe with one thing in common: virtually zero familiarity with fat bikes.
For Tyler, our Canadian intern with German ancestors, it was a completely new experience to schlep his bike up the mountainside for such a long time, and one I’d loved to have saved him from. The fireroad that we’d chosen for the climb was pretty much un-rideable given the sheer amount of snow — and that’s with a fat bike.
After a good hour and a half, light began to break through the forest, signaling our entrance to the barren lower part of the mountain peak. The sky, no longer on our side, was gray and there were neither views nor mountain panoramas to be enjoyed. The second dip in motivation reared its head, and the final few metres up to the summit took a lot out of us. The path was much steeper here, and barely used. With every second step we sunk knee-deep into the snow. The wind howled around us, and the weight of the bikes dug into our spines.
When the summit finally came into view, the section just below it offered some much-appreciated shelter from the wind. Like true mountaineers, we’d come prepared with snacks. The Rocky Mountain Blizzard served us well with its frame-attachable bag, which fit our small espresso maker perfectly. Feeling just like Bear Grylls as he tries to make a fire during a monsoon in the jungle, we struggled to get the burner lit with our lousy, wet, cheap lighter. But the gods must have felt sorry for us, and we were finally able to enjoy some delicious summit-style coffee. As the caffeine boosted to our spirits and the skies opened to reveal the Karwendel mountains, we felt revitalized and more than ready for the downhill.
Though perhaps downhill isn’t quite the right word to describe the initial descent… A more apt choice of word would be downfall. Riding in such deep snow wasn’t much of an option (apart from the few metres for the photo), so we mainly went down on our backsides.
Despite the fat tyres, the soft ground didn’t want us to keep the front wheel on track and we kept coming to an abrupt standstill. And once we’d picked up speed, this included the classic over-the-handlebars “endo” move. We each watched in hysterics as yet another one of us had to shake off massive amounts of snow from inside his helmet. We did all admittedly fall at least five or six times in the less wooded parts. The day’s acrobatic feats would surely have made any gymnast green with envy.
The more we descended, the better acquainted we got with the handling of the fat bikes. The hardest aspect of them is managing your weight transfer: too much pressure on the front wheel causes the bike to stop, and with too little the bike goes into autopilot with you as the passenger.
Yet once you’ve found the perfect balance and some traction on the ground, then fun is guaranteed. Just like Olympic bobsledders, we soon were flying along the trails. With 50-centimeter-high snow-walls on either side of us — which occasionally doubled as berms — the blanket of snow had transformed these bumpy, rock-strewn summer trails into the purest flow trails, with not a trace of unevenness. With every corner our confidence increased in the grip of the tyres. But then, before we knew it, we paid for this with yet more crashes. By that point, however, even the endos couldn’t wipe the grins off our faces.
In the end, we all agreed that despite the less-than-ideal conditions and our occasional motivational lapses on the climb, it had been an incredible day. Of course, just like the stunned hikers at the bottom of the mountain, one could ask what real purpose fat bikes serve. We would have been far quicker and safer on skis – or perhaps even without a bike. But trust us, it wouldn’t have been half as much fun.
They were right:
Fat bikes are great. Fat bikes are so much fun. Fat bikes work in so many conditions – and particularly well on snow.
Words & Photos: Christoph Bayer