Getting Low- Fat Bikes and Snow
Photo:Jeb Wallace-Brodeur- Bike Mag
2.21.17
By Chuck Zangara
Winter's Back! There’s a couple feet of snow on the ground. You want to ride. You grab your trail bike, deflate the tires to 25 PSI, and head out to your local trail. Today you’re lucky: snowmobilers have run the trails and packed the snow. That will make it easier. Probably.
The trail starts with a descent into a series of flat-corner turns. In early fall, after some rain, the dirt here gets loamy, and your bike’s tires rail into the turns as if on tracks. But today you’re hoping to just build enough momentum in the snow to drift through the corners.
You commit. You mash the pedals and actually gain some momentum. Mashing might work, you think, as you sight the entrance to the first corner just ahead. Then your front tire crashes through the hard-pack, and you are thrown unceremoniously over the bars. Lying in the snow, you hear the Woods whisper “try a fat bike”.
The Woods don’t lie. It’s true, on a fat bike, the 4+ inch tires, inflated to a ridiculously low 4-8 PSI, act like snowshoes, keeping the bike hovering on top of the snowpack while maintaining excellent grip. While fat bikes do no better or worse than a trail bike on wet, slushy snow or ice, they are serious fun on groomed trails.
If you haven’t tried a fat bike yet, the Round Top Mountain Bike Association (RTMBA) in Round Top, NY is holding its annual fat bike festival on February 26, 2017 (depending on weather), and you can get a guided tour and hot lunch for a $20 donation. A dedicated and genuinely friendly bunch of folks, the RTMBA groom and maintain the trails with snowmobiles, creating the kind of tight-packed snow that is the fat bike’s domain.
If you’re in the market for a fat bike, what should you consider? First, a fat bike behaves differently than a trail bike. The combination of large tire and rim width size, coupled with low PSIs square off the tire’s contact with the ground in such a way that the tire begins to move laterally, causing the bike to independently steer itself into a turn without much input from the rider,auto-steering. You can correct this through design options such as choosing a wheel with a narrower profile, and on-trail modifications like inflating the tires with a few more PSI.
Also, consider the degree of optionality you want with your bike — and the compromises that you may need to make to achieve that optionality. If you plan to ride the bike year-round, you may want to swap out the snow balloons for a narrower width tire and go from a 29” inch wheel to a 27.5. Several models, like the Salsa Beargrease and Trek Farley, can accommodate wheel-size changes. Keep in mind that wheel width and size variations can affect the way the bike handles by changing its geometry.
Finally, consider whether you want a rigid, hardtail or full-suspension set-up. All three offer a different ride experience with unique advantages and disadvantages. Having said that, frame and suspension designers have begun to hit the sweet spot of pedaling efficiency and active travel in such a way that a full-suspension bike can perform extraordinarily well across a variety of disciplines. Of course, a full-suspension bike will never have the out-of-the-gate speed of a rigid, nor the extraordinary sensitivity to trail input of a rigid or hardtail. But, neither of those will recover fast enough to let you hover over roots and rocks when the trail points down.
For information about the RTMBA and the fat tire festival, go to the RTMBA’s website .
By Chuck Zangara
Winter's Back! There’s a couple feet of snow on the ground. You want to ride. You grab your trail bike, deflate the tires to 25 PSI, and head out to your local trail. Today you’re lucky: snowmobilers have run the trails and packed the snow. That will make it easier. Probably.
The trail starts with a descent into a series of flat-corner turns. In early fall, after some rain, the dirt here gets loamy, and your bike’s tires rail into the turns as if on tracks. But today you’re hoping to just build enough momentum in the snow to drift through the corners.
You commit. You mash the pedals and actually gain some momentum. Mashing might work, you think, as you sight the entrance to the first corner just ahead. Then your front tire crashes through the hard-pack, and you are thrown unceremoniously over the bars. Lying in the snow, you hear the Woods whisper “try a fat bike”.
The Woods don’t lie. It’s true, on a fat bike, the 4+ inch tires, inflated to a ridiculously low 4-8 PSI, act like snowshoes, keeping the bike hovering on top of the snowpack while maintaining excellent grip. While fat bikes do no better or worse than a trail bike on wet, slushy snow or ice, they are serious fun on groomed trails.
If you haven’t tried a fat bike yet, the Round Top Mountain Bike Association (RTMBA) in Round Top, NY is holding its annual fat bike festival on February 26, 2017 (depending on weather), and you can get a guided tour and hot lunch for a $20 donation. A dedicated and genuinely friendly bunch of folks, the RTMBA groom and maintain the trails with snowmobiles, creating the kind of tight-packed snow that is the fat bike’s domain.
If you’re in the market for a fat bike, what should you consider? First, a fat bike behaves differently than a trail bike. The combination of large tire and rim width size, coupled with low PSIs square off the tire’s contact with the ground in such a way that the tire begins to move laterally, causing the bike to independently steer itself into a turn without much input from the rider,auto-steering. You can correct this through design options such as choosing a wheel with a narrower profile, and on-trail modifications like inflating the tires with a few more PSI.
Also, consider the degree of optionality you want with your bike — and the compromises that you may need to make to achieve that optionality. If you plan to ride the bike year-round, you may want to swap out the snow balloons for a narrower width tire and go from a 29” inch wheel to a 27.5. Several models, like the Salsa Beargrease and Trek Farley, can accommodate wheel-size changes. Keep in mind that wheel width and size variations can affect the way the bike handles by changing its geometry.
Finally, consider whether you want a rigid, hardtail or full-suspension set-up. All three offer a different ride experience with unique advantages and disadvantages. Having said that, frame and suspension designers have begun to hit the sweet spot of pedaling efficiency and active travel in such a way that a full-suspension bike can perform extraordinarily well across a variety of disciplines. Of course, a full-suspension bike will never have the out-of-the-gate speed of a rigid, nor the extraordinary sensitivity to trail input of a rigid or hardtail. But, neither of those will recover fast enough to let you hover over roots and rocks when the trail points down.
For information about the RTMBA and the fat tire festival, go to the RTMBA’s website .
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Chuck Zangara is lawyer and mountain-biking writer living in New Paltz. He rides trails throughout upstate New York and northern New Jersey. Chuck has been mountain biking for over 20 years, and last year raced in the 50+ open men's class in the Eastern States Cup Downhill race series. When not spending time with his family or riding, he offers trail guiding and bike maintenance clinics. |
