A Very Small Adventure on Big Tires

Thank you all for celebrating Fat Bike February with us. The following is a guest post from Nicholas Carman. You can find many more fat biking resources, photos, and stories on Nicholas' blog, gypsybytrade.wordpress.com

My first post on the Adventure Cycling blog detailed my year-long ride aboard a fatbike, including commuting through a snowy winter in Alaska and diverse, rough-stuff summer touring, with a healthy dose of pavement to connect the dots. Next, I described a multi-day fatbike trip here in New Mexico where I encountered a vast range of conditions within a few short days. But not all rides cross continents or encounter sandy arroyos and fresh snow. On some days, I ride out my back door onto a local network of urban singletrack trails along the Rio Grande known as the Bosque. This is not fatbike-exclusive terrain, but the landscape looks much different with such a voluminous tool at hand. Each bike is a lens with which to view the land. While a speedy road bike is a telescope that can see very far away, a fatbike is a microscope that looks very closely and particularly at the ground underfoot. Go near and look hard!

When a friend stopped through town recently, I immediately knew how best to show him around. I borrowed a Moonlander from Two Wheel Drive where I work part-time, and headed for the river. We ducked under branches and clambered over deadfall. We ripped along well-worn singletrack, carving corners in sandy soil. And, inevitably, we charted new routes through sandy arroyos, over unconsolidated mounds, along riverine sediment bars and over remnants of forest fire and flood. It is hard not to go new places on these bikes. This must have been how it felt to get on a mountain bike for the first time in the 80's. It's 1984 all over again, but this time the tires are a lot bigger.

Riding along the Rio Grande river is rather pedestrian by most accounts, as it is flat and non-technical. But with an adventurous eye and big tires, it looks much different.

Flotation: Big tires do help a lot in the sand and snow when those situations arise. The tires on the Moonlander are 5? wide mated to 100mm wide rims. At low pressures (4-8 psi), you can crawl through otherwise unrideable conditions.

Traction: Having lots of rubber on the ground, and a soft tire that can conform to the contours of the land are incredible tools for traction. Consider the natural suspension of 4- and 5-inch tires as well.

Surprisingly, these bikes ride very nimbly. The greatest compliment to a bike is that it rides like a bike. This Moonlander rides like a bike.

Traction while climbing and cornering is superb, even in soft conditions. Note, fatbiking can be a casual affair. Boat shoes will do for a casual ride through the woods. Our ride is much more like a hike, than the no-holds-barred rides shown in mountain-bike magazines.

Scouting the river banks over piles of deadfall is part of the contagion of fatbiking. We have beavers in New Mexico?

Big tires, big rims, and low pressures equal a comfortable, capable ride. This Big Fat Larry tire is mounted to the rim without a tube, but with a liquid sealant which is much better at resisting fatal punctures than typical tubes and sealant. It also makes the wheels much lighter. Such ?tubeless? systems are essential in the prickly southwest.

Speaking of weight, these bikes aren't much heavier than a comparable bike with ?normal? mountain bike wheels. In fact, they may be lighter that your touring bike with racks and fenders. The proof is in the fact that they can get off the ground when you want them to.

Goatheads are a nuisance in southwestern states, and are a blight along disturbed soils such as along bike trails. These tubeless fatbike tires held up to a barrage of nearly 500 goatheads at once.

Of course, a special frame is required to fit such big tires. Such bikes and frames are available from a growing cast of manufacturers and custom builders. Notably, Surly and Salsa fatbikes are available around the country, while 9Zero7 and Fatback Cycles have been leading the industry with innovations from Anchorage, Alaska, which is the fatbiking center of the universe.

Photos by Nicholas Carman.

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NICHOLAS CARMAN left on a bike trip in 2008, and hasn't stopped riding. He shares stories, photographs and ideas at gypsybytrade.wordpress.com.

Source: http://blog.adventurecycling.org/2013/02/a-very-small-adventure-on-big-tires.html

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