Some of you may recall a post (https://fat-bike.com/2022/12/fatbike-to-the-cottage/) and video that I posted back in the winter of me riding to a mountain cottage I use. Well this time I made my way there in summer conditions and by a different route. The weather here in the UK has been a bit below par these […]
I’ve had a few weeks off the bike recently and with the recent summer solstice falling midweek during a decent spell of weather, it was a good excuse to get back out. After finishing a work conference I made the 2 hour drive to the heart of Eryri (formally known as Snowdonia) where I would […]
A few years back, some of our northern Iowa gnome fest cousins started a klunker race, called the Mayday Mayhem. For one reason or another, I hadn’t been able to attend. In the meantime, I urged pretty much anybody that would listen to go in my stead, because, in addition to my obvious fat bike […]
![20230407_201345[1]](https://img.youtube.com/vi/TJD4WRfhLGw/0.jpg "Remote Scotland (100th Film!)")
Back in 2019 I set off from home on what I had hoped to be a 10 hour drive to a destination I wanted to ride, Sandwood Bay in the far north west of Scotland. Unfortunately after a few hours driving my vehicle decided it wasn’t to be, so the plan was put on hold. […]
Having biked on the G2G trail from Guelph to Blyth (Ontario) the previous summer on my first bike pack trip, I was curious to complete the final leg of the G2G trail between Blyth and Goderich. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to introduce my son to bike packing. I took my son […]
One of the reoccurring waves of enthusiasm for two-wheeled fun that I’ve enjoyed over the years has been driven by singlespeed bicycles. It probably was heavily influenced by growing up near Chicago and the Schwinn Bicycle Company. I grew up riding steel singlespeeds. Somewhere in my twenties, I started mountain biking on a steel Rockhopper […]
My bivvy a month campaign is going well this year with some pretty fine camps. This one was up there with the best! The only way is up! Again on familiar territory within the Snowdonia National Park in north Wales, I headed up the second highest mountain in Wales & England. At 3490 feet Carnedd […]
It’s Summer cats and kitties! Have you ridden your bike to a large body of water and then gone swimming? Time to do a cannonball into the deep end!
Last weekend I met up with some of the fat bike guys from the south of England for FatFOD. FatFOD is an annual met up run by Graham Foot of Smokestone bikes. A couple of social days riding the natural tracks close to Gloucester followed by beers in the evening. Big views Saturdays route was […]
You can’t get any further north in Wisconsin than Bayfield County (without a boat). A bit further north, the Apostle Islands are offshore out in Lake Superior and probably worth a whole ‘nuther adventure but today’s story got started with an event called the Superior Vistas Bike Tour held in Washburn, WI. Washburn is on […]
Summer solstice, the fattest day of the year! As part of my bivvy a month challenge, the month of June was slowly nearing its end. With other plans covering the weekend (FatFOD), my only chance of getting a bivvy done in June was going to have to be a midweek getaway after work and try […]
The Sub 24 Hour Overnite or S24O is, yet another, sterling example of bicycle freedom and potentially another excuse to ride your fat bike. I’m quite fond of the S24O. I’ve recently taken a couple of S24O trips to two local remote campsites with different set-ups, just to keep things interesting. My old Surly back […]
The second leg of my recent trip to the Upper Penninsula of Michigan took me to the east side and the tiny hamlet of Moran, home of Bearclaw Bikes. Moran is near the gateway to the Eastern UP not too far from Mackinac Island Ferry but far enough away to fly completely under the radar […]
After being out and about on the bike last weekend I spotted a track about 3 miles away on a hillside and thought “I’ve gotta give that a try”. There’s a track in the distance going between them two hills So 7 days later I headed out to southern Snowdonia in Wales for a bit […]
I’ve had a plan to get up to the UP to ride for at least a couple of years. Ever since Jason at Bearclaw Bikes announced their drop-bar fatty called the TOWMAK I dreamt about returning to the vast Huron National Forest and its hundreds of miles of rustic roads, trails, and beaches. So when […]
We all love making plans of future bikepacking trips, don’t we? Back in October 2019, I set off with a plan of heading up to the Assynt which is in the far north of Scotland for a few days bikepacking. However, after 5 hours of driving, an engine warning light decided to throw those plans […]
Dunes State Park is a great place for fat bikes!
Dan Fedewa sent in this shot, which piqued my curiosity, so I asked him if he could tell us a little bit more about his photo. This is what Dan shared. Sure….crossing the “ice bridge” from St. Ignace Michigan to Mackinac island (British Landing) on February 5th 2022. We rode around the island. The picture […]
As our sun-starved pallid bodies become reintroduced to the bright warm stranger in the sky, I’m compelled to recall a recent last bit o winter biking frolic. During my typical mid-February cabin fever-induced blues I came across a quaint blurb from a bike-minded Gnomish friend talking of turning cranks across a local frozen swamp. Needless […]
For the last dozen, or so, years, my wife, Bethany, and I, have been blessed to live with Bodhi, Cecil & Cowboy. Bodhi and Cecil are both gone now but Cowboy is still around. All three of our boys are what they call Bernese Mountain Dogs. They’re like little bears and they have a thick […]
We’re proud to welcome Nick Tryon to our staff of cycling adventurers. Nick is a former Royal Marine and lives on the West coast of Scotland. Nick loves all things outdoors and is one hell of a great photographer.
Last winter I made a great winter bivvy spot at an old slate mine in one of my favorite spots here in Snowdonia, North Wales. By rigging a tarp over the remnants of an old slate workers’ hut, I had managed to have a great retreat during the colder nights. It helped having a fireplace/chimney […]
Better Late than Never Earlier in April 2021 I got the call up from Uncle Gomez about a ride/race called the Fat Fish Forty, billed as a Fat Tire multi-terrain course I read some of the features of this ride and it sounded challenging as well as scenic, so immediately signed up as I was […]
Back in September, Greg Madison contacted us with some photos that he’d taken at Bruneau Sand Dunes State Park in Idaho. Greg’s a retired teacher and lives in Boise. Bruneau Sand Dunes State Park is a little over an hour away from Boise, so Greg takes his fatty out there when conditions are favorable. Greg […]
One of our Grand Rapids amigos, Thom Goodyke gave me the thumbs up, when I asked him about beach riding conditions on the Michigan side of the Great Lake with the same name. That set my imagination on fire with fat-bike-beach images from the past. I cut my teeth riding mountain bikes in the Wolverine […]
We left St. Paul, Minnesota in the blistering heat of Friday rush hour. Rows of cars stacked on top of each other crawled across ribbons of concrete. My phone pinged with texts from my friends offering advice and well-wishes–reminding me that in seven hours I will be chasing the stars, blinking tail lights, and the […]
I decided that it was high time to get out and ride the Full Monty at Kettle. The Full Monty is a colloquialism for riding the Blue Loop at the John Muir Trail system to the Connector Trail to the Green Loop at the Emma Carlin Trail system. Then back to the connector and home […]
So it was 9 years ago that I toed the line for my first Wausau 24, I was running the 12 hour 2 man Fat Bike class, it was the first year that Wausau had a Fat Bike class and since I had just gotten my first Fat Bike a couple of months earlier I […]
Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to rough it to get your bike-fun merit badge. I’m here to tell you that it’s ok to go glamping or (gasp!) stay in a nice hotel and soak in the hot tub after a day in the saddle. I see a lot of press about riders […]
With things getting back to normal(ish) as far as getting together with friends to ride, I hatched a plan to get together with our resident singlespeed expert, Spinner Ryerson and REEB super-fan JP Syverud so they could ride the Hopptie that we have on loan from Tim at REEB. These cats are both seasoned product […]
Todd Poquette is at it again. He loves creating super hard races in the most secluded spots in the UP of Michigan, changing the course every year. This year he outdid himself. His goal, for participants of the 40-mile event, was to experience Mosquito Gulch. Mosquito Gulch is a long stretch of nasty boulders. There […]
After a couple of seasons of consideration and planning (along with the open calendar created by the covid pandemic ), I convinced two of my friends to join me on a bike pack adventure. Ever since buying my 2015 Norco Bigfoot I have been researching how to go about doing a bike pack trip. I […]
More Poor Choices: The Chequamegon 100 MTB Race – by Greg Gentle My documented life of risk-taking and foolery on the bike knows few boundaries. To keep my streak of poor choices and bad decision-making running strong I decided to race the Cheq 100 mountain bike race in Cable, Wisconsin last weekend. Technically the Cheq […]
I decided to take a ride the other morning with the purpose of comparing a Framed Montana full-suspension fat bike and the Wyatt maverick front suspension fat bike. I basically wanted to see which one was faster. I have a local loop that I like to call the Bandido that consists of chip and seal […]
Over the past year and a half, I’ve been dreaming about bike shenanigans, waiting for a time that we can start to gather together for a good bike party. With the new CDC recommendations for vaccinated people to be able to gather together, Adam Blake and I put together a little get-together with some close […]
I’ve had a busy few weeks getting some fine riding in and a few bivvies to make up for what I’ve missed doing the past few months. One of those bivvies was in my favourite place of Cwm Eigiau. Back in late March I posted a video https://fat-bike.com/2021/03/85-days/ of me checking out future over night […]
Balmy sunny days in the UK With parts of the US experiencing some cold times of late, the UK saw some near record temperatures at the end of March. So with ‘warm’ weather coupled with the start of 2 weeks off work, this was the perfect time to get one of my bivvies in again […]
After a belly full of beer from the night before I somehow got up early and left the house just after 5am. Just over an hour later I was waiting on a hillside for the sun to rise and start the last Sunday of March. I waited for around 45 minutes and soon got cold. […]
GFBD UK Covid Edition The C word has put a downer on many things this year and sadly has caused pain and heartache to many. So this years Global Fat Bike Day ride was going to be a little different for many. You could say it went back to how it was in the early […]
Normally we feature the bike of one of our readers in a Reader’s Ride(s) column, but today we’re taking a look at a ride that Mark “Jake the Snake” Jacobson took last month that is visually stunning. We had featured Jake on Wallpaper Wednesday, and today he’s taking us for a ride in the High […]
A few weeks back I set off to do this bikepacking trip but bailed as I wasn’t in the ‘zone’. I was pretty gutted as the weather was perfect, no wind, no cloud and the chance of a great sunrise. Fast forward 4 weeks and I wasn’t going to let it go as I again […]
3 weeks after filming my SLATE video I made a return to the area as a friend of mine, Allen, really wanted to see the slate sights. So we quickly picked our date and was joined by John Climber. The 3 of us set off on a very humid Sunday afternoon which had plenty of […]
With restrictions being lifted here its great to be able to get out and do what I’ve missed doing for the past few months. So I’ve got some catching up to do! For this bikepacking overnighter I went to a local area that rich in slate history, the Cwmorthin & Rhosydd slate mines. The mines […]
Shortly after launching the #fattestdayride celebration, I started to think about what I should do to celebrate the Solstice. I thought that a pagan weekend of bike chicanery at Levis sounded like a good plan for what mi amigo, Erv Spanks reminded me is the third fat-bike holiday on the calendar. I somehow managed to […]
