At Fat-Bike.com, we want to help people find the very best trails for riding fat bikes. Right now the best resource for finding and navigating groomed trails is Trailforks.com. By using the filters for the map display, you can select mountain bike trails that are groomed and sometimes specific to winter riding. To save our readers a bit of trouble, we now have embedded that winter trails view on our new Map of Groomed Fat-Bike Trails Page.
While the Trailforks app works pretty well, and has a LOT of trail systems in it, we think Ride With GPS offers some unique features that make it a better tool to find new places to ride and to inspire other riders to visit. For instance, I often use Trailforks to navigate my local Chequamegon Area Mountain Bike trails. But when I am looking for new places to ride, I prefer to check out the custom maps on other websites like the routes map on Bikepacking.com or The Nxrth.com’s maps for the Upper Midwest.
The functionality of those custom RWGPS-based maps allow me to click on a Trailhead POI to follow a link to another internal page on the site with very digestible information about the trails. The pages not only include trail route tracks, but also nice photos in an attractive layout around stories with suggestions about which trails to ride depending on abilities, where to eat, where to find a good local craft beer, where to stay, and some history and general information about the areas.
Sven and I would like to build out a similar custom RWGPS-based map of reader-curated places to ride fat bikes all around the globe. To do this, we are going to need your help. You all have the local knowledge we need to suggest where to ride, where to eat and drink after the ride, and to share what makes your favorite trails special. To get things rolling, and gather your local intel, we have created a Google Form that asks some basic information.
The form will add some standardization to the map. Once we start filling out a map with that basic information, those readers with a ton of great photos or videos and the time and inclination to write up a compelling story about their area trails can submit more to us and we will build out those pages. This is going to take some time, but we hope you share our stoke about the project. We will try to start the process by creating some pages for trails we ride here in Wisconsin and reaching out to some trail stewards we know can quickly get us info about the trails they ride and maintain.
But if you are at all interested in sharing the trails where you like to ride, please take the time to fill out the Google Form below. It asks a few questions you might need to search online to answer, like average annual snowfall and days below freezing, but it should not be too much trouble. And if you have suggestions for how we can improve this map or build it out faster, let us know in the comments below. Until then, as our Northwoods neighbor Jeremy Kershaw says, ride the good line…
