Bivvy a Month Challenge Global Fat Bike Day 2018 We all know December 1st 2018 was ‘our’ special day as it was this year’s Global Fat Bike Day. However it was made even more special for me this year as I bagged my final Bivvy a Month for the year. I’ve organised the last […]
Fat Bike Snowdon #BAMfatbike2018 I must admit, I’ve not been ‘feeling it’ the last few months when it came to getting out and that probably showed by the last 3 BAM’s being on the last weekend of the month. I needed that to change, so I picked an area that ‘ticks’ my boxes and […]
Fat Bike to the Bothy #BAMfatbike2018 Despite trying to get more organised with my bivvy a month rides October took place on the last night of the month, Halloween night!! I initially had plans to spend a couple of days on one of the islands on the west coast of Scotland but the impending forecast […]
People like to geek out on gear lists. I am one of those people. I always get ideas by seeing how other people roll. To give back to the bike packing community, here is my addition to the gear list cannon. This is what I used for 18 days and around 800 miles of riding […]
This turned into a two-part podcast because of how long it ended up being. In the first part of the show, Ken interviews Gabe Tiller who is the executive director of the Oregon Timber Trail Alliance and the primary route creator for the Oregon Timber Trail. Here is a link to Ken’s geeky summary of his […]
Burley Design celebrated it’s 40th anniversary this year. The company has grown and changed over the years since, Alan Scholz, co-owner of Burley Bike Bags designed the first Burley trailer to transport his hand-made bags (30 miles) to a market where he sold them each week. Along with the bags, Alan also carried his daughter and […]
QuietKat is not a company I was familiar with until recently. This is mostly because they specialize in e-fat bikes which are not exactly my jam. Based on the QuietKat site it looks like a big part of their clientele are hunters so they offer a single wheel fat bike trailer to haul hunting […]
So bivvy a month number 9 came by way to quick, so once again I got out on the last weekend of the month! Luckily the weather was on my side for this again. Once again I stayed fairly local to me with just a short 25 minute car journey to the start of the […]
Our family spent 3 weeks biking 900 miles in Alaska. This is the third of three parts describing our journey. Read Part One Here and Part Two Here. After a day and a half of rest, much-needed showers, laundry, and resupplying on food, while binge eating pizza and ice cream, we started the next segment […]
Our family spent 3 weeks biking 900 miles in Alaska. This is the second part of three parts describing our journey. Click here to read Part One. Our adventures of fat biking through Alaska began in the city of Anchorage. Anchorage is a typical metropolitan area. There are tall buildings, lots of traffic, and plenty of […]
Alaska, the 49th state, is the largest of the states. It is three times the size of Texas, with 57,432,650 acres of wilderness. Most of this great state is not accessible by road. Of the miles accessible by road, our family tackled 900 miles of Alaska pavement and gravel this August. Our family’s journey, […]
I spied one of the prototypes for the Backcountry Stitch Works (BSW) Aww Snap (strapless) frame bags on Will Ross’ Hawt Pank Langxx last year just around the time of the Fat Nationals in Michigan. I quizzed Will about his fuchsia bike purse and he told me that the bag was pretty sweet. So I tried to get […]
Bivvy a Month #8 – Take Two!! Well, when I set out to do the Bivvy a Month Challenge I knew they’d be challenges. Despite a so far successful year with my rides and the weather, my luck seemed to run out towards the end of August. I had my route planned so I […]
This bikepacking adventure was born out of looking at the map and seeing what looks remote yet kind of flat for the bikes. It was also to tick off visiting another part of Scotland we had not been to before. A small further motivation to visit Loch Etive was to find the location of the […]
This is the second Tuesday in a row that our Fat Tuesday Video carries the #BAMfatbike2018 banner. Last week, the Commissioner of the Bivvy a Month Challenge, Jeff Price posted from the UK and this week…Tom Ice gives us a look at BAM No. 7 from Colorado. I’m gonna go by the sign (with all of the stickers) […]
With the UK still in the midst of a heatwave it made planning this month’s bivvy trip a little easier than normal. Its great to know that you’ve got a good dry spell ahead of you as you don’t need to take much in the way of kit. So for this one as it was […]
Last December we announced the Bivvy a Month Challenge and our amigo, Tom Ice, has stepped up to the plate and is over half way to earning the Bivvy a Month Challenge merit badge. Our challenge will take you on a journey to discover just how much fun, you can tolerate. Are you up to the […]
The Idaho Hot Springs Mountain Bike Route, by Adventure Cycling, is a 517 mile main route, with several single track options. Months ago, we decided we wanted to tackle the main route in whole this summer. We picked two weeks in June after school ended and decided we would start in the Sun Valley area, […]
A Quick Getaway June’s bivvy a month is the halfway mark in this year of adventures. The month of the summer solstice is the main night for spending a night under the stars but as I was too busy for that one I had to squeeze a bivvy in at the end of the month. […]
Not many people drive across Michigan. It’s not on the way to anywhere. It’s the anti-Iowa in the way that I’ve driven through Iowa a dozen times to get to a destination but never had the pleasure of staying overnight. Michigan, like Florida and Maine, is a destination location, unless one is driving to Cuba, New […]
Fat (video) Tuesday returns with the new live double album from ForestyForest recorded on his tour of the Southwestern US. This one sort of grabs you and pulls you in with poignant quotes and beautiful imagery. Check out the Route: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Rzm… Follow ForestyForest on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forestyforest/ Share your Plus or Fat Pixels Give us your tired, your […]
Tom Ice sent us pics from his Bivvy a Month Challenge – #5 BAM for May in picturesque Crystal, Colorado. We debuted the new design for the #BAMfatbike2018 merit badge last week. I should get cracking on getting some of those made. Speaking of getting things made…we were temporarily out of Otis stickers, but we […]
Fat Bike Jura I had a few days spare at the end of May for my 5/12 of #BAMfatbike2018. I must admit I wasn’t feeling like using them up as I wasn’t in the zone for a trip away. However as the weather forecast was looking hot here in the UK it would have been […]
It has been almost 5 months here in Peru and just like any other long stay like that I had the urge to change country, scenery, and experience. Eventually, the constant up and down in the rain can get tedious and all these beautiful mountains and remote mines start blending together into something less […]
Slate The summer made a brief appearance over the UK with a couple for days of nice warm weather so it was initiate #BAMfatbike2018 making this 4/4/ The area I picked is steeped in history as it was once the largest open slate quarry in the world. Slate put Wales on the map was shipped […]
Within the first hour of our five-day bikepacking trip through the White Mountains, north of Fairbanks, we shared the trail with skiers, snowmachiners, one dog team, and a flock of fellow fat-bikers. The area is an oasis for such users, where one can penetrate into the winter-laden woods from the comfort of a groomed […]
Apidura Backcountry Bags With virtually the full set of Apidura’s Backcountry series of bikepacking bags landing on my doorstep you could say I was a little excited to try them out, and with my Bivvy a Month #2 just around the corner you could say it was great timing! As stated on the Apidura website […]
A few months ago, we had decided we wanted to bikepack in Grand Staircase-Escalante. After many weeks of cold and clouds, our family was ready to head south to the desert for spring break. Neither Bryon nor myself had heard of the national monument, until this past year. After spending 3 days riding close […]
Fat Bike Snowdonia #BAMfatbike2018 With the first two camps done and dusted these following months should get a bit easier as the temperatures rising. However the UK saw winter bounce back with some chilling temps which made me bag my March camp near the end of the month. Despite all the planned locations I had […]
Chris Ferguson sent us a shot that he took of his camp on his first overnighter of the year. This is at Sutton Salt lake in central Otago, New Zealand. It looks like a beautiful spot to wake up to, in the morning! Slap this photo up on your computer desktop and you might have […]
Last January we introduced you to the SkiPulk FatBike Pulk Kit. The version we received in the test lab came with the original orange Paris pulk, a black Paris duffle bag, a mountable seat post hitch, and 2 fiberglass poles. Here is the link to the product spotlight for all the specs and initial […]
We’ve been enjoying a set of Bootlegger Fork Bags from our old friends from Oveja Negra. The Bootlegger has a two-liter capacity and is a perfect fit for a Nalgene water bottle inside of a Bar Mitts Winter Bot neoprene sleeve for insulation. They mount directly to the triple cage bosses that come on some […]
Fat Bike Galloway #BAMfatbike2018 After committing myself to the Bivvy a Month Challenge its got me thinking about where to have these mini adventures. With February usually a bit on the chilly side (by UK standards) I had my thoughts on staying in a bothy. A bothy? Let me explain, a bothy is an unlocked […]
For the last few years, I have been searching for the ultimate bike-packing setup. There are definitely no shortages of bag options out there. My preferred bags have been the snack bags that mount on your handlebars. They’re super easy to access and grab something quick without having to stop and they fit multiple […]
The Lookout… The moon and stars aligned for my first bivvy of 12 for 2018 to take place over here in North Wales, UK. The forecast was looking OK for this January bivvy, cold but dry. However, as I don’t have the warmest of kit the thought of being out in the fresh air was […]
Well, it’s our last post of 2017 and instead of looking back on a pretty crazy year, let’s talk about what the plan is for the New Year! Our amigo, Jeff Price, over in the UK suggested that he’d like to engage in a Bivvy a Month in 2018 and I thought that was a […]
We had a week at Ballater in the highlands of Scotland. It was an opportunity to complete a route intended for the bikepacking weekend trip up Glen Tilt earlier in the year. We were to go north from White Bridge up to Corrour Bothy and loop back round back to Glen Tilt and home. […]
Fat bikers of the universe we invite you to join us (relatively speaking) on a year-long adventure, the Bivvy a Month challenge. The bivvy a month challenge is a brainchild of one of the many bike packers that frequent the Bear Bones forum (http://bearbonesbikepacking.co.uk/) in the UK, Kevin Cunniffe aka Blackhound. The rules are simple, […]
A last minute change of plans saw a window of opportunity open up for me to get out in the hills of Snowdonia (Wales, UK) for an overnighter. I had a place in mind as I’d ridden there many times before. For some people bivvying out on your own in an old quarry may not […]
The big surprise at Saddledrive this Summer was the new Salsa Blackborow. Not the same Blackborow that Sven raved about in years past. This is a new mid-tail fat cargo bike that might look like a copy of a Surly Big Fat Dummy, but the Blackborow has significant differences, that start with the frame […]
A couple decades back, my friend Cale and I started a bike gang called the Bike Black Ribbon Society and over the years BBR established chapters all over the US. When we started to need help with testing bikes for fat-bike dot com, we established the BBR Test Pilots from BBR Chapters and their known […]
FATBIKE ADVENTURE THROUGH TAVAN BOGD NATIONAL PARK, ALTAI MOUNTAINS, WESTERN MONGOLIA The first time I went to Mongolia was 4 years ago. As a photographer, I had long wanted to visit the far western part of Mongolia, which shares a boarder with China to the south and Russia to the north. I spent 3 weeks […]
Last year Surly released their full-size “Porteur House” rack bag, designed for their 24-Pack Rack and other platforms of similar ilk. A beast of a bag, you could easily pack a full litter of Schnauzers or four dozen tamales in the Porteur house. Of course, sometimes the picnic is of a more modest size, […]
We’re back in the Cairngorms for a weekend of mountain biking visiting familiar trails in the awe inspiring Scottish landscape and to seek out any news trails that took our fancy. The route we planned took us to the area north east of Aviemore out past Glenmore starting from the other end to the far […]
