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Last week was easy. Salsa gave us a new Beargrease, 45NRTH gave us a new carbon rim, and actual fat-bike product news briefly fell from the sky.
This week requires a little more digging, which is probably closer to normal for the current state of the fat-bike space.
The good news is that the winter calendar is coming together quickly, and there are still people showing up to races with fat-bikes even though nobody has bothered to provide them with snow.
Let’s get into it.
The Big Stuff
The Fat Bike Birkie Is Back for March 13
The 2027 Fat Bike Birkie is set for Saturday, March 13 in Cable, Wisconsin, with the Big Fat 47K, Half Fat 21K and Fun Fat 10K.
There are a couple of interesting details in the rules this year. The Birkie considers 3.5 inches the minimum fat-bike tire width, which is a bit skinnier than our 3.8-inch Fat-bike.com line in the snow. Class 1 e-bikes are also allowed, although they won’t be eligible for awards or results placement.
That seems like a reasonably adult way to deal with the e-bike question. I saw a bunch of folks having fun on e-fat last year and I don’t think it ruined anyone else’s event. Should they be allowed at other, smaller, venues. I’m thinking not, but let’s see what happens.
The Birkie remains one of the better indicators of where organized fat-bike racing is headed, and I may spend some time this season comparing equipment rules between the bigger winter events. Tire-width minimums, studs, e-bikes and other rules are a lot less standardized than you might assume.
Norpine Remembers That Bike Racing Is Supposed to Be Fun
The Norpine Fat Bike Classic returns January 8-10 around Lutsen, Minnesota.
There are 11.5 and 27-mile races Saturday, but the weekend also includes demos, food, local beer, a winery stop and a Dark Sky Tour. Dark Skies rule!
Proceeds support the local trail organizations doing the grooming and maintenance, which makes the whole thing even easier to like. A good winter event should do more than hand out numbers and record finishing times. Get people somewhere worth riding, give them reasons to stay for the weekend, and help keep the trails running. Dig!
Forty Miles Is Apparently the Beginner Version
The St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra runs January 9-10 in Minnesota’s St. Croix State Park.
Participants cover roughly 40 miles by fat-bike, ski or foot while carrying required winter survival gear. There are also two checkpoints where racers have to demonstrate that they actually know how to use some of that equipment. I like that part.
It’s easy enough to strap a pile of mandatory survival gear to a bike and hope you never need it. Making people demonstrate a few basic skills turns the equipment list into something more meaningful.
The event is positioned as an introduction to longer winter ultras such as Tuscobia, Arrowhead and Iditarod.
So yes, forty miles in a Minnesota winter is the sensible beginner option.
Fat-Bikes in the Wild
Apparently They Still Work Above Freezing
We've spent the last decade largely treating the fat-bike calendar as something that starts when the ground freezes.
Apparently not everybody got the memo.
Michigan’s Dirty Mitten gravel race offered fat-bike divisions at 10, 28 and 50 miles last weekend. Virginia’s Unravel Gravel also included a fat-bike category, and this Saturday’s Traverse City Trails Festival has fat-bike classes at both 15 and 28 miles.
Nobody entering one of these events can claim they need a 4-inch tire. They’re riding a fat-bike because that’s the bike they want to ride.
Which makes me curious: Who are the people still racing fat-bikes all year?
That might be worth finding out.
And if you’re one of those people, I’d genuinely like to hear from you.
Around Fat-bike.com
The New Beargrease
If you missed it last week, Salsa gave the Beargrease a substantial redesign rather than simply hanging a new drivetrain on the existing bike and calling it 2026.
We dug into the new geometry, 27.5 x 4.5-inch tire setup, 26 x 4.8 compatibility, aluminum and carbon frames and new Bearpaw.
The launch also raises a larger question that may be more interesting than the specifications themselves: Why is Salsa investing this heavily in a new fat-bike platform when several major manufacturers have walked away from the category? That’s one I’d like to dig into.
New 45NRTH Carbon Rims
45NRTH also introduced the Levitas, a new carbon fat-bike rim offered in both 26- and 27.5-inch versions.
The interesting detail is that they’re not simply the same-width rim in different diameters. The 26-inch rim uses an 84mm internal width while the 27.5 comes in at 76mm, with each designed around the tire profile 45NRTH wanted for its existing fat-bike tires.
New dedicated fat-bike components don’t exactly arrive every Tuesday, or even every month, anymore, so two meaningful fat-bike product launches in one week is a step in the right direction. Keep ‘em coming!
The Events Calendar Is Growing
The new Fat-bike.com Events Calendar is now the permanent home for the season schedule.
Rather than reproducing twenty event listings in every Weekly Dose, we’ll use the newsletter to highlight what’s coming up and keep the complete list updated on the site.
If you’re putting on a fat-bike race, festival, ride or other winter foolishness and we don’t have it listed, let me know. [email protected]
On the Calendar
Global Fat-Bike Day — December 5
Worldwide.
The annual excuse to find some other people with ridiculously large tires and go ride bikes.
Tuscobia Winter Ultra — January 1
Park Falls, Wisconsin.
Choose from 80, 160 or 320 miles.
Starting January with 320 winter miles seems like an unnecessarily aggressive approach to New Year’s resolutions, but apparently some people are built differently.
Fat Pursuit — January 8–10
Island Park, Idaho.
30K, 60K and 200K routes through the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Norpine Fat Bike Classic — January 8–10
Lutsen, Minnesota.
Racing Saturday, with enough other things happening around it to justify making a weekend of the trip.
Seeley Big Fat Race — January 16
Seeley, Wisconsin.
CAMBA trails, groomed winter riding, food and the Big Fat Raffle.
Fat Bike Birkie — March 13
Cable, Wisconsin.
47K, 21K and 10K on the Birkie Trail.
Here’s Why Experts Say to Ditch Your Old Cutting Boards
Before you prep another meal, here’s what you need to know:
Plastic boards shed microplastic particles into your food with every cut.
Wooden boards trap moisture and food residue, the perfect breeding ground for hidden bacteria and toxic mold that transfers to your food.
One More Thing
There’s something encouraging in the contrast between events like Norpine and the Richard Tom Foundation Winter Fat Bike Rally in Vermont.
Norpine wraps racing inside a whole weekend of trails, food, drink and hanging out. The Vermont event goes even further in the other direction: free trail access, free loaner fat-bikes while they last, group rides, chili and hot cocoa.
For a category that we’re regularly told is shrinking, maybe one of the more useful questions isn’t simply “How many fat-bikes did the industry sell this year?”
Maybe it’s:
“How many places are still giving people a reason to ride one together?”
The answer appears to be quite a few.
That’s the Dose
Winter still isn’t particularly close here in Wisconsin, but the calendar is filling quickly enough that it’s probably time to remember which tire has the slow leak you’ve been ignoring since March.
We’ll keep adding races, rides and gatherings as they’re announced. If you’ve got an event we’re missing, a strange fat-bike project, something interesting happening in your part of the world or simply an opinion about any of this stuff, hit reply or bring it over to the Fat-bike Lab.
Join the Fat-bike Lab — free, no algorithm, just riders helping riders.
See you next week.
Greg
Fat Dash Bike Dot Com
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