Inside Line: Fatback launches two new fat bike frames

One of the original trendsetters in the fat bike market was Fatback out of Anchorage. Pioneers of the wider hub spacing that made 4-inch tires possible in the first place, the company’s latest products continue to push the envelope of fat bike mountain biking. Both are suspension corrected for the RockShox Bluto fork and presumably new suspension forks to come.

The carbon fiber Skookum was built to handle not like the trumbling fat bikes of yore, but like a modern mountain bike, with shorter chainstays (440 mm) and a slacker head tube angle (68.5 degrees) while still making room for 4.8-inch tires thanks to the 197 mm thru-axle. There’s also internal routing for a dropper post and can fit 27plus and 29plus rims and tires too.

It will be available in three sizes and four complete bike build kits, as well as a frame-only.

The new Rhino frame takes the attitude of the Skookum and adds a bit of versatility with rack mounts and the sliding dropouts give it the ability to run geared or singlespeed, or even with an internally geared hub now that Rohloff is making fat bike versions. The aluminum frame ships with a matching aluminum fork but build kits are available with Bluto forks or the Lauf leaf spring forks. It too can fit 4.8-inch tires on 100 mm rims as well as 27plus and 29plus.

The Rhino is available in five sizes and two colors, blue or green.