fat-bike

The Beargrease is Salsa’s trail-oriented fatbike and in 2015, became the brand’s first carbon fatbike. It was designed to be agile, fast and totally singletrack-capable, dispelling the myth that “fatbikes are slow” (yes, they are slower than an XC race bike but quicker than you think if you’ve never ridden one). As the happy owner of ...

Words by Russ Risdon When I think of Valdez, I visualize steep, backcountry lines accessed by Heli drop for snowboarders and skiers. It is on the top of every adrenaline junkie’s tick list. When I received an email inviting me to come to a festival and ride those same infamous passes on a fat bike, ...

Hello from Salt Lake City! We’re here at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show, checking out some highly unique and interesting bikes and bike-related things from builders around the country and world. This is personally my first time at the show, but it’s been one that I’ve been hearing about for the past several years. ...

Words and photos by Zach White There’s a big part of me that wants to give REEB a huge middle finger of a review due to the simple fact that there was no Oskar Blues beer offered while picking up or dropping off our REEBdonkadonk loaner at their bike-and-taco shop, CyleHops CANtina (Editor’s Note: This ...

Words and photos by Zach White Ask anyone who’s ridden a fat bike in snow, and if they’re the honest type, they’ll tell you how finicky the bikes are about conditions. Specifically, if the snow isn’t hardpacked, riding will be difficult, if not impossible. On soft, ungroomed trail, front tires don’t offer much float or ...

Words by Scott Williams Frozen Fat is a fat-bike-only weekend held in Huntingdon, PA, or more simply, Central Pennsylvania. As evident as it may appear from the event title, I would be willing to bet there are quite a few individuals who ask, “Do I need a fat bike?” The short answer is no, but ...

Words and photos by Zach White It seemed fitting to have a budget-oriented fat bike show up at the doorstep the day after getting back from riding a handful of various all-carbon, high-end fat bikes in Crested Butte during Fat Bike World Championships. Pedaling $5000+ fat bikes around in big, mellow, snowy loops at a ...

Trek designed the Farley EX 9.8 to be a year-round bike capable enough to tackle any trail or weather condition. Fortunately I got my hands on this beauty at just the right time, as we transitioned between a glorious fall and bitter winter. I figured the large 3.8″ 27plus tubeless tires would be a welcome ...

Tester: Jon Pratt Age: 45; Height: 5’10”; Weight: 190 pounds; Inseam: 31” Salsa Cycles is not one to shy away from big tires, so it is only natural to see another one of its bikes with a bit of extra rubber show up at our door for review. This time around it’s the Pony Rustler, ...

The Salsa Mukluk is all-new for 2017. We admittedly almost overlooked this beast. One does not really think about five-inch fatties when it’s 80 degrees and sunny on the site of a mountain bike park. Well, maybe you do. The all-new Mukluk is available in both carbon (pictured) and aluminum. The stiffness of the carbon ...

Blue Bicycles was once based in Georgia but is now in California. It was once struggling to survive but now has new life breathed into it. It was once only (or best) known for triathlon and cyclocross bikes but now has three different mountain bikes in its line. We took a peak at what’s coming ...

This is our third annual roundup of trail bikes that aren’t priced to the stratosphere. We could call them affordable, budget, real-world, blue-collar or college-fund-friendly, but someone would take offense at our assumption of disposable income level. It doesn’t really matter though. These are great bikes for the price, and we’ll leave it up to ...

Fuji’s Bighorn 27plus trail hardtail will recieve an update for 2017 that was showcased at Sea Otter. The bike is ready for whatever with 27.5 x 3.0 Schwalbe Nobby Nics, SRAM GX components, a KS Lev dropper post, internal cable routing, three sets of bottle cage mounts, rack and fender mounts and 120 mm of ...

Bets around the Dirt Rag virtual water cooler (which is located in the virtual Dirt Rag HQ) put money on Trek releasing a 27plus full-suspension trail bike or a Stache 29plus full-suspension ripper. Neither guess was accurate, obviously. Instead, Trek dropped a 27.5 x 3.8 Farley EX trail bike with full suspension at the Sea Otter Classic. Actually Trek ...

I had lots of plans to ride fat bikes this winter. But January seemed to have more days in the 50s than the 30s, and I missed the only real snow storm due to a trip to Chile to ride the new Santa Cruz Hightower. Winter is paying us back with some cold weather, and ...

Words: Sarah Galbraith In parts of our country, when winter takes a firm, frosty grip on your core, some mountain bikers mark the turn of seasons by putting away their bikes and tuning up their skis. But explosive growth in winter fat biking has taken hold in the past few years: Sales grew 44 percent ...

Just so we are clear, this story is about Crested Butte Fat Bike World Championships, as in SSCXWC and SSWC and #fatbikeshit. The acronyms UCI and USAC had nothing to do with the super-fat-tire race that went down last weekend high in the Colorado mountains. Crested Butte, Colorado, claims itself as the birthplace of mountain ...

One of the more interesting features of Ibis’ Tranny 29 hardtail is its two-piece frame. Not only can it be taken apart to fit in a airline-legal bag, it can also be used to tension a chain for singlespeeding. Now you can take your Tranny fat-biking by replacing one piece of that two-piece frame with a ...

Fat bike car racks were a bit slow to come to market even as frames shod with four- and five-inch tires took off out of the gate. Now, RockyMounts is offering a fat bike roof rack for $160. The TomaHawk can fit almost all wheel sizes: 20 inches to 29 inches, and up to 5-inch fat bike ...

Editor’s Note: This bike is part of our annual, sub-$3,000 bike test where the Dirt Rag staff spends significant time aboard less-expensive but fully capable offerings that we’d seriously consider buying ourselves. The final review will be out early 2016 in issue #189. Subscribe today so you don’t miss it! Price: $1,500 The new Wednesday brings ...

Every year for the last few years, Dirt Rag has gathered up a half-dozen or so full-suspension trail bikes for complete testing that fall into the entry-level/affordable/budget category. Yes, three grand is still a lot of money, but good bikes aren’t cheap and this price point is much more reasonable for the average enthusiast rider willing to ...

Fyxation might not be the most familiar brand to mountain bike riders, having started life focusing on the urban riding scene. Which is why this carbon fat bike came as a surprise from a company whose bike line is otherwise a fully steel affair. I asked Ben Ginster, Fyxation’s marketing guy, about the decision to ...

It’s been a busy week in the world of bikes. First and foremost it is Red Bull Rampage week and with that comes all the excitement of the big day which you can watch live on Friday Oct. 25th on Red Bull TV. Outside of the cliffs of Virgin, Utah, there has been a bunch ...

Editor’s note: Here at Bicycle Times we are as mindful of price as you are. So we gathered together a group of six very diverse bikes to showcase what you can find right now at the $1,000 price point. See our introduction here. I’m pretty stoked to be testing the Minnesota 2.0 fat bike from ...

Photos by the author and Anthony Bareno, Velo Cult It’s hard to point a finger at what was the “first” fat bike. Just like the origins of the mountain bike itself, there are several branches in the family tree. This prototype of what would later become the production Hanebrink “Extreme Terrain Bike”—which is still in ...

Some people like to envision tropical scenes when they feel cold in the winter. Here at Dirt Rag HQ, I’m trying something different, something a bit closer to schadenfreude: watching a video of someone train for, then compete in, a fat bike race. The training for the race takes place in New Jersey, and the ...

Carved into the back of the goalpost I tended on the homefield of my varsity field hockey team back in high school was a wise offering: “The only way to beat temptation is to yield to it.” This is what comes to mind when I look out my window to the gray, snowy Pittsburgh I ...

Pivot has revamped their version of a fat bike. The new Pivot LES bumps up the tire size to a 27.5 X 3.8.  Along with the Manitou Masatdon fork Pivot looks to take the fat bike to the next level. From all-day adventures to bikepacking expeditions the new LES Fat seems fit to handle anything that you can ...

Ahh, November. Depending on where you live, you may still have hard-packed— dare I say “dusty”— trails, or you may already be frolicking in a winter wonderland. Here in the mid-Atlantic, we are sludging through the awkward adolescent season of late autumn, where the trails are slick with wet leaves, roots, and rocks, and for ...

Name: Evan Gross Age: 30 Weight: 187 lbs. Height: 6’2” Inseam: 36” Introduced in late 2016, the Big Fat Dummy is not just a Big Dummy (Surly’s original 26-inch wheeled longtail cargo bike) with fat tires, though the name makes it seem as such. But there’s a lot more than just fat tires that separate ...

The Surly Pugsley, one of the original popular fat bikes, got a makeover and is now designed specifically to be an off-road touring and exploration machine. The new “Pugs” features a longer wheelbase for improved stability and handling while loaded, standard Q-factor cranks and plenty of rack and 3-pack mounts to strap just about whatever you’d ...

Photos via Salsa, by Scott Haraldson  Yet another Salsa retains the same name but becomes a notably different bike (see Deadwood, for example). This time, it’s the Blackborow. Formerly Salsa’s five-inch-tire-compatible fat bike with a short rear end and longer front end to retain a snappy “mountain-bike-like” feel, the 2018 Blackborow has taken things in ...