I think you should get one. I am selling my beloved Fender Amp to get one...Sounds like a plan.
Nooooooooo!
Bullshit.
I have many miles under my belt on bikes with 2.25" tires in the winter, with and without studs, and it was fun.
Ditto on the Moonlander with 4.8" tires.
The Moonlander has also done 60 mile road rides and a lot of technical terrain in all seasons. It's not better or worse than the Tracer, it's different. Quit fucking theorizing, get on a bike, ride it and enjoy it.
i remember getting schooled by Fat bike riders at Spear during the monkey fest.
Dude, I ride 6/7 days a week all year long. I know what works in our hood.
Some of the problems I see though are that while the drivetrain usually does outstanding in the winter and cold, winter and the cold is the enemy of anything pressurized with seals, so forks, shocks and dropper posts. So while you can get out and ride the trails a lot of the time in the winter, it's not the best for the bike and in many cases it does some damage, vs. being able to just go out at any time/temp. The wider tires give a lot more grip on the trails too, vs. when someone rides a skinny bike and you can see them sliding all over the place from their ruts. Sometimes, when the trails pack way down, or we get a bunch of freezing rain, skinny bikes with studs are the way to go for a while. Fat bikes with studs still work, but not as well. For a lot of places, the fatbikes blast winter riding into something that can be sustained throughout the season that can be done with similar effort and frequency to summer riding. The little kids doing the XC school/club ski lessons go nuts when we pass them on fat bikes, as in they wish they didn't have those dumb sticks on their feet and they wish they were with us. Last winter we got storm after storm though and it seemed we were out there every week with snowshoes and skis packing down trails. It didn't take much before you could ride through on super-low pressure 5" tires, but it took a while before it really packed down to where you could actually ride with some speed. In those conditions, skinny bikes didn't have a chance. Still, I've ridden in Snow all the way from here to Arizona. The difference in Arizona was that I just didn't have the gear I have now that makes it downright enjoyable. I remember one ride I went out when it was showing 5° in town in Arizona and up in the mountains I'm sure it was less. I quit after about 30 minutes and swore it off as the worst idea and ride I'd ever had. Was woefully unprepared for that.
Even Hipsters who treat bikes like fashion accessories as they smash themselves into parked cars while trying to ride in traffic on fixed gear bikes without brakes ?
Chopped Salami and eggs. shallots and grated cheddar and hunks of swiss.
I will say that woodrow's bucksaw was pretty cool in mixed, shitty conditions. It gripped in corners at RM that were covered in hard pack snow and ice. I think studs would have a hard time gripping on rocks that are everywhere and regular tires would get bogged down wherever it got deep. I think I'd want a good 3.8 or 4.0 tire, rather than the 4.8s he was running, and certainly lower tire pressure, but that bike was downright fun, rather than nervous, in terrible conditions to ride bikes in.
I do think that people get confused with tire width vs conditions. There's the whole "dick measuring" thing with everybody needing 5" tires, but those are really only good for vermont and minnesota where you get miles of packed snow.
NEMBA? I hated what they did to Great Brook after they had their way with the trails. Technical places I had spent years trying to clear were reduced to rock armored paths. It was a shame.
Yeah. I refuse to get organized in any fashion (got enough of that in my childhood) but I've heard from a friend they are seriously debating building bridges over rocky sections now etc.
Future of mountain biking on the east coast. I am expecting most of our trails to be either paved or shut down in the next 25 years.
Wait for self-riding e-bikes! The future is bright.
might have to engage yourself in some strava terrorism
Wasting a perfectly good export. The rest of us could use those East Coast Rox to liven up our perfectly smooth dirt paths with nary a rock, root, or tire track from people riding when the trails aren't ride able in sight!.
believe it or not, this is a real issue. as the trails get snowed in and packed down, they get smooth and fast. There's a few KOMs that were nabbed in the winter, that are at least 30% faster than in the summer. It would be nice if Strava made fatbiking a different sport than mountainbiking. It would be nice if Strava could make mountain biking a different sport than road biking for that matter... but that's an issue for a separate thread!
Yeah, as much as I'm getting used to it, and it's kinda cool to see progress over time, I'm beginning to feel like it doesn't really add anything useful to the experience...
Still thinking about becoming a chubby rider for the winter.
I like the idea of trying to find a narrower q-factor fatty but it doesn't look like there's much mainstream choice beyond the Rocky Mountain Suzi Q...
I like the idea of trying to find a narrower q-factor fatty but it doesn't look like there's much mainstream choice beyond the Rocky Mountain Suzi Q...
Check out the Fat Caads.they have reasonable Q. Love my Fat Caad 2. Bud and Lou at 5psi just rolls over anything. (Except pavement, awful on the road linking trails.)
When I get on the 27.5 or 29er in the spring after riding the fatbike all winter I say "WTF is this and how the hell do people ride these cranks/BBs without crashing their feet into the stays all the time, I feel like I'm on a clown bike with tiny pedals!".
IME, it feels a little odd at first, but you adapt just fine, if anything it's closer to how most people stand, but when you change it up it feels weird as hell for a while (either way).
I have never noticed the BB width difference, but do notice the light/twitchy feeling when getting back on the Tracer in the spring.
yeah, me too. But it's more of a "oh, you have to lean the bike to turn" sort of feeling instead of turning bars...
We got about half an inch of snow on ice, ice below because it's been raining for the last few weeks.
You can grip just fine on solid ice, with studs, with winter tires. You'd be amazed how well winter car tires can grip ice, it's not nearly as slippery as you think in the cold.
Snow is the same, gripping cold snow can be quite good, like sand, dirt, etc.
But snow sitting (un-bonded) on top of ice? That is the FUCKING MOST EVIL THING EVER IN THE WORLD.
Did some riding tonight, it was rowdy, almost crashed 3 times, one of which almost flung me off the bike path and into the freaking high-traffic road on the way home (mind you, there's an elevated bank of ice and frozen crap in between, but this evil snow on ice had no problem slingshotting me up that way). I can stand for less excitement. I hope we get some actual freaking winter again soon.
You can grip just fine on solid ice, with studs, with winter tires. You'd be amazed how well winter car tires can grip ice, it's not nearly as slippery as you think in the cold.
Snow is the same, gripping cold snow can be quite good, like sand, dirt, etc.
But snow sitting (un-bonded) on top of ice? That is the FUCKING MOST EVIL THING EVER IN THE WORLD.
Did some riding tonight, it was rowdy, almost crashed 3 times, one of which almost flung me off the bike path and into the freaking high-traffic road on the way home (mind you, there's an elevated bank of ice and frozen crap in between, but this evil snow on ice had no problem slingshotting me up that way). I can stand for less excitement. I hope we get some actual freaking winter again soon.
Luckily we don't have ice like that here. Its either powder or crushed down dense snow with a crusty layer on top.
I'm probably dumb, but my buddy reports that it snowed about a foot last night. I'm going to go up to the big hills and try to roll down them. It'll definitely be hike a bike back up...
I'm probably dumb, but my buddy reports that it snowed about a foot last night. I'm going to go up to the big hills and try to roll down them. It'll definitely be hike a bike back up...
A foot is usually way too much to ride, I've managed around 8" or so of light dry downhill, aided by the slope to push through. The thing is the more snow you get, the harder you need the base below to be, to ride, sometimes just 4-5" is a crazy amount of fun and more work than you can imagine on the flats and uphills. Even just a couple inches is a blast. Usually with more than 5-6, you gotta go out and pack it down with snowshoes, skis, etc. It's got to settle too. Good luck, let us know. Looks like we are getting more rain today here in AK, was above freezing again last night.