OutDoor Demo this year. The fact that most bicycle manufacturers are producing one or more models of fat bikes and that they are already sold out for this year proves that “it is not just a fad, it’s a sustainable family of bikes,” he added.
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trails,” and the Methow Valley is providing a kind of test case, he said. What is that? Fat bikes attract attention because they’re new and because they’re, well, fat. They are specially made bicycles with ultrawide tires that can be run at very low pressure. The average mountain bike is designed for tires measuring between 1.5 and 2.5 inches, whereas fat bike tires run from 3.7 up to 5 inches wide. A very low tire pressure on a standard mountain bike would be 20 pounds per square inch (psi); fat bikes can roll as low as 2 psi. In general, high-volume, low-pressure tires have more surface area in contact with the ground, which allows them to conform to trail irregularities and increase traction as well as comfort. On snow, fat bikes are described by riders as floaty, stable and fun. While most fat bikes are ridden in the snow, many people have begun using them year-round as their primary mountain bike since the newer, lighter bikes “offer a ride comparable to their full-suspension mountain bike counterparts,” according to Joe Brown, co-owner of Methow Cycle and Sport. Brown reports that fat bikes were highly visible at the Interbike trade show’s two-day
Photo by Stephen Mitchell
Several groomed, multi-use trails in the valley are open to fat bikes.
A recent phenomenon “Something finally clicked in the last couple years and it really took off,” said Stephen Mitchell, bike aficionado and owner of the Rocking Horse Bakery in Winthrop. Mitchell stands among the pioneers of fat biking. He was living in Seattle in 1987 when he first heard about the 200-mile Iditabike race that had premiered that year in Alaska. The next winter Mitchell traveled to Knik, Alaska, to ride in the second Iditabike. He describes the ordeal of walking his bike for 60 miles of the 200-mile course that year because the snow was so soft. “It was long before fat tires. We were using standard mountain bike tires and didn’t even know that letting air out would help,” he said. Mitchell went on to ride the Iditabike five times over a six-year period, and was race director in 1990. That year Mazama’s Dave Ford, riding a bike with two rims laced to the hub and double tires front and rear, was declared the winner when all the racers decided to quit after slogging through the first 50 miles of heavy fresh snow, Mitchell
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