Fat Tire Frenzy

Every few years someone comes up with a new way to ride a bicycle.

The latest version of fun biking is the “fat bike.”

These beefed-up mountain bikes sport huge, fat tires giving you traction and stability like nothing you’ve ever ridden.

My son and I tested a couple of these bikes Saturday on Blacktail Mountain, which is a perfect venue for mountain biking. There are steep single-track trails, plus miles of old logging roads. Get someone to drop you off at the top of the mountain, next to the radar tower, and you can enjoy hours of exciting riding, all the way back down to Lakeside.

The bikes work well in sand, gravel, mud, rock and snow. There was a little bit of mushy snow left around the summit of Blacktail, and the bikes struggled through the unpacked snow. But on packed snow the bikes worked extremely well.

The big, fat tires give you a sense of stability and traction not felt in traditional mountain bikes. On Blacktail Mountain Road we were hitting speeds over 30 mph and loving every minute of it.

“They are outrageous. You name it you can do it,” Renny Johnson, owner of Montana Adventure Sports in Bigfork, said. “They’re like a monster truck of bikes.”

The bikes work great in urban conditions, also. Johnson said he met a man this week who is riding a fat bike from Washington to Maine.

The idea behind the fat tires is that by putting on a bigger tire, you not only have more stability, you have a soft ride. With the fatter tires the bikes don’t need suspensions, which adds weight to the bikes. However, some manufacturers are adding full suspensions to the bikes, so that then the tires are inflated higher the bikes don’t bounce as much.

The bikes really shine in winter, when streets and trails are frozen. Last winter bikers were using them on the frozen sand of the north shore of Flathead Lake, riding from Bigfork to Somers.

Last weekend we rode through untrammeled terrain in forests, easily riding over logs and rocks. The bikes are like fat skis: they make an old sport fun again.  

Fat bikes are useful for hunting. Johnson said you can load them with over 50 pounds of gear — or elk or deer.

“They’re just fun all-around bikes,” Johnson said.