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I just read an article about a Fat Bike Summit that was recently held in West Yellowstone, but the article was more of a general overview of the sport of Fat Biking. If you don’t know much about it yet, be sure to click on over and read the entire thing:
The last few paragraphs talking about the riding opportunities available for fat bikes (there were other mentions further up in the article too) were rather interesting: http://www.westyellowstonenews.com/news … 963f4.html
Fat bikes are in use in national parks and national forests, state parks and Nordic centers throughout the United States. Meiser used examples from places throughout Wisconsin, Minnesota and Alaska.The town of Jackson, Wyo., has approximately 25 miles of groomed trails that fat bike riders can utilize. Fitzgerald proudly noted that they have been incident free in the five years that he has been offering fat bike rentals at his shop.
"You can hear the snowmobiles coming," he said.
Events like the Togwotee Winter Classic snow biking event have popped up within the last four years in the greater Teton area. The Togwotee Pass/Continental Divide trail systems boast more than 600 miles of snowmobile and winter recreation trails. Smaller scale events are starting to gain attention in Minnesota and Wisconsin as well.
With three shops in the Teton Valley offering snow bike rentals and the recent addition of six rental snow bikes and additional signage for the bikes on their 15-plus kilometers of Nordic Trails at Grand Targhee Resort demonstrating the growth of a new form of winter recreation, fat bikes may have a future in West Yellowstone.
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Apparently the second annual Fat Bike Summit is happening next month in Idaho.
The second-annual Fat Bike Winter Summit will be held in Island Park, ID, Jan. 25-27, 2013. Co-hosted by Quality Bicycle Products and Fitzgerald’s Bicycles of Victor, ID, the event gathers land-use planners, rangers and representatives from the bike industry to discuss fat bikes and assess their potential impact on public lands and local economy. The event also includes races, demos, clinics and an expo. IMBA is hosting registration but is otherwise not involved with the summit or its content.Fat Bikes are cool and all but do they really need their own summit? Although IMBA is hosting registration, it feels like a duplication of effort, at least on the public lands side.
When is the 29er summit next year? Probably right after the 650b summit. 😀
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Using x/c ski trails for other uses can be problematic. When I lived in NH walking or hiking on thee trails would bring out the x/c ski trail nazis. These IMO are worse then hiking trail nazis. By specifically addressing fat tire bikes they may be trying to turn them over to their "these are my trails" believes to multi-use trails where everyone can get along.
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Makes sense I guess. IMBA deals with dirt; Fat Bike (org) deals with snow.
From what I’ve heard the XC skiers actually like fat bikes because they pack down the snow. Unlike hikers who just make holes. 😀
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That sounds exceptional. West Yellowstone is gorgeous in the winter–even more so than in the summer IMO–wish I had been there!
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My wife and I worked in Yellowstone one winter years ago. Currently they groom the roads with huge snowcats, and they allow snowmobiles and xc skiers on them, as well as vans converted with tracks that ferry visitors to the couple of lodges inside the park that are open in the winter.
Being able to head into the park on a fatbike would be an amazing experience, and I hope this summit results in that becoming possible!
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I was just reading up on the On-One Fatty, as well as an article on "why fat bikes are brilliant".
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That On-One is actually a really good price.
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