Our House!
For awhile now, I've been wanting to try riding a "fatbike." If you're not aware, basically a fatbike is a mountain bike with huge (4" - 5" wide), low pressure, high floatation tires, meant to go through sand, snow, mud, or whatever. They are in the list of "fastest growing trends in mountain biking" right now, along with Enduro Racing and 650b wheels. However, whereas Enduro Racing and 650b wheels are just downright stupid, fatbikes look awesome! Plus, they are trendy, and I'm all about gettin' on the bandwagon! Anyway, they looked interesting to me, but the only way to ride one was to spend the money to buy one, and spending that much money on something that could be just a novelty wasn't high on my list.
Then, in a moment, everything changed. A bike shop in Methow Valley on the other side of the Cascade mountains began renting fatbikes! Not only that, but they had a plethora of local cross country ski trails that were open, depending on conditions, for snow biking! I decided to seize the opportunity, and began planning a long weekend trip. I rounded up five (5) of my friends who are either nice enough, bored enough, or desperate enough to accompany me on some half-baked trip to ride ridiculous bikes in the snow, when they could be doing something better, like, NOT riding those bikes in the snow. These poor unfortunate souls included my girlfriend, Deb, my buddy Nick, who's listened to me talk about wanting a fatbike for awhile now, and my friends Ross, Debbi, and Stephen.
I placed a call to the bike shop to reserve the bikes, and found out that they only had 3 of them for rent. One each in small, medium, and large. Immediately my dreams of an all day long, six person adventure ride through the winter wonderland were dashed to pieces. However, it was right around this point that Nick began informing me that fatbiking would be pretty much terrible, and doing it for more than 45 minutes or so was going to be "fucking stupid." So with that, I hatched a plan to ride the bikes in two shifts of 3 each day, for the weekend.
With the bike situation sorted, we reserved an awesome looking log house for us all. Then, there was nothing to do but wait for the appointed weekend to roll around. As the part of Washington east of the Cascades seems to have 3 passtimes: farming, voting republican, and cooking meth, the trip was soon dubbed the Methlab Valley Trip.
Friday morning was soon upon us, and Deb, Ross and I met up at Nick's place for breakfast. Nick made some kick-ass crepes and all was going well until I attempted to put whipped cream on mine. Somehow 80% of the slots in the end of the nozzle had become clogged, leaving about 1000psi to spray the whipped cream out of the remaining slots. And spray it did, all over the place. Epic breakfast fail!
After some care and feeding instructions from Nick's long suffering wife, Julie, we piled into Deb's truck and hit the road. Debbi and Stephen would be joining us later that night after Stephen got out of work. The drive was uneventful, and soon we found ourselves on the other side of the mountains in the unappealing, blasted wasteland that is central Washington. We passed through the equally unappealing town of Cle Elum, where it appears the gene pool dried up a long time ago. After some more miles, Nick started whining about McDonalds, but it turns out that central Washington is as devoid of McDonalds as it is of high school graduates.
After several hours on the road, we reached Methow Valley, and headed up into the mountains. The crappy high desert gave way to picturesque mountains and snow, and things were looking up. We left behind the sketchy hick towns and found ourselves in an area who's primary economy is centered around mountain tourists. Finally we rolled into Winthrop, and stopped at the Methow Cycle and Sport to pay for the bikes. There they were, all three of them, resplendent in their chubby-tired glory, looking not very sleek, and ready to charge off at 5 - 7mph in search of adventure. After talking to the guy at the store, we elected to leave the bikes there for the night, as the trails we were planning to ride were right near the bike shop. With a promise to be back in the morning, and after several minutes spent fondling and admiring the bikes, we headed out to find our house. After another 20 or so miles, we arrived at our destination, tucked into the valley with some other cabins, next to the river, clustered in a little village around a back country airstrip.
Anxious to get started on the evenings activity, drinking, we quickly unpacked our stuff while Ross worked on heating up the chili he had prepared for dinner. We quickly realized that we not only beer, but literally gallons of hard alcohol, and a quick glance at the clock revealed that it was well past beer-thirty, so we got to work pouring some drinks, and Nick got to work playing one of his strange remix CDs on the stereo. With that taken care of, and the aroma of yummy food starting to fill the place, we had a chance to look around. The view out the huge living room window was pretty spectacular, with a 7000' mountain sitting just on the other side of the river. With the entire landscape covered in snow, I had no doubt that saturday would bring the epic snow bike adventure that I had been dreaming of. I could hear the crunch of the crisp snow beneath the clown-sized tires, feel the bite of the cold air on my face as I barreled along at a brisk walking pace. I didn't really pay attention to the fact that it had basically been tshirt temps when we rolled into town. This would prove to be somewhat of an issue the next day, it turns out.
So, with nothing more pressing to do, we settled into an evening of eating food, drinking, playing board games, waiting for Stephen and Debbi, playing more board games, drinking, snacking, drinking and other assorted forms of vacationing. Eventually the last two members of our intrepid band of fat bikers (fat-bikers?) arrived, and after some drinking and chit chat, we went to bed.
We stumbled out of bed at the crack of 10:30 or so, and Stephen created a batch of tasty oatmeal. A hearty breakfast is important a long day of snowbike adventuring. The last thing you want is to run out of energy miles into the backcountry. After a bit of discussion, it was decided that Nick, Deb, and I would take the first shift. We headed into town with the plan that the others would follow in a little while, and we would switch places with them after a bit of riding. At the bike shop, Joe was very helpful and gave us a map and directions to the trails. Since it was only about 2 miles away we elected to just ride there rather than deal with the hassle of trying to attach 4" tired bikes to the bike rack on Deb's truck.
So, off we went! The first thing we did was ride over some solid ice/snow piles in the parking lot. Other than almost losing my balance and falling off the top of one onto my head, it went well. The next obvious step was to try some wheelies. Surprisingly, the bike wheelied quite well! Although it looks quite ungainly, there seems to be something about the tire's huge contact patch that makes it easier to maintain your balance. Pedaling these ridiculous bikes through town, and wheelie-ing at every opportunity got some odd looks from people. In fact, once we were past the town and out in the country, one guy even slowed down to a crawl and rolled down his window so that he could stare at us. It could have had something to do with the fact that I was riding along in the ditch at the time, I'm not sure.
As there was only one bike of each size, and Nick is a little taller than I am, I had ended up on the medium bike. After a bit I wanted to try out the large size to see if it felt much different. It felt, well, slightly larger. After a few minutes I decided to trade back, and that's when things went a little pear shaped. I decided to skid to a stop on the shoulder of the road (from a blistering 5mph), so I got my weight over the front and grabbed a handful of rear brake. I had, of course, completely forgotten that Nick had swapped his brakes moto style, as he is from the UK and they do dumb stuff like that over there. The giant front tire dug into the road with its unlimited traction, pitching me and the bike up in the air. My junk came to rest on the stem, and we hung there, at the balance point for the longest moment ever, while Nick made incoherent, non-verbal noises in an effort to point out that something had gone awry. After what seemed like a very long time of staring straight at the pavement while balancing precariously on my gooch on something which was itself balanced precariously, the whole system slowly tilted backwards, and came to rest in a normal position, rather than depositing me face first on the side of the road. Good times.
A little more pedaling brought us to the parking lot at the trailhead, where we talked a nice lady into taking a picture of us. After a bit of fiddling around, it was time! This is it, this is where the proverbial rubber meets the snow. Also, we were realizing that it was pretty bright out, what with all that snow, and none of us had thought to bring sunglasses. No matter, off we went!
We made it about 7 feet along the snowshoe trail before sinking into a soft patch of snow. The going was pretty tough, but fortunately the bikes have some pretty low gearing. After another 7 or 8 feet, we decided it was time to air down the tires. From the shop they had about 10psi in them, but Joe had told us we could run them as low as 2 or 3psi! So, we let some air out. It takes awhile when you have a tire that seems to contain the same volume of air as a car tire. Anyway, with the tires at a lower pressure we continued, and it seemed to work a little better. Not great, but better. Pretty soon the trail headed slightly uphill, and it became a real chore. The snow had become quite soft, as it was probably in the mid 40's out, and even with low tire pressure it was really hard to get enough traction to climb even gentle slopes. We struggled on though, and after 1/2 hour or so, managed to cover a solid half mile. So, yeah, our average forward speed was about 1 mph.
We quickly realized that on the uphills in particular, it was much easier to just ride on the bare ground next to the trail, rather than trying to ride on the trail itself. This was fun in its own right, monster trucking through scrubby brush and whatnot. Eventually we had reached the high point. We were all beginning to suffer the initial effects of snow blindness, so it was good that this is where the trail headed downhill while turning back towards the parking lot. Finally, some downhill, good thing I've got my barreling pants on! Nick set off, with me and then Deb following. As we picked up speed into the sweeping, downhill, left curve, I decided that I was basically obligated to try and pass Nick on the inside. He seemed to have the same thought, and as I moved left to pass, he moved left to block me. This resulted in both of us simultaneously running off the packed trail into the foot-deep soft snow at the edge, followed by synchronized endos. After picking ourselves up, and explaining to Deb just what on earth we were doing, we set off again.
As we picked up speed again, it was noticeable that the bikes were quite squirrely in the soft snow. With an uneven surface to push the front tire around, and very little traction to use in steering, the ride was, um, exciting. Any application of brake made it even worse, and so the only viable technique was to just kinda hang on and suggest where you wanted the bike to go, and hope for the best. Sketchy, but fun! After a bit more pedaling, we made it back to the parking lot and headed back towards town, which was, thankfully, mostly downhill.
Back in town we met up with Debbi, Stephen, and Ross for lunch, and gave them the 4-1-1 on the conditions. After some discussion, we decided that rather than riding the trails, they would take the bikes back to the house, and ride them around there, and then they could go out earlier in the morning when it was colder and ride the trails. So, with some creativity, we managed to get the bikes onto the car racks, and headed for home. While Nick, Deb, and I relaxed a bit, the other three suited up and headed out to explore the area where our cabin was. After some time had passed, they returned, with the following video footage of Ross:
At that point, it was time for me to cook some dinner. Joe from the bike shop, and his significant other (I think her name was Julie, but I am terrible with names) were planning to join us. With a bit of help from Ross and Deb, I managed to get a couple of pork tenderloins and some potatoes roasting in the oven. Our guests showed up, and a fun evening of food, conversation, and drinking ensued. Eventually it was time for them to head out, and after a bit more drinking it was apparent that our conversational IQ had reached an all time low. By that point it was pretty late and there was more biking to do the next day, so people headed off to bed.
The next morning, Ross and I decided to do some fatbike exploring near our house. There was a river that ran past our backyard, so we suited up and set out along the river in search of adventure and/or glory. It helped that someone had snowshoed along there and packed down a bit of a path that was firm enough to support our big squishy tires. The upshot of the semi-soft snow conditions was that you would ride for a little bit, then your front tire would hit a soft spot and sink in, bringing you to a halt. The obvious reaction was to then put your foot down. Inevitably, your foot would sink up to your knee in the soft snow causing you and the bike to topple over sideways, and hopefully not tear all the ligaments in your knee in the process, thusly:
For the most part the snowshoe path prevented this from happening, or at least reduced the frequency of the occurrences to something acceptable. So, being mindful to stay on the packed down track, we crawled our way slowly along the riverbank and through the trees. Pretty soon the path diverged from the river and we were faced with a choice... continue into someone's backyard or leave the path and ride down an embankment back towards the river. Since it involved Extreme Winter Downhill Barrelling, we immediately chose Option B. We both crashed in a fairly comical manner.
After slogging through some more snow, we came to a mostly dried up portion of the river, covered in softball sized rocks. I charged in, expecting it to be unridable, but to my slight surprise, the fatbike rolled over the rocks without complaint! Finally it felt like this thing was coming into its own. Spurred on by feelings of monster-truck invincibility, I plowed on ahead into the water, which was maybe 6 to 8 inches deep. This, it turned out, was a mistake, as the wet rocks were much slipperier. Within about one second (just long enough to get into slightly deeper water) my tires slipped and I put my foot down into the icy water. Son of a.... :-/ After a bit more playing around on the dry riverbed rocks, we set our sights on the long journey home, a trek of nearly 1/10th of a mile.
After a break indoors to warm up, we headed out again with Nick, while Deb headed off to explore the area on snowshoes. The three of us, Ross, Nick, and I, pedaled over to the snowed-in airstrip that lies in the center of this community of cabins. This turned out to be the scene of Ross's BikerFox shenanigans from the day before, so I decided to give it a try. At first it took a little bit of commitment to make myself sprint full speed (5 or 6mph) into a snowbank with the intention of catapulting over my bars, but it was a great deal of fun! Until I smacked my knee on some piece of bike hardware attached to my handlebar, that is. I suppose it is a small price to pay for a taste of the celebrity life of BikerFox.
After some more screwing around, we made our way back to the house. At this point I decided it was my obligation to try to recreate the BikerFox flip on flat ground. That is, riding on the flat snow, rather than charging into a 2.5 foot tall snowbank. Somewhat to my surprise, it went pretty well! You can see the low resolution results of this low IQ stunt here, although the camera is not zoomed in very much:
Unfortunately, by this point Stephen and Debbi had left as they needed to get back to Seattle. Deb and I decided to head into Winthrop to check out the shops in the town, and drop Ross off at the trail so he could experience riding the bike on an actual trail. After that, we would return the bikes to the shop. Nick opted to stay at the cabin and read his "graphic novels." We dropped two of the bikes at the shop, and then took Ross to the trail head. Then we drove back to town to find pretty much everything was closed either because it was Sunday, or because it was winter, which is not the tourist season. After a bit of failed "afternoon on the town" we headed back towards the trail to pick up Ross. We met him halfway there, with his bike looking like it had been dragged through a cow pasture. He had discovered that it was much easier to just skip the snowshoe trail entirely and ride off to the side where there was no snow. Once he discovered this, he simply pointed the bike straight down the hill and comenced barreling. It sounded like great fun, although I did feel slightly bad about returning the rental bike covered in mud and straw/hay.
Back at the house, Nick had spaghetti and meatballs on the stove, so we did a bunch of eating, and played some board games until it was time to hit the sack.
After some breakfast, it was time for the inevitable end of the trip, and packing. With the truck loaded up and one last look around the place for any stuff, we locked up and headed out. Since Nick had spent the whole trip out craving McDonalds, and we never stopped, we decided to find one on the way back. After a couple hours of driving we made it to Wenatchee, which has a McDonalds. As far as I can tell from driving through there, Wenatchee must be a native American word for "strip mall." It sucked. The McDonalds sucked. The whole experience made me feel dirty, and I blame Nick. The rest of the trip home was more or less uneventful. Everyone had that, "Crap, vacation's over, I have to go to work tomorrow!" feeling. Blah.
In summary, it was a lot of fun! It was a lot of fun doing a bike trip with friends, and despite not having ideal conditions for the bikes, they were still a blast to play around on. And now, of course, I really want one. I don't really know what I would do with it, but I'd probably just ride it everywhere, just because I could. Fatbikes, it turns out, are the Real Deal, and enduro racers on their 650b wheels can eat a dick.
