Thursday, March 16, 2017

Fat Bike Conditions Flowchart

This bipolar winter has made for exceptionally hit or miss fat biking conditions. Mostly miss. When we get snow, we get too much. Then few step up to perform the sacrificial work of breaking out trails for riding later. Then poof, the snow is gone again, and there is no need to muddle around on a fat bike. Even when snow gets packed by the user community, the end product is often less than desirable riding material. Glad I have other winter activities to fall back on.

While attempting to ride groomed trail at Horse Hill today, it occurred to me that I have gotten robbed of riding fat bike on snow this winter for about every reason that exists. A flowchart something like this popped into my head.


1 comment:

mkr said...

Nice chart :) It's funny how finicky winter cycling is now, and in reality always has been. in the metro areas that get lots of foot traffic from dog walkers and others, trails pack in quickly. We've always been able to find packed snow within a day or two of the storm in Arlington and Lexington, which is typically ridable on a MTB. Heavy foot traffic does the best job of compacting a trail hard enough to ride, albeit at the expense of having a rough surface. The more suburban you get, the harder it is to find packed areas. The riding has been pretty good on fat bikes at Kingdom Trails. We had brief luck packing trail by hand but the snow quickly got away from us.