For cyclists who put rubber to the snow during winter, the fat tire bike experience does not enthrall them in the same way that mountain biking does.
“I'm always looking for excitement on a mountain bike, but on a fat bike, we're a lot more amenable to just having a boring ride on a wide groomed track,” said Joe Hanrahan, owner of Durango Cyclery. “It's more like you're outside riding a bike in the winter; it's just sort of a novelty, just another way to get outside.”
While mountain bike rides typically involve descending trails at G-force inducing speeds, fat tire rides are of a more leisurely nature. Most fat tire riders take their bikes, equipped with 4-inch wide tires, to groomed or hard-packed snowy trails during the winter months. In Durango, a small minority also use them to commute or to travel on desert sand.
Bike shop owners around Durango say that the sport peaked from an economic standpoint between five and eight years ago, so much so that very few shops in Durango even carry fat bikes. Big-name manufacturers have slowed or halted production, making them harder to come by.
Hanrahan said he has sold just one fat tire bike this season, and he stocks only a handful of Surly fat bikes in his shop. Duncan Adams, the bike shop manager at Ski Barn Durango, said he cannot get stock from Giant, the brand the shop stocks. And Heath Garvey, the general manager of Mountain Bike Specialists, said the shop stopped carrying fat bikes three years ago when Specialized quit making them.
The downfall of the fat tire bike economy is due, in part, to their simplicity. The bikes cost around $2,000 – less than many high-end mountain bikes – and unlike their downhill oriented brethren, fat bikes do not typically have a suspension system. Because of the laid-back essence of fat tire bike ride, the bikes don’t take as much of a beating either.
“They don’t get ridden a lot and there's not a ton of wear and tear because it’s just on snow,” Hanrahan said.
The season for fat bikes is also short, he points out. Neither slushy old snow nor fluffy new snow is compatible with fat bikes, meaning riders can only hit the trails under the Goldilocks of conditions. They must await cold weather and hard-packed trails.
Like the iPhone, mountain bike technology is constantly being upgraded, rendering a bike antiquated almost as soon as it leaves the store. Fat tire bikes are more akin to the mousetrap: functional, unchanging and enduring.
For that reason, Durango fat tire bike enthusiasts say the lack of sales does not indicate a precipitous drop-off in the sport’s popularity. Many of them purchased one, or multiple, fat bikes during the boom around 2016 and have had no reason to replace or upgrade them since.
Most riders are mountain bikers when dry trails make themselves available. Like many outdoor recreation fanatics, they maintain a “quiver” of toys, each tailored to suit a particular desire (or what some might call a “need”).
Rick Callies, founder of the “Durango Fat Bike Society” Facebook group, said two of his seven bikes are fat tire bikes. It is not uncommon for fat bikers to have what they call a “buddy bike,” to take friends on rides. This is precisely how Callies got hooked.
“A couple friends talked me into trying it and I couldn't believe how fun it was and how great it was and how freeing it was,” Callies said.
Compared to Nordic skiing, Callies’ winter sport of choice before he began fat biking, winter cycling vastly expanded the size of his adventure domain.
However, fat bikers are quick to note that despite a thriving community in Durango, there are few opportunities to ride near the city. The best trails are groomed, such as Boggy Draw north of Dolores.
But near Durango, the closest fat bike terrain is La Plata Canyon, which is not groomed but gets packed down by frequent snowmobile and snowshoe travel. Some other areas, such as Vallecito Lake, are off limits to fat bikers because the tires tear up the Nordic ski track.
“To drive an hour and a half each way to ride maybe an hour – I don't find that to really fit my schedule,” said Durango fat biker John Hartley, talking about Boogy Draw. "... With a winter like we've had this year, if we had grooming (near Durango), we would have just the best groomed fat bike trails in the state.”
The society has not secured permission to pull a groomer behind a snowmobile on any Durango trails – something they hope to do in the future.
“It's a real hole in our recreation opportunities,” Hartley said. “I would just like to see us come up with a land-use plan that would give (us) some trails that we could groom.”
Despite the lack of access, bikers say the community is still going strong. Each year since 2013, Durango Cyclery hosts the Silverton Whiteout Fat Tire Bike Race.
Hanrahan, who organizes the event, said registration has held steady at about 150 riders the last few years.
“It started when fat bikes were way more of a thing,” Hanrahan said. “And now, it's almost like a family reunion of bike culture that we get to have in the winter.”
rschafir@durangoherald.com
