Singletrack/MTB
Gravel/All-road
Dirt-road Touring
Fat-bike
Crust: Bikepacking to a Mountain Peak (Video)
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Filmed back in 2014 and finally published last month, Norwegian bikepacker Mikkel Soya Bølstad’s latest video documents his multiple attempts to find solid crust for backcountry fatbiking at the tail end of spring. Watch it here…
Words, photos, and video by Mikkel Soya Bølstad (@backwoodsbikepacking)
Can you bikepack to a snowy mountain peak on a fatbike? I don’t know what I would have done without the bike. The bike is my freedom machine. And the bike that gives me the most freedom, is hands down the fatbike. What other bike enables me to ride almost anywhere I want?
Though, even the fatbike has its limits. You can’t just ride anywhere. Well, actually, under certain conditions, you can. At least in the mountains. The magic happens in spring, when thaw during the day and frost during the night produces a solid crust that enables you to go fatbiking in the mountains.
For weeks, I had wanted to go fatbiking on the crust and try to summit a local mountain peak by bike, but bogged down with work, it didn’t seem to happen. The nightly frost disappeared in the mountains, and eventually the crust collapsed, and the hope of summiting the peak by bike dwindled like dirty snow in the sun. It wasn’t going to happen. It was too late for fatbiking on the snow crust.
Or at least that’s what I thought. A couple of weeks of warm weather later, a brief period of cold nights in the mountains refuelled my remaining slivers of hope to the extent that I packed my gear on the fatbike and gave it a go. Early one morning in late March, I pedaled out into the local side valley on buzzing high-pressure fat rubber, carrying a tent, sleeping bag, sleeping mat, some food, and a solid chunk of optimism.
Mikkel Soya Bølstad is an author, public speaker, and magazine writer. A keen advocate of finding adventure close to where you live, he can regularly be found exploring his local backwoods and beyond by bike. He documents his bikepacking work on Instagram and YouTube.
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