Winter means early darkness, even worse drivers, and adventure. Whether you ride to decompress from work, to meditate, for fun, for fitness, or all of the above, fatbiking in winter just feels right. Winter riding also means your city trails are all yours, selfish smiles allowed along with getting to really know the area where you ride. With the quiet that winter brings along with the clear crisp air you hear everything, people having a fire in their backyards, people with their TV’s too loud, and smell everything else like the rare house with delicious cooking smells coming from it, or the stink of dryer sheets. I’ve stopped using them just from how pungent I found them when I first started to really love night rides years ago, they are an assault on clean air, don’t believe me, go for a walk on even a mild winter night in your neighborhood and you too will soon be overwhelmed with a sense someone just shoved ammonia up your nose, it’s brutal.

Along with finding out your neighbors habits you will find short cuts, side roads, and alternate pathways obscured or ignored in the summer, I’m guilty of this as some of my favourite trails in the bushes along the river are so bug infested in summer you end up with eyes and nose full of bugs fives minutes into the ride and god forbid you bring an uninitiated rider on one of these trails, unless you’re mean that way;) This also leads to one of my absolute favourite encounters, on just this single night ride last week which these pics are from I ran into a coyote, owl, deer, and beaver all of which I got within 25 feet of. Ever watch those nature documentaries about all the animals that come out at night in the city? Try night riding and live it, it’s so much fun and sometimes scary when they startle you (there’s a story here).

And finally it teaches you to appreciate two things, first; at least in my city the snow clearing crews really do work their butts off to deal with major snow falls as they are the vehicles I see most since I always try to ride after a dump of fresh and secondly; as you can see in my pics since snow drifts, so fatness matters. My bike is admittedly older (tires this ride are 3.8″ on 80mm rims) but I ride with some N+1ers that like to trade a ride on 190mm frames and 4.8″ tires to experience the difference extra float means. I had to do a couple hike a bikes on this run but it’s fatbiking so it’s all good, that said you can really notice the extra float of a Blackborow or Ice Cream Truck with their larger wheelsets on crusted over snow. I can’t recommend goofing off on snow ridges enough, they are fun to balance on and not a big deal if you fall since you have a snow cushion. Newer bikes are going for smaller wheelsets for all year riding and I think it’s awesome for fatbiking but some progression on the fatness side of things is what I want to see. It’s so fun bombing over crusty snow drifts, side cutting big hills, and skibiking down the odd hill for old school giggles, it’s the reason I fell in love with fatbiking, it’s just plain fun, no other way to describe it.

Until next time, happy night riding and don’t forget to layer.