VIDEO: Touching The Sun – Salsa’s New Mountain Bike Movie

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Here at Singletrack we get daily notifications of shredits and new videos with more-awsums® and biggerer-hucks® to the point that we now rarely feature videos unless they truly do something a bit different. And we know that if people want all of the radness, they know where and how to look for it. They don’t need our help.

Radness awaits

 

Salsa Cycles has always ploughed a slightly different furrow. With bikes built for snow racing or offering full suspension fat bikes, Salsa seems happy to go for the fringes of the mountain bike world. And so, with its latest film, it unashamedly has a go at promoting mountain biking as a way of getting out there – deeper into the forest, or into the mountains, or nearer the great trout lakes than you can get on foot.

Shot not too far from Salsa’s HQ in Minnesota, it shows a couple of Salsa employees/aficionados heading out for a multi-day fly fishing trip. There is a 100% wheels-on-the-ground incidence, there is no big air and there’s not a single guitar solo or dubstep bass-drop. And yet it’s a great watch, seeing a couple of guys patiently tying flies, inflating rafts and heading out into the lake to catch something tasty for dinner.

Given that fishing is said to be one of the most popular pastimes in the UK, we have rarely seen anyone here combining fishing and cycling. Perhaps you just don’t need to go that far to fish here. Or perhaps UK fishingists just have too much stuff. Does anyone have any ideas to the contrary?

salsa, fishing, mountain biking, packrafting
Any fishermen (and fisherwomen?) in the house?

Anyway, enjoy the film and see if you think it needs more gnar, a bass-heavy soundtrack and a few more hucks-to-flat. If you want more info on the trip, check out Salsa’s page about it, titled ‘Ode to Trout’…

salsa, fishing, mountain biking, packrafting
Not a normally required skill in our world

Here’s what Salsa has to say about the video:

“Minnesota has 180 stream trout lakes, scattered throughout the state. Many of these are located in Superior National Forest and offer a prime opportunity for exploration, solitude, hard-earned but rewarding access points, and adventure by bike.

“Loading up the Salsa Blackborow fat bike with fly rods, float tubes, fins, camping gear, and all the associated items for a few days of life in the woods and on the water resulted in memorable days.

salsa, fishing, mountain biking, packrafting
But hey, there’s bike riding!

“Trails were ridden. Trout were brought to hand. Mother Nature showed her many moods. Fine camp living was enjoyed to the fullest.

“It doesn’t get much better than that.”


Can’t see the video? Try here.

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 22 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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