I’ll be honest. Saw various Surlys at the gravel dash and thought they were cool. Live 1.5 miles from the beach so convincing myself I need a pugsley or similar.

The wife will tie me to a stake and set fire to me (as is the punishment when one breaks the last bike promise!) but the itch is becoming increasingly difficult not to scratch.

i could sell my little used HT and get a krampus to cover both bases but thinking that may not really be as beach competent.

Any similar experience/regrets/enlightenment?

Love my Surly Wednesday Moorsey, i’d say risk the divorce and go for it 😀

I have a 29+ and fat bike – whilst 29+ copes better in sand that a regular MTB, it ain’t no fatbike on really soft surfaces. A good compromise might be a fat bike with an extra pair of 29+ wheels for ‘summer’ duties – probably what I’d do now if I’d started with the fatty first.

Another divorce😳? Good call Lawman. The Wednesday has been on my list of possibles.

Yup, 29+ is great but it’s not a fatbike. Get a fatbike.

I bought a cheap voodoo wazoo on eBay just to try it, since then I rarely ride my much better titanium 29er. I have since built a surly wednesday and love it. As others have said will probably get a set of 29+ wheels for next summer.

A Pugsley is a good choice because you can fit 29er+ wheels as well as fat.

Their big advantage is their weird offset rear which allows you to run ordinary 135mm hubs instead of paying the fat tax for extra wide hubs. That also allows you to run a hub gear so you don’t have a derailleur clogging up with sand.

Living so close to the beach makes your decision so much easier, wish I did. Two wheel sets is the way to go, best of both worlds. Try before you buy if not sure, solo rides on a good beach are something you need to experience, you wont be disappointed….  🙂

And don’t just “test” one fatbike and decide that you don’t like them. Some are slow and ponderous, some are lively. Geometry, weight, kit levels etc make just as much a difference as on skinnier tyred bikes.

Live 1.5 miles from the beach

No brainer, especially if you have dunes, they are great to play on

Had a go on a fat bike and really enjoyed it, but not sure how much of that was novelty value. If I had one how much would I use it once the  novelty had worn off? Good question to ask yourself.

I don’t live near a beach though.

I got mine as my +1 bike and a couple of months later sold the hardtail. It’s not that it’s good, or bad, it’s just really different- the same trail on a fatbike can be totally different to on a normalbike

I’ve only ever ridden it on the beach once though, for about 10 minutes. Not that I hate it or anything, it’s just not what I do

I’ve got a large surly ice cream truck frame and forks in the for sale section. Just saying like 🙂

i tried 29+ on my wednesday, im not a fan, i got 27.5 plus to replace them, i had them on the bike for one ride then put the full Fat wheels back on, you can do anything on fat wheels Moorsey! usually with a massive grin on yer mush too 😀

Have had my Wednesday for 2.5 years, haven’t touched my 26″ hummer since or my road bike, used for everything inc commuting. But starting to get the itch for either an e-bike or a 27.5+ fs. Have to say I got cheezed off with the whole mtb carry on when all the standards changed. Would love to update my hummer but it’s 1 1/8th, i s brakes, 26″ wheels!

Fatties are great though.

I bought one. Now I’ve got two. A case of F+1 rather than n+1.

Love my Pugs. Just to rub salt in the wound mine was a 20th anniversary present from the wife!

I couldn’t see the point but its a long winter where I live and a buddy was having a great time on a fat bike in the snow.

Went a bought a a couple of years old Trek Farley 6 last Christmas, fully rigid and sized for 26×3.8 tyres.

Not sure if it’s the return to fully rigid or something else but it’s amazing fun and isn’t slow.   Turns out the Farley was not as fat as some and a pretty racey beast as fatties go.

Worth giving it a go.  Fits into my bike lineup nicely.

I’m having Fat doubt as it’s not as good as my other bikes on my local trails.

However if I lived near a beach I’d definitely have one. Great fun for exploring.

I think it depends where you live. I moved to Norway a couple of years ago and got a good deal on a fat bike in a sale last year. It’s perfect for the trails here, I don’t tend to ride technical stuff on mine but it’s great for bikepacking and riding on the snow is a blast! It’s a much more fun bike to go exploring on than my hardtail. If you live near the beach it could open up a lot more terrain for you, and as others have said maybe get a 29er wheelset built up as well and it could replace a couple of the bikes you already have?

I bought a fat bike in the winter.  I think it is likely to be my main if not only bike to use offroad.  It was great fun at a trail centre and also great on slippery local trails.  My only concern is the increased drag on the 7 miles of tarmac out to the pentlands.  Not been riding much recently but I think the addition grip over my conventional MTB and the increased fun this brings outweighs the increased drag and increased weight of the fatbike.

For me mountainbiking is not about speed of miles but smiles – and I seem to have more of them on the fat bike.  I really don’t see myself using he conventional mtb much at all now.  So for me its a game changer

I risked it with the wife and funnily enough, pulled it off. It was the next bike that was the problem, and the fat bike had to go to allow for the new play thing. I loved my fatty but it just didn’t get ridden enough once the novelty wore off. Like you I live near the beach and had a couple of pretty cool little loops worked out, but it just lacked variation, and the ADHD set in. Or maybe it was the 3 mile road ride all uphill, into a headwind, on a fat bike with 8psi in the tyres,  after every ride that put me off.

Wot Tjagain said 🙂

zippykona

I’m having Fat doubt as it’s not as good as my other bikes on my local trails…

I haven’t ridden mine much in the last few months either.

However I haven’t seen the trails so dry in years, it’s possible to ride a lot of them on a cx bike at the moment.

It’s all to lure us all into a false sense of security so I’m currently building up another fatbike for the forthcoming bogfest we’ll get to make up for the dryness. 🙂

Had a go on a fat bike and really enjoyed it, but not sure how much of that was novelty value. If I had one how much would I use it once the  novelty had worn off? Good question to ask yourself.

I don’t live near a beach though.

All of that. Except I don’t know how you can answer how that question without finding out!

I hired one in Moab, had a blast on Porcupine Rim, but wasn’t sure how long it would be before the novelty wore off on home trails.  Waited till I saw a Puffin come up second hand, thinking I could flick it on for no much loss if/when I got bored.  Still got it 3 years later.  Done a fair bit of bikepacking on it, including some big routes up in the Lakes, where I honestly think it was the best tool for the job, but most of the riding is smashing round the trails at home – always fun.  Even ridden in on an actual beach – big cobbles at Tywyn, just as uniquely suited to big tyres as deep sand!  Took all the opportunities to ride in the snow earlier in the year – didn’t have enough to really make a difference, but it was very nice to have for some stretches for wall to wall frozen chunder in sunken tracks, 8″ deep spikes and boot/hoof holes – just float over the top!

Fatbikes in general: better, (or way better) at way more things than you’d think, and worse in fewer ways, less seriously than you’d guess as well.

Bought a 2nd hand Surly Pugsley, rode it for a winter, sold it again, not really for me, just never really did anything for me.

Would have to have been something really good for me to have to commit to another wheel/tyre ‘standard’ and it wasn’t.

My pugsley is my favourite bike.  It is great for exploring and just riding around, seems to keep up with non fat friends bikepacking, fun on the commute if I pump the tyres up hard, superb on smooth trail centres like Brechfa and I have ridden it over 60 miles loaded with a p.raft on the back in a day on Tarmac at the end of a trip and found it fine – you just need rock hard tyres.  On gravel tracks it is brilliant and can crawl slowly down ridiculously bumpy rocky descents.

Cons… Compared to my old long trace HT It it isn’t much good on fast rocky decently such as the end of ‘The Wall’ being rigid and all.  You do have to faff with tyre pressures quite a lot and the most annoying thing about fat bikes is getting the tyre seated perfectly if you are a bit anal about having zero tyre wobble.

I am not sure why I end up fat bike evangelising though… It just happens. Sorry, I know it’s annoying. I also know that they are not for everyone…

Is a fat bike just another missing piece of my n+1 jigsaw or game changing?

Hmm they’re too different to be part of the same jigsaw esp with really big tyres. You may think some new forks or wheels make a difference but a fat bike is a whole new experience

And as above there are many different kinds of fat bikes. Some are land rovers some are monster trucks some are rally cars. Make the same decisions as you would with any other bike.

Here is my fatbike “journey” so far, for what it’s worth.

Took a Surly Ice Cream Truck out for a spin while over in Aviemore with the family in Spring 2016 and bought one shortly after. Rode it pretty much everywhere for the next year and loved it. With Jumbo Jim 4.8 tyres it was surprisingly fast off road. I set PRs on loads of climbs and got up and down stuff I’d never managed before. You couldn’t go fast over rough ground or it would turn into a rampant spacehopper and it was a bit of a drag on tarmac, but it was always fun to ride. Ideal for exploring new areas where you didn’t know what the track would be like, or even it it would exist. Sand, snow, beach or bog it was all a laugh.

In Spring 2017 I “upgraded” to a Canyon Dude. I bought the base (rigid) model, because I preferred the colour and swapped most bits over from the ICT. I also bought a set of Bluto forks. The result was a much lighter fatbike that worked much better as a trailbike (with the Bluto). Now I could go faster on the rough stuff and I rode it all last summer, but to be honest it was never as much fun as the ICT and I started riding the trailbike (Five) a bit more as well. When winter came I put the rigid forks back on the Dude and found that I was really enjoying it again. It became my default option again for all of the (long) winter. The Blutos definitely made it a better trailbike, but I had a trailbike that was even better and somehow the front suspension took away some of the fatbike madness.

This Spring I upgraded the Five to a FlareMax and found that a long slack 29er was just as much fun to bulldoze through stuff as the fatbike while also being faster over the rough stuff and less of a drag on the road. So, I’ve ridden that almost exclusively this summer. However, I expect I’ll be back on the fatbike when winter comes. My winter rides tend to be more about getting outside and enjoying the fresh air. Progress is usually slower and the trails tend to be tamer but I tend to stay off roads more. A rigid bike and the security of monster tyres makes a lot of sense for that sort of riding and if the snow gets boring I can always head to the beach.

The steel frame thing is a funny one. I’m skeptical that frame material really makes any difference once you stick 5″ tyres on, but I can’t deny that I had more fun on the ICT than the Dude. Maybe it was simply that it was my first fatbike. Maybe I just like the look of skinny steel tubes. I don’t know, but there is something reassuring about being on an overbuilt steel tank when you are blatting down a rocky trail as fast as you dare. Since I’ve had no interest in the ICT frame I’ve thought about selling the Dude frame instead, but I’m still swithering on that one. If nothing else it’s easier to carry when you really can’t ride.

When I got my Wazoo in Feb 2016, it was great for giving me riding confidence on the road after my RTA, with the odd bit of off-road thrown in. But since getting the Fatnotfat 29er wheelset (July 2016?), I could probably count the number of times I’ve briefly switched to the fat setup on two hands, it’s basically become a fat framed hybrid for my work commutes and sometimes extended rides home. Since I got my road bike in May 2017, it very rarely gets taken out besides commuting, albeit it had a few extra rides during the extended winter BOTE this year.

I really ought to take it up the South Downs and explore more of those off-road paths, such as the ones between Durley and Cheesefoot Head, for a start.

Despite not using it for its intended purpose, still got ~4500 miles on the clock since September 2016, when I joined the Strava bandwagon rather late.

Thanks for all the great feedback. Im sold! Unfortunately my dawdling has left me missing out on a bargain pugsley necromancer. Hey ho, ill keep em peeled. Think the two wheelset idea is a good call. My vagabond and high latitude may well both go to pave the way to fatsville.

I’ve got an on-one and love it.

Riding it down average single track feels like riding a dh bike down a dh track, loads of grip and a slightly detached from reality feeling. Never taken it to a beach, and TBH ‘snow’ requires the sort of groomed trails you get at the idtarod, point it at your average British snow drift and it’ll still sink. I rode it a lot during the beast from the east!

Unless you plan on doing 1000 mile self supported rides across tundra then I’d put some thought into whether you want a ‘trail’ bike (like a Wednesday or on-one) or ‘expedition’ bike (like a pugsley or 907). Just like skinny wheels fat bikes have evolved to cover all bases!

If the vagabond is a large I could be tempted to swap…….

Appreciate the offer mate, unfortunately the vagabond is a small (im a short arse im afraid).

Had my Cube Nutrail Pro for 8 months, by far the best bike I have ever owned.  Silly grin to cost conversion rate is through the roof.  The rockshock bluto makes such a difference if you want to through it down your trails.

I bought a 2nd gen Puffin after running my SIR.9 as a 29+/b+ combo. Now, I’m a fully rigid singlespeed luddite, & it was a blast. FullFat was an itch that needed to be scratched, so the search for a 29+ / Fat was on. After reading Coastkids blog about the Puffin that SAM has loaned him, it was like fate when the very same frameset popped up on Faceache shortly before Xmas. The SIR.9 hasn’t been ridden since, the Five was sold not long after.

i get such a short riding window whenever one does pop up, & the Puffin is just a laugh, a right laugh. It’s not for everyone, & there’s times where it’s totally unsuitable. Bike Park Wales for example, where I just hire a FS when we go.

But if you want a bike that’s a right bloody laugh, then try a Fatty. But try a few out, as they are all different. My lads On-One Fatty is quite different to my Puffin. I’d never part with it…

Well, a Pivot Les Fat might tempt me. 🙂

Unfortunately my dawdling has left me missing out on a bargain pugsley necromancer.

Take that as a blessing. Not that there’s anything inherently bad about that bike, but it does give you a chance to consider/test alternatives.

but it does give you a chance to consider/test alternatives.

I would add that if you are planning on getting it with beach riding in mind, maybe go for a bike that has clearance for the bigger tyres (4.8-5.0″) – this normally means 150mm/197mm hub spacing which in turn means a wide q-factor. This can take a bit of getting used to, so get some test rides or borrow a couple of different bikes before you pick one.

There also seems to be an annoying push towards 27.5 fat bikes (The new Salsa Beargrease, for example) but essentially 26″x4.8″, 27.5″x4.0″ and 29″x3.0″ will all work in the right frame.

The GoOutdoors/Calibre Dune is pretty good value, although I would upgrade the gearing right away. Most of the bits from your High Latitude would transfer over if you didn’t want to spend a lot extra.

In the 14 years I have been MTBing my Canyon Dude CR is best fun I have had by some distance. I have had bikes by Intense, Spesh, Turner, Trek, Santa Cruz, Whyte and Canfield to name but a few. OK my eye sockets get rattled on fast rocky sections and my heart is my mouth on certain trail sections but I have no problems on tracks like Llandegla’s black, its brilliant for off road bike packing and it was the only way to reach Hilbre Island for a cheeky overnighter.

Sounds like you live round my way pb2, pretty much sums up my perceived usage for a fatty, piecing together the beach sections along the Wirral coast and the odd trip to llandegla

Pb2.??? Is that you PAUL?