The Pinkbike Podcast: Episode 158 - PB Snow Day w/ Levy and Henry

 I'm in your neck of the woods and I think about getting a fat bike every fall, but the way the weather is changing it seems to make less and less sense. The only thing I can rationalize is getting something like an RSD Sergeant or an old Suzi-Q that can run 4" tires but also be turned into a decent hard tail for the non-snowy months.

Last winter in particular was the worst winter for any kind of biking I can ever remember. Everything was covered in glazed ice for 2 months. This was Feb 12, 2022.

www.pinkbike.com/photo/23953291

The winters of my youth would have been perfect for fat biking, but that was the 80's unfortunately.

 @silverstanktions: I have co-workers in Calgary that ride their fatties year round with a tire swap. some wish they had a fork for shoulder season where they would ride snowy conditions up top and dryer conditions down low. basically running it as a hardtail as you mentiuon. mostly feel fork is not required for winter season since everything kind of smooths out.

I never rode last winter but yes....it would have been a year for studs for sure. this year, I'm not sure my studs are needed since we haven't had much of a freeze/thaw cycle.

many seem to feel 2.6"-3" with studs is all you need for edmonton winters. i take my bike down to bragg/canmore about once a month on top of local single track so I'm quite pleased with my purchase. definitely a needed change from the basement pain cave riding on zwift.

 Exactly that, you nailed it. Everyone should definitely expect a certain level, of course, but let’s also step back and look at how good nearly every bike is, especially the less expensive ones.

 @mikelevy: I do have to say though that the part about pricing getting too high is also all relative. The cost of housing, rent, interest rates, food, gas, heating and generally everything that you need for living has gone up so drastically. I am still getting paid the same as I was 5-6 years ago.

So when I am wanting to buy a bike or saving towards one, and you have kids and other expenses, the fact that bikes keep creeping up (some marginally, others by quite a bit), it feels like a much bigger jump because they seem to be getting so much further out of reach. I think that is why there are complaints about bikes getting too expensive maybe. Then you are looking at forgoing a new bike and getting a used one and forgoing warranties etc. Which is sad.

 Untgrad - Good call. This is where a bit of "min / maxing" comes into play. Get a good frame and suspension and then hang what ever you want on it. Also hardtails are really great these days and you don't have rear suspension to service / bearings to replace.

 @fartymarty:
Right? Can you imagine jumping into the wayback machine and making a hardtail with modern geo?
If the bike industry got ahold of that in the ‘80’s, we’d all be working for robots with giant metal bugs flying us to our jobs.
I’m an ex Moto racer that could have had a real pro career because I had all the required elements. Plug me into a bicycle and it gets weird, but I make it work. One thing I find to be pure positive is “slack”. My current bike is nearly 5° slacker than my previous and I find no difference climbing tight switchbacks. Rocks, roots, it’s the same.

 @Untgrad: or even a rigid bike with modern geo like Andrew Major (NSMB) Walt 2.

Slackish is good. I'm at about 64 degrees and it's fine. Any slacker and the flat trails would get too boring.

 @fartymarty:
Absolutely!
Yeah there has to be a point of diminishing returns. Including front end traction.
I assumed my new slack bike would be a compromise on the super tight switchbacks in Crested Butte CO. I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong!

 @fartymarty:
Although, a lifetime of turning MX bikes around tight switchbacks is why..

 I wouldn’t last a week haha

 @mikelevy: @masonguy got me good, listened at 2x just wondering when that bomb would drop haha

 Hawes, south mountain and white tanks. There. No podcast needed.

 As an avid mtber and snowboarder, I really feel like you can make either sport exorbitantly expensive or reasonable depending on your approach. If you want new gear and to travel to different resorts all winter, the lift tickets, food, and gas bills are going to stack up insanely fast. But, if you want to ride your local hill all winter with the gear you have, yeah, you can probably swing it for a couple grand a winter. Same goes for biking—you can buy the several thousand dollar bike and ride from your house or drive to local trailheads inexpensively if you aren’t a gear head. Or you can go down the gear junkie rabbit hole and spend thousands. That said, it’s pretty hard to swallow lift ticket prices that cost over $200 per day at resorts that used to cost $70 not long ago (Jackson Hole, Big Sky, etc.). Since I enjoy shiny new parts that I get to keep, I can rationalize (perhaps erroneously) bike part purchases, but a lift ticket for a weather-dependent snow day is tough to wrap my head around. The resortiness and bougie factor hurts my soul too.

 I've thought about this as I live in Squamish and there is an assumption amongst many that you 'have' to partake in winter sports (and I have). The thing is, in order to get to Whistler you really need a decent AWD / 4WD vehicle, which I don't want for 10 months of the year. I like my nippy little economical hatchback.... Winter clothing is very specific, but my MTB stuff for the most part I wear for general use, trail building etc. I'm not going to wear snow boarding pants to go shopping in, or wear a jacket with no side pockets. Also, the winter season is pretty short, and for the most part the MTB season is very long (around here). It's not a big deal to hang the bike up for a couple of months and watch Netflix.... Even the opening hours in the winters are short. So when you factor all that (and more) into $ per run, I'm pretty sure skiing / boarding will work out much more expensive. So yeah, the price of the equipment swings positively towards winter sports, everything doesn't, unless you happen to live near a ski hill with easy transit options and you use the facilities for 5 months of the year.

 Not to mention ski gear for kids is definitely cheaper then getting them a new bike every year or two as they grow.

 Yes, more RC!

 Same. Winter is a good reason to relax on the riding so I enjoy it even more in the spring. I don’t know what the number is, but I only have X amount of rides in me per year so I want to maximize my enjoyment on the bike.

 You just don't live far north enough. We hav snow from Oct to May, and hard packed snow rides like dirt and squeeks like Styrofoam. It's great. That said, I see the snow conditions fat bikers get excited for in southern Canada, and I wouldn't want to ride that garbage either.

 @mikelevy: this sounds like an excuse to avoid the fatbike group efficiency test.

 @RKingan: I would call it that

 I agree. Fat biking is good maybe 1% of the time. The rest sucks. Fat bikers are also the worst breed of mountain bikers. Don't even think about touching the trails with tires narrower than 4.0". They will lose their minds. It's even worse if you walk on them without snowshoes. They will basically try to fight people hiking. It's embarrassing.

 @matyk: Have you ever met an XC Skier - kinda the same personality... With that, a ton of effort goes into grooming and it can all go to waste with a winter warmup / thaw. There's a ton more places for people to hike than Fatbike or XC Ski... And if I'm being honest, hikers are the most entitled trail users out there - you know the people that at all costs work to get mountain biking banned so they can have their quiet time in the urban woods, 5 minutes from highways... Ugh.

 It sucks if the conditions are not right, sure. Sounds like you just don't have the right conditions very often. If you live in a cold, mountain town, that gets trails and roads groomed, the conditions are great pretty frequently, especially if the skiing conditions are not very good. And yes, Karen is right, you would not be able to ride the trails on a regular mountain bike. You are going to need close to 5" tires, running 2 psi. You also need fatter skis to ski deep powder than groomers. That's just physics.

 @blum585: You know what's a good way to get mountain biking banned from a trail system? Fat bikers getting verbally combative with hikers because they had to ride over snow with footprints in it.

 They’ll be in addition rather than replacing the bike pods.

 @mikelevy: totally on board this!

 Only in spirit