How to Make Fat Bike Snow Trails
Fat bike communities commonly speak about how to make fat bike snow trails. Fat bikers may talk of breaking trail for others at least once a month as a common courtesy, and this is all fine and dandy in the right circumstances. There are times when snow can be so deep that to pack the trail fat bikers will say please get out your snowshoes and pack some trail.
Fat bikers even talk about snowshoeing the day before we want a good ride. These are all great common courtesies and help others on the trails. All of these can work if the trail is not too long or snow is not too deep. Or the snow has not gone slushy. In these circumstances many fat bikers just do not go out and ride. They often talk about riding early in the morning when the snow is hard.
However, some of the fat bikers have a different view. The view is to literally groom your trail. Be able to make a great fat bike trail in almost any snow condition. To do this take your snowmobile or talk to one of your buddies who has a snowmobile or side by side with tracks and groom it with a snow groomer made for making fat bike trails..
We do not know of any other snow groomer company that made a type of groomer specifically for snow fat bike trails.
We call it the Sno-blaster, a snow groomer that makes perfect fat bike trails.
Check out the video of the Sno-blaster in action:
We not only want to have good fat bike trails we hope to make great snow trails. This is much harder when snowshoeing or breaking trail with a fat bike.
What do you need to make a fat bike snow trail?
In order to make a fat bike snow trail you will need:
- Lots of snow
- Snow groomer or drags
- Snowmobile, Side by Side or ATV
When you get a lot of snow, then the blaster portion will take off the excess snow and pack what is left. You actually set how much snow to take off the trail with how deep you set the plow to go in the snow.
We are not talking about a trail that is only a tire wide either. After snow grooming with the sno-blaster if you have to put your foot down you can stand on the trail. Not fall into the snow.
The Sno-blastser will pack the snow when there is only a little snow. No trail busting needed after using the sno-blaster. The trail is packed.
Many main trails are already groomed by larger groomers. But the side trails that are so fun are often not wide enough for these groomers. So the Sno-blaster was made to be the width of biking trails.
When it gets slushy take the Sno-blaster and blast off the slush. Taking out the tracks others have left in the slush. Even if you cannot groom it when it is slushy the blade can cut out the ruts left in the ice by fat bike tires. Although, I personally like to make it smooth right before it freezes. Make it smooth then ride your perfectly groomed trail. Grooming and compacting the snow can help you keep the snow trail longer.
The Sno-blaster even leaves corduroy covered trails. This gives fat bike tires great traction.
So doing the work with a machine made to groom fat bike trails can make the trails better, safer and more fun. It can give you better rides with less crashing. Although I have to say that crashing on a fat bike and landing in snow is way better than crashing on trails with no snow.
The Sno-blaster is meant to not break when running into trees under the snow that you may not be able to see. The plow portion is made to ride up over obstacles. It is a super cool design. Yeah, we are tooting our own horn.
Many people have used drags to help make fat bike snow trails. This is better than nothing. But catching a drag on an obstacle can be dangerous. Yes in our younger days we caught things and things would break and chains would go flying. These dangerous situations are solved by breakaway pins and bolts when something goes way wrong. Safety has been designed into the Sno-blaster.
The Sno-blaster can be pulled at much faster speed than most snow groomers or drags. So when asking your friend to groom your trail it can be just a fun snowmobile ride. Quite different from the work to groom trails by snowshoe or breaking trail. Some guys just love to groom the trails. So I do not want to take away from the guys who enjoy doing it. I just like to make the trail then play on it.
One word of caution. If you get your buddy to groom your trail he may want to groom his own snowmobile trails with the sno-blaster when the moguls or whoops get bad. Even though this groomer was totally designed to make fat bike trails, plenty of folks use it for snowmobile trails.
Get yourself a sno-blaster as it can save you that fat bike event when there is lots of snow.
