This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Northern Fat Bike Summit in Marquette, Michigan and enjoying a full weekend of nothing but fat tires and snowy trails.
This is the second of 4 Summits this year that are taking place all across the U.S. to help spread the word about fat biking, winter trail use and to gather riders, the industry and land managers together in one setting. Marquette is already well known as a mountain bike community and served as a great backdrop to talk everything fat biking. The summit itself was very well attended with over 120 participants from all across the Midwestern United States with fat bikers, snowmobilers, Nordic centres and trail users as well as many land manager and land management agencies in attendance. Companies like 45NRTH, Specialized, RedBull, Surly, Borealis and more were also in attendance to show how much the sport is growing.
Organized by Gary Sjoquist, Advocacy Director for Quality Bicycle Products, the Summit does a great job of breaking down the sport into a way that land managers can understand and get on board with. The theme of this summit was organization and that just like in the summer time, we as riders, need to be organized and have a voice in regards to our trails and work with the other user groups and land managers to ensure a positive relationship and trail experience. The Summit was broken down into different modules to ensure that all attendees were able to learn about all facets of the sport. Things like a history of the fat bike, grooming equipment, grooming workshops, and panel discussions were all held with many demos and groomers on hand to interact with to get most out of the experience.
The Annual Polar Roll Race was also held in conjunction to the summit, with over 20 participants taking on either a 30 or 50km course around Marquette’s famous South Trail Network. With many more Nordic and ski operators looking at fat biking and allowing access summits like these will only continue to grow and become more important as the sport of fat biking grows.
For a link to photos from the Northern Fat Bike Summit click here!
If you have any questions about fat biking or would like to see our Fat Biking and Winter Trail Use presentation please email Justin Truelove at justin.truelove@imbacanada.com
-Justin Truelove