Über Cush: Full-Suspension Fatbike

In the blog last week, we reviewed the fat-tire Salsa Mukluk, a beast of a bike with four-inch-wide tires made to surmount nearly all terrestrial obstacles as well as plow through snow. Our article noted that suspension on bikes like the Mukluk or the obese-tire Pugsley and Moonlander models from Surly is superfluous, as the bulbous rubber run at low pressure serves to absorb ruts, roots, and bumps on a cushion of air.

Well, lo and behold, it appears we were overassuming a bit with the comment on suspension. This week, on Salsa’s blog, the company previewed a prototype full-suspension fat-bike frame! Noted the post, “The inspiration for this project came from numerous people within our team and from the fact that fatbikes are being ridden all year long as opposed to being strictly thought of as snow or winter bikes.”

Salsa cites nothing too substantial on the project but notes the “tremendous capability” with the new genre of the fat-tire bike and that its experiment with suspension is meant to “explore the concept further.” The company has a small batch of suspension-enabled frames to build up and ride for the experiment.

Will a fat-tire bike with full suspension soon come to market? Fun as it sounds, it’s not looking that way. “These are prototypes,” the company noted. “We expect to learn a lot from them. They may or may not eventually become an actual product. That is undecided at this time.”

—Stephen Regenold is editor of GearJunkie.