Fat Bike Summit To Rally Riders

If the thought of plentiful snow and fat bikes makes you tremble with anticipation, mark your calendar. The thick-tired ilk will rally in Ogden, Utah, for the third annual Global Fat Bike Summit on January 24 – 25, 2014.

Expect educational seminars, a festival area with free demo bikes and a race. The goal of the event is to connect the cycling industry, consumers, and land managers to enhance recreational opportunities and economic development around fat riding.

Product advances have helped the fat-bike genre explode in the past three years. We recently covered a new fat bike for hunters and discussed the relevance of the ‘fat bike’ trend.

The Festival is hosted by distributor Quality Bicycle Products, which has a large stake in the genre with its Salsa, Surly, 45NRTH, and Cogburn brands.

A lot of details remain to be ironed out, but QBP spokesman Mike Roering said that about 70 brands will be invited to show products and provide demo bikes at the event. Registration and other logistics will be posted later this week at Fatbikesummit.com.

The festival is open to the public and free of charge. It will be held in the foothills above the city with access to 5 miles of groomed trails in the rolling hills of the Ogden Golf Course . It is sponsored by the Get Out And Live (GOAL) Foundation and the city of Ogden. (The GOAL Foundation’s aim is to “attract, organize, support and encourage athletic events that promote an active lifestyle in northern Utah.”)

You can demo bikes and talk to reps about new gear free of charge. A land management workshop on Friday Jan. 24 will cost $25 and a race on Saturday Jan. 25 will cost $35. Registration for the race and workshop will be online at Fatbikesummit.com.

This is the first time the event will be held in Ogden.

The fat bike genre is growing. A document called the Fat Bike Summit Report estimates about 10,000 fat bikes were sold in 2013. The projection is that 20,000 fat bike sales will occur in 2014.

The summit gives those tasked with nurturing and managing this growth a forum to communicate and plan for the future while getting out and playing in the snow. —Sean McCoy is managing editor of GearJunkie.com