Fat Biking the Telephone Loop

Mukluk's at rest, Telephone Loop, West Bragg Creek

Conditions were perfect to head out to the mountains so we could run our Salsa Mukluk demo bikes through a long ride on XC Ski trails in the West Bragg Creek area west of Calgary.

Hommie and Krocker were up for the challenge so we loaded up the bikes Sunday morning and drove west into what we hoped would be epic winter conditions and lots of sweet single track.  Both were eventually found - as well as a new desire to get out to the mountains in the wintertime on something other than skis. Arriving at the trailhead and were surprised to see a little less snow on the ground than what we had in Calgary, would the fatbikes be overkill?

Front range of the Rockies in the distance.

Once we were organized and ready to go it was decided that Telephone Loop would be the trail of the day.  At 15 kms long and not maintained right now (logging is in progress along part of it) we guessed it would take about 2 hrs of riding to complete.  We also knew that there were no really steep and long sections on the trail so we figured it would be a good option since fat bikes can still have a hard time on steep, snowy climbs.

The trail itself was really fun for fatbiking.  The entire loop had been hiked on so there was a slightly packed down boot trail to follow in the deeper snow usually found in the open meadows.  We had to employ our Jedi balancing skills to stay within what was basically a 12" wide trough (I cannot explain how hard it was to stay in that trough!) through the open areas but once we were back into the trees the trail was usually wide with a little less snowpack and easy to pedal on.

The absolute best part of the ride was the look on xc skiers faces as we pedaled past them: How do you adequately convey the look of jaw hitting the ground?  All three of us would burst into belly laughs when passing these ghastly looking faces, so funny!  

Nature being rather natural.

I recorded the loop to Strava and you can find the info here.

If you are interested in trying out one of these amazing bikes book your test ride with us.  We have 4 bikes available for demo - but be careful, you will want one!