Steve Graepel worked in partnership with Visit Idaho to create this Travel Tip.
My legs were burning, my beard was frozen, and I was shrouded in that muffled silence you find in the winter wood. In fact, the only sound I could hear was the whoosh of my breath and the pounding of my heart. Yet I wasn’t skiing. I was on a bike … pushing pedals silently up a groomed trail. But like a kid with a new toy, my face was smacked with a crooked smile, and I was loving it.
Whether climbing our foothills or pulling kids to the zoo, Idahoans love their bikes. And with the growing popularity of fat-tired bikes, numerous groomed trails once relegated to skiers and snowshoers are now dabbling with permitting fat bikes on their groomed trails.
Over a long weekend in February, I encouraged my wife to exchange her Nordic boards for a fat bike to explore some of the new trail opportunities in Idaho.
We headed to Jug Mountain Ranch, an early adopter of fat bike-friendly trails, for a weekend at their cargo container-turned-cabin, where we’d use the semi-remote digs as our backcountry outpost to explore this (relatively) new sport.
Fortified with a wood stove, kitchen, bunks for six and an outhouse, the alpine cabin sits perched on the edge of Jug Mountain Reservoir. So close, in fact, that in summer you can literally swing open the doors to hang your toes in the water below.
Our kiddie sled was once again bloated with supplies for the weekend for a family of four: food, sleeping bags, clothes, clothes and more clothes. I stuffed a trail map in my shirt pocket, swung a leg over the bike and slowly led our party up the South Boundary Trail to the alpine cabin.
After a long winter—about as long as most of us can remember—the trails were buffed smooth over a deep base of snow. If you were to take a few steps off trail, you’d easily punch through. So the rules are simple: Pedal, ski or snowshoe. If you have to walk, or you find your tires cutting through the surface more than an inch, turn around.
A fat bike is simply a mountain bike with oversized tires, accommodating geometry and an easier gear ratio to make tanking through softer surfaces seem easy. Instead of two-inch tires, four to five-inch tires are the norm. You feel like you’re riding a monster truck—stable and in control, plowing through terrain that would stop a “narrow-wheeled” mountain bike.
My wife and I rented carbon-framed fat bikes from the Jug Mountain Nordic Center. While kid fat bikes exist, only a handful of companies make them, and they cost as much as a full-sized bike, making them somewhat of a unicorn in the rental world. So instead, we put the kids on Nordic skis. With our bikes loaded down with gear, we crunched through the snow at a comfortably similar pace.
After we arrived at the cabin, knackered, with gear uncompressed, and sprawled out to dry, I reignited the troops’ enthusiasm as I lit the woodstove, saying, “I hear the lodge has inner tubes and a sledding hill!”
That seemed to do the trick, as the following morning the kids were up before my wife and I. Boots and skis on, they had already stomped out a mini-loppet on the groomed corduroy looping in front of the cabin.
The mid-morning sun had softened the trail surface, causing my wife’s bike to Scooby-Doo in place. “Pull over, let’s let some air out,” I encouraged. A more experienced rider once told me that reducing the tire pressure widens the tire footprint, buying you more traction. The tires squished under her weight as she saddled back up. She steadily pedaled down the trail with a smile.
After a day of exploring trails and hauling tubes up the bunny slope, the kids’ energy was successfully sapped. To refuel, we hopped in the car and made the short drive to Lake Fork to grab a bite to eat.
Recharged, the kids were once again ready to tackle the climb back to the cabin. Well…sort of… As a “just-in-case” measure, I had strapped the pair of sled poles to my pack, ready to convert myself into an uphill ski-towing machine. My daughter caught wind of the idea and readily hooked into the rig to experience firsthand the joys of bike-skijoring.
After another toasty night and a final meal at the cabin, we packed up and were ready to make our final trip down to the car. What took us an hour to climb the night before rolled quickly over a fresh top coat of snow. We were back at the car in 20 minutes.
Our trip nearly over, I pulled up on the handlebars and pressed on the pedal to pop the bike up into a wheelie, if only for a few pedal strokes, but still gleefully happy as a boy on his first bike.
Experience It For Yourself
Boise
The Bogus Basin Nordic Center has four kilometers of trails open to fat bikes, including the Nordic Highway and Sapper’s Return. Monday–Friday: All day. Saturday–Sunday: 2 p.m. to close.
Sun Valley
Bigwood Golf Course allows fat bikes on the dog and boundary loop of the winter golf course.
Durrance Demo Loop offers seven kilometers of groomed trail on the narrow slip of land starting out of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area headquarters lot, five miles north of Ketchum.
The Wood River Trail is the 20-mile bike path that meanders from just north of Ketchum, southward to Bellevue and is open to riders free of charge.
McCall
Seven miles before McCall, Jug Mountain Ranch offers 25 kilometers of groomed trails with dedicated uphill and downhill routes. 10 a.m.–4 p.m., Monday–Sunday.
Targhee Area
Harriman State Park in Island Park grooms 24 miles of its Nordic trail for fat bikes.
Grand Targhee Resort has 15 km of groomed trail and seven miles of singletrack open to fat bikes. Riders are asked to let the trails “set” until 10 a.m.
Where to Rent
Boise Area
McCall
Jug Mountain Ranch (Cabin rentals can be found here, too.)
Sun Valley
Targhee Area
All photos, including the feature image, are credited to Steve Graepel.
Artist, writer, adventurer and father of two, Steve Graepel is in constant pursuit of a balanced life. Living in Idaho, he can pursue it with gusto. Steve’s work has appeared in National Geographic Adventure, Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line and Gearjunkie.com. Steve and his wife Kelly live in Boise with their two children, Chloe and Ethan.
Updated on October 03, 2023
Published on March 14, 2017
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