Winter bikepacking to a mountain peak: A fatbike adventure on snow

Can you bikepack to a snowy mountain peak on a fatbike?

I don’t know what I would have done without the bike. The bike is my freedom machine. And the bike that gives me the most freedom, is hands down the fatbike. What other bike enables me to ride almost anywhere I want?

Though, even the fatbike has its limits. You can’t just ride anywhere. Well, actually, under certain conditions, you can. At least in the mountains. The magic happens in spring, when thaw during the day and frost during the night produces a solid crust that enables you to go fatbiking in the mountains.

For weeks, I had wanted to go fatbiking on the crust and try to summit a local mountain peak by bike, but bogged down with work, it didn’t seem to happen. The nightly frost disappeared in the mountains, and eventually the crust collapsed and the hope of summiting the peak by bike dwindled like dirty snow in the sun. It wasn’t going to happen. It was too late for fatbiking on the snow crust.

Or at least that’s what I thought. A couple of weeks of warm weather later, a brief period of cold nights in the mountains refuelled my remaining slivers of hope to the extent that I considered packing my gear on the fatbike and giving it a go.


Filmed with the Canon XA20 in 2014, edited in 2022.


Music provided by Epidemic Sounds:

Watch it grow – Peace Reels
Sunshine Road – Kit and the Calltones
Guide Me on My Way – Mid Knight
Dead and Gone Blues – Peter Crosby
Nothin’ Left Blues – Peter Crosby
But You’re the One – Headlund


#bikepacking #fatbike #fatbiking #cycling #norway