Fat Tires On Gravel: From Krampus To Gryphon - The Inspiration

 Continuing on with this series concerning my thoughts and experiences with 29+ tires and gravel, we will look at the bike that inspired it all for me. That being Mike Johnson's 29+ fat bike conversion of a Ti Mukluk from Salsa Cycles. 

Well, it was Mike's bike and the event where I saw it in action. This specific use instance really resonated with me due to the difficulty of this particular ride. The ride? It was the 2014 edition of Odin's Revenge, a classic gravel grinder which took place in Gothenburg, Nebraska. If you are curious about this now retired event, see my "Lament For Odin's Revenge", written in 2016, or my "Gravel History With Guitar Ted: Odin's Revenge", written in 2022. 

Mike Johnson had done Odin's Revenge in its inaugural year of 2012 and was impressed with the "backside" of the course's sandy "gravel" which confounded skinnier tires and was still very difficult with a MTB tire. So he decided that his attempt at the course for 2014 would be done on a fat bike conversion to 29+ wheels. He had a nice 2012 Salsa Cycles titanium Mukluk and had the wheel set built and set up with 29 X 3.0 Surly Knard tires. 

Ostensibly this was all done just to tackle that sandy, North of I-80 section of Odin's, but Mike had no idea that in 2014 at Odin's he would have the perfect set up. The weather made that particular bike a coveted bike by many other riders that day, and I was one of them. 

A pre-event thunderstorm turned the 2014 Odin's Revenge course into a quagmire.

It was a perfect storm:(Sorry for the pun!) The Odin's course, a course with many dirt roads, then add in an over-night thunderstorm, and top it all off with Mike's bike choice. The combination proved that Mike's bike was to be the class of the field in as far as capability to ride went. 

Mike has always been a better, faster athlete than I. So, after the start, he was up the road from me. But I could discern his tracks versus the other riders in the wet gravel and especially in the dirt. Mike's wheels were barely making an impression in the road while other riders with skinnier, "gravel" tires were cutting into the surface more and working a LOT harder to get down the road. 

In the foreground you can discern the way skinnier tires were cutting into the saturated surface.

As I labored heavily to get to the first checkpoint that year aboard my Salsa Cycles Fargo Gen I, I realized by looking at the evidence that the tires left behind that Mike had it made. He was expending a LOT less energy than I, or most of his fellow riders, and that I ultimately needed a set up like this for myself. 

There was literally miles of this. (Rider David Mizelle)

The day ended for me when I determined that I would get to the first checkpoint far to late to make the second one, especially in those conditions and with my bike. I rode 47 miles and it was the hardest 47 miles I have ever ridden. By the time I, and my riding partner for most of that day, Don Daly, had reached CP#1, we were in the top ten of the field. But only because so many riders had dropped out already behind us. The roads were just too hard to ride through on skinny tires. 

On the way home I just could not shake how Mike's bike was so capable in those difficult conditions and how miserably inefficient even a Fargo with 2.2" tires was in comparison. By the time I had gotten home my mind was buzzing with ideas. I had a Ti Muk like Mike's. Could I do this with my Mukluk? Maybe I needed a new bike?

Well, a development that occurred in 2014 set me off in another direction. I also did explore the possibility of a Mukluk like Mike's bike. I'll cover all of that in the next two posts in this series. I'll talk about each bike and idea, and why ultimately none of those bikes passed muster with me. 

Next: The Experimental Phase