Fat Tires On Gravel: From Krampus To Gryphon

 Another Fat Fargo Idea

After a hiatus due to changes in my life, the idea of fat tires on gravel was bubbling back up to the surface again. This time in the form of some tires that I was gifted back in September of 2020 and also by a development from Black Mountain Cycles owner Mike Varley. 

The spark was coming at a time when, as you all probably remember now, we had a LOT of time to cook up ideas. The pandemic was in high gear, and we all were sat with worry and wonder. Anything to take our minds off that madness was welcomed, and so cooking up fat tire gravel ideas was back on the menu again. 

Mike Varley sent the first idea sparkling across the universe of imaginations when he let on that he had a new model in mind dubbed La Cabra.  It was painfully close to what I wanted, but it wasn't designed to be a corpulent gravel road crusher with 29+ wheels. Nope! 650B fat only, and I'd already been down that road. 

Then there was the Mone' El Continente', a 29+ masterpiece of custom brazed steel that looked fantastic, and expensive. While that was mildly tempting, it wasn't something I found that was going to be very practical to obtain at that time. 

The Black Mountain Cycles LaCabra was gorgeous, but not quite "it" for me.

The Mone' El Continente' is a stunner, but a bit too spendy.

At the time, I was working at Andy's Bike shop. The times were tough and money was tight, but Andy and I made things work. We supported each other's cycling habits when we could. One way that happened was my gifting Andy my Surly 1X1, since it fit him, and he obviously liked the bike. He would do things in turn for me, as when he gifted me a set of Surly Extraterrestrial tires in 700 X 2.5" size. 

I figured that these might be fun on my Gen I Fargo, but.... I remembered how 27.5 X 2.8" tires would barely pass the chain stays on that bike. What would a 29 X 2.5" tire be like? I had an appropriate wheel set to test this out with that had old Bontrager Duster rims. Okay, so let's see about it....

The Gen I Fargo with Surly Extraterrestrial 29 X 2.5 tires.

And you know what? It worked! Yeah....the tires are pigs in this size, but it worked! I was stoked on the possibilities. That said, this was still not quite right because the tires still were too big for the frame, the tires in 29 X 2.5 are mostly pretty knobby, so replacing these was going to not work out, and it messed up the bottom bracket height a bit too, which I am a bit sensitive to, I'll admit that.

So, while this was encouraging, it wasn't quite there yet, and I ended up going a different direction with the Fargo pretty quickly thereafter. But again, the idea was sound, I just knew it was, and if I could get a line on the right frame and fork without having to pay for a custom frame and fork, I was going to bite on that. Whatever it might be. 

Next: The Gryphon Mk3 comes along.