Fat tire bikes are being featured at this year’s Badger State Winter games, thanks to a new trail system in Wausau developed specifically for riders on the innovative bicycles. The trail at Sunny Vale Park on Wausau’s west side will be used as a race course for the first-ever fat bike race included in the winter games, scheduled to take place on Saturday.
According to the Wausau Daily Herald, volunteers from the Central Wisconsin Offroad Cycling Coalition created about seven miles of fat-bike trails throughout the 300-acre Marathon County park. CWOCC president Gary Barden said the trails opened for cyclists shortly before Christmas.
Fat tire bikes are built with extra-wide tires that can be ridden at very low air pressures, which increases the bike’s traction and ridability in snow. The big tires allow riders to stay on top of snow, where narrower, higher-pressure tires tend to sink in and bog down. With more and more cyclists embracing the new bikes, the need for a good place to ride near Wausau grew, Barden said.
