John Allison's Salsa Beargrease

Fat bikes are in vogue at the moment –most major brands are now producing a model, and brands like Salsa have ended up with a really deep range. Although they are mostly known as excelling in snow or sand, the reality is a fat bike is great at finding more traction on any loose terrain.

Many Australians will live closer to a beach than buff singletrack, and a fat bike really does shine on sand. The recent Lasseters Easter in the Alice MTB Stage race included a fat bike category.  It’s not the kind of event where a fat bike is required – or even an advantage. But the course designers created some fat bike specific sections for a couple of the stages, utilising the sandy creek and river beds.

This Salsa Beargrease belongs to John Allison, who used the Easter in the Alice as preparation for the Simpson Desert Challenge – where a fat bike is almost a necessity. It’s been designed as an agile fat bike for endurance racing, with a full carbon frame, thru-axle drop outs, full length housing, a 27.2mm seat post for extra compliance, greater standover clearance and lots of heel clearance. It’s a response to the use of fat bikes becoming more competitive, and finding more fans.

The spec is pretty much the standard XX1 build, with a few modifications. The 10-42 range of the cassette is plenty for desert racing, and the single ring makes accommodating wide tyres a little easier as the chain line doesn’t change. John runs Time pedals for reliability.

Comfort counts, and John has customized the grips with a bit of extra Oury comfort. There are now a couple of fat bike suspension forks on the market, and Salsa have released the Buzzsaw for 2015 – a dual suspension fat bike which will really change the perception of what a fat bike can do. No beards required.

The WTB saddle is stock, but the Syntace P6 post has been designed to flex a lot for comfort. With countless hours, and days, spent in the saddle, that counts.

The biggest benefit of a fat bike is the tyre footprint. The Dillinger tyre is actually quite light (for a fat bike) with a supple 120tpi casing. When you consider you can run this as low as 5psi in super soft sand, you can imagine how much floatation it can give you.

A bike isn’t fast if you can’t fix a mechanical, and John carried his multitool and tyre plugger up on his stem, out of the way of sand, and easy to get to. The plug works just like that for a car tyre, just a little smaller. It’s a great way to repair a hole in a tubeless tyre.