6th Annual Frozen Fatty at Spirit Mountain

DULUTH, Minn. — The 6th annual Frosted Fatty event returned to the trails of Spirit Mountain Saturday, and even though there were a few wipeouts, people still had a blast.

The race brought out 35 riders from the Twin Cities, and even out of state, to try their luck racing downhill on the mountain bike trails of Spirit Mountain.

2013 was the first year Spirit introduced mountain biking, but winter is a different challenge riders can experiment with.

“It’s fun to kind of see what it’s like in the summer and I guess in the winter it’s a lot more, you’re all over the place a little bit more, and you’re riding, trying to stay on the bike more than try and do jumps and things like that so it’s a different kind of fun,” Zach Sullivan, Competitor, and Owner of Romp Bags, who sponsored the event, said.

The tires on these bikes are meant to give a little more surface area when biking on snow or sand… Making it easier to stay on top of surfaces as opposed to regular bike tires.

“So winter time, people break out their fat bikes and they’re able to lower the tire pressure which gives them that better traction on the snow,” Jon Regenold, Director of Resort Services at Spirit Mountain said.

The bitter cold and high winds from Friday night blew some extra snow on the trails, creating a less-than-ideal bumpy ride for racers.

Spirit Mountain doesn’t get many chances to open these trails up in the winter, because according to staff, it takes longer for chair lift operators to load and unload bikes, while skiers are also using the lift., so bikers seized the last chance to ride on Saturday.

“They’re fun and spirit mountain, we like to do fat bike Sundays, we do lift access but Duluth has a number of really nice locations for fat biking,” Regenold said.

And the race introduces many out-of-towners to the number of accessible biking trails available year-round throughout Duluth.

“[We] have such a building community of enthusiasts that come up and enjoy Duluth Minnesota, through their mountain bike, on their mountain bike, and we’re just really proud of what we have but then really proud of the whole network of trails that Duluth has,” Regenold added.

The mountain bike trails at Spirit Mountain were accessible for the past few Sundays, but after the Frosted Fatty, they will remain closed until spring.