Gatineau Park’s southern trails open to fat bikers

This weekend, Gatineau Park in Ottawa is another place where you’ll see the distinctively wide tread of fat bikes rolling along the snowy trails of winter. It’s also a place where you’ll see likely see the surprised expressions of passers-by, watching these big-wheeled, sturdy-framed bikes riding with ease on the sort of variable terrain where others may fear to tread.

Their presence in Gatineau Park, the Ottawa Citizen reported, is thanks to a decision made by the National Capital Commission back in November, when the organization announced it would allow fat biking in the park.

Specifically, there are four trails in Gatineau Park, mostly in the southern end, that are open to fat bikers. They’re all snowshoe trails, chosen as routes for fat bikes—called “snow bikes” in National Capital Commission literature—in order to determine if the new, growing discipline will become a permanent winter activity in the park. Numbers, of course, are the key to that determination, which is what Commission officials will be watching for.

Noticing that fat bikers were already using the trails, those officials were concerned about the potential impact of the big, steady tires on Gatineau Park trails, but didn’t want to restrict them from using the trails. Instead, the organization teamed up last fall with the Ottawa Mountain Bike Association, a partnership more common to the summer months, to figure out a way to make things work for both cyclists and other trail users.

Balancing the needs of snowshoers and fat bikers, officials said, has been the priority. And with the former sharing those trails with the latter, things are so far off to a good start.

“Up to now,” said Louis-Rene Senechal, Gatineau’s manager of public programs, “we haven’t heard negative feedback from the snowshoers. I think that’s because we did communicate the pilot project quite a bit to our visitors and this isn’t even 20 percent of our snowshoeing network. So the impact, though existent, is minimized.” Representatives from the Ottawa Mountain Bike Association, too, have noted that fat bikes have received a warm reception from Gatineau Park’s more traditional trail users.

“It’s actually been a really nice atmosphere on the trails,” said Sandra Beaubien, president of the organization. “A lot of snowshoers have been asking questions about the bikes and there have been lots of conversations happening, which is really exciting.”

As positively as things have been going, though, Ottawa-area fat bikers will need to wait a year to see if the park will be fully open to them, after the National Capital Commission reviews comments from other park users and the frequency of fat-riding itself to determine if the discipline is here to stay.

So get out there this weekend, fat bikers of Ottawa and Gatineau.