Cycling in Canada: Winter fat biking comes of age in scenic fashion with Travel Yukon tourism video
Perhaps nowhere is the ascendance of fat biking as a discipline more evident than in outreach material published by Travel Yukon.
Winter Fat Biking in the Yukon – Travel Yukon Promo from Union Production Co. on Vimeo.
Perhaps nowhere is the ascendance of fat biking as a discipline more evident than in outreach material published by Travel Yukon.
Published on Nov. 28, the new video—produced by Travel Yukon and a production company, Union Production—demonstrates the increasingly widespread appeal of the big-rubber, deep-tread form of cycling. The intent of that video, if nothing else—to get more people sampling the Yukon lifestyle—is testament enough to fat biking’s now-influential popularity. Beginning with aerial shots of the snow-frosted, serene Yukon wilderness, the camera tracks to a field of ice, where a squad of riders are about to set out.
When they start moving, it’s a taste of the wintry beauty of Canada’s north—through communities, over trails and alongside Yukon’s Bennett Lake—that’s best experienced from the saddle. More specifically, it’s best experienced from the type of saddle affixed to a bike with fat tires, ready to chew up winter and spit it out.
Through Travel Yukon, Yukon’s government, the CBC reports, kicked in $15,000 for the production. Shooting the video involved the participation of a number of parties, including local cycling outlet Boreale Biking, which offers fat bike rentals to tourists. The best metric of the sport’s popularity is in the Yukon government’s choice to highlight it, which has trickled down into other, equally notable measures of the skyrocketing appeal of fat biking. Only a handful of fat bike riders came to explore the Yukon last year, a representative of the company told reporters. With the territorial government’s choice to highlight the fat-tired discipline, David Pharand says, that has changed.
“That was with no marketing,” he said, referring to last year’s lower numbers. “This year, it’s just beginning, and we’ve already doubled that.”
The numbers aside, though, the imagery is stunning. It’s no wonder the winter discipline is taking off.
