Video: Ali Clarkson Attempts Trials Lines on a Fat Bike

Words: Ali Clarkson

Four years ago I visited my local trails at Cathkin Braes just south of Glasgow with a plan to find the most interesting lines possible. Being a Trials rider by trade meant that I ignored the usual trails and instead looked for places you wouldn't normally think would be suitable for a bike...trees. Cathkin has a great selection of fallen trees and fortunately for me they mostly fell in my favour.

That was four years ago however and whilst these fallen trees were fresh and grippy then, they've done what trees do and spent the last few years rotting. I hadn't planned on waiting so long; I make weekly vlogs and I felt these scouted lines had more to give than to include them in something as disposable as a vlog. I had planned on getting a crew involved to help with the project but budgets, schedules, weather and a certain pandemic sadly got in the way.

Part of my vlog life involves building and riding unique bikes, fast forward to a couple of weeks ago when I built a fat bike to showcase my sponsor Light Bicycles Drift fat bike rims and I began to realise the insane levels of grip might be good on logs. I took the bike up to Cathkin with no plans to film an edit, I was just going to do a vlog as usual but as soon as I landed a couple of difficult lines I remembered my initial plan from 4 years previously.

The only issue was it was a Tuesday and my video schedule meant that I had to have a watchable product by Friday: four days to produce an edit was tight, especially as some of the lines needed prepped. I had to self-film, find music, edit and upload and that's not including the fact I was trying potentially the hardest and scariest lines on a fat bike I've only ridden four times. I'm not one to turn down a challenge though.

It had been a huge help that I had done most of the prep work 4 years ago, which included clearing the areas of rotting logs and cutting any dead branches out of the way, which saved at least a day of hard labour...the only issue was that much of the run-ups were now full of brambles. With a little blood sacrifice from my exposed legs I got things cleared and I could start filming.

Having vlogged weekly for the past 6 years I'm fairly efficient at getting set up and cracking on but I was still unsure whether I would physically be able to complete the lines I'd set out to do. A few of the logs gave me concern with how rotten they were Would they snap? Would my tyres grip? If they were safe would I dare do the line? Was I skilled enough on this weird bike?

Ah yes, speaking of the bike, I'm new to the world of fat bikes but I'm certainly not the first to give them a trials thrashing. Chris Akrigg has shown his skills on one and Pat Smadge has a whole collection of videos of him making it look easy. Maybe because of them a fat bike has been probably the most requested content I've had over the years, the industry hype seems to have died down but there's still a vocal bunch of riders who swear by the oversized bikes. It took a bit of getting used to, a couple of baby step rides and then in at the deep end at a local trials competition. After these rides I had much more confidence in the bike and was blown away by the levels of grip it had!

This grip was a real help for this video and I'm confident that many of these lines wouldn't have been possible on my usual bike. The riding didn't come easily though! The more difficult ones were lucky to get in under 50 attempts but with my strict "no correction hops" style inspired by Ryan Leech you might be forgiven for thinking it was easy...it wasn't!

Overall I'm extremely proud of the end product. I really hope you all enjoy it too. Please consider subscribing for more content on a range of bikes, there'll be a BTS vlog of this video up soon.

Huge thanks to Light Bicycle for supplying my rims including these 26er Drift rims (85mm outer) https://www.lightbicycle.com/

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