Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Ride the Wild: The Beauty of Backcountry Bicycling

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous quote speaks about doing something that you’ve never done before, going beyond the known and exploring the unexplored. That’s a large part of why I first took up mountain biking in 1993, and even more so riding a “fat-bike” in 2012. The volunteer group I lead had been given two Surly Pugsleys, one of the original production fat-bikes, primarily for the winter events that we help with here in Minnesota. After I posted on Facebook about riding my mountain bike into an interior historic landmark on the Chippewa National Forest in north-central Minnesota, a friend encouraged me to try the fat-bike. I did, and it changed everything.


I ride a Cogburn; a Cogburn Outdoors CB4, pedal-powered bicycle with four-inch-wide tires and 20 gears. The Cogburn was the brainchild of Quality Bicycle Products (QBP), the Minnesota-based company that also brought the world the Pugsley, and its sister, the Salsa Mukluk. Originally marketed to those who wanted to ride their mountain bikes on snow in the winter, fat-bikes quickly gained popularity as an all-season, all-terrain, all-weather, human-powered ATV. Dozens of companies got in on the ride, some including the fatties in their existing lineup, and some building and marketing exclusively fat-bikes. At the peak of this, QBP introduced the Cogburn, a fat bike specifically targeted for outdoor persons. Advertisements for the new cycle encouraged riders to pedal their Real Tree® camo-painted vehicles, “to go deeper, faster, farther, and leave no trace,” in the pursuit of fish and game. Articles appeared in hunting, off-road, and even bicycling magazines, touting the Cogburn for hunting deer, grouse, elk, and backcountry angling, and even using it as a survivalist “bug-out” vehicle. Unfortunately, the Cogburn came out at a time when e-bikes were also starting to gain popularity, and new companies like Bakcou, (then called Backcountry Bikes) QuietKat, and Rambo were marketing their camo-coated products to the exact same audience. Introduced in early 2014, by 2018 the Cogburn was no more. But… I got one!

As I said, I have been mountain biking since 1993, including over two decades as a bike patrol park ranger, and as an EMS and trails volunteer. I have a custom-built 29-inch MTB that I might have never ordered if the Cogburn had been available a year or two earlier. It is the primary bicycle that I ride these days, and while at 70-years of age, I’m certainly considering an e-bike for my next ride, I’m in no hurry, and I certainly will never stop riding the Cogburn as long as I am physically able. Let me explain why: The first part is that, as a retired Ranger, I have a heightened respect for the rules, and the “Authority of the Resource” that created them. At the end of March 2022, the United States Forest Service issued guidelines on the use of e-bikes and e-Mountain Bikes on our National Forests and Grasslands, essentially categorizing electric-powered, or electric-pedal assisted bicycles as motorized vehicles, thereby restricting them to trails that are open to motor vehicles. Although I may not personally agree with these guidelines, they are the rules, and they are subject to change, but until they do I will obey them.



The second, and more personal reason is that most of my off-road cycling, be it for fishing or as a volunteer, takes place on national, state, and county forest lands. I love riding through the tall pines of northwestern Wisconsin and northern Minnesota to access some backcountry stream in pursuit of trout, or pedaling down an old logging road to find a trail that will take me, deeper and farther into the forest, to a creek with deep, dark holes that may or may not hold native browns. I travel at five or six miles per hour, slower going up hills, and faster going down. If I fall, and I do, (My Police Cycling Instructor always said that if you’re not falling, you’re not learning. I’ve learned a lot in 30 years.) the forest floor cushions my landing.

You see things from the seat of a bicycle that escape the eyes and the attention of the motorized visitor. Bear, deer, pheasant, grouse, raccoons, turkeys, majestic bald eagles, squirrels, and even a long-tailed weasel have crossed my path while riding. Once I rode into an abandoned sandpit on the Chippewa National Forest to the amazing sight of over twenty bald eagles feeding. Another time, I watched two adult eagles in pursuit of a red-tailed hawk that had gotten too close to their nest, like two F-15s chasing a P-51. Or I might have missed that 12-inch brown trout leaping into the air in pursuit of a mayfly if I were riding in a UTV. Although I’ve never seen one, one trail that I ride frequently has an authentic “moose crossing” sign tacked to a tree. I’ve seen their tracks but never had to face one of the wily ungulates in person. Another time, while pre-riding the course for a mountain bike race we would be helping at, I came across a good-sized black bear methodically tearing down the flagging the race director had put up only hours before. However, what was probably my most memorable wildlife encounter came one summer afternoon as I was pushing my mountain bike up a steep hill on a backroad in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest. I frequently ride solo, as I was that day, when I got the feeling that I was being watched. I looked up from the roadway to the top of the hill and saw an adult Timberwolf standing there, watching me. I reached for my camera (this was before cell phones) and when I looked back, the wolf was gone. But, when I reached the top of the hill I found his tracks; pawprints the size of saucers. Interestingly, it was on that same ride that I encountered a pair of ATV riders, which were totally legal in that area, and they shared a can of soda with me as I told them the tale about the wolf. As residents of the area, they were more impressed with the fact that I was riding that trail on a bicycle than the fact that I saw wolf.

 


And it’s not just the wildlife. Chicken-of-the-woods fungus on trees, Jack-in-the-pulpit, lady slippers, Columbine, little white flowers that I don’t know or maybe don’t remember their name. There’s a lot of beauty on the forest floor, and you are likely to miss it, roaring by at 20, or 40, or 55 miles an hour. Fall colors rides are one of my annual must-dos. The yellows, reds, oranges, and browns are magical when viewed from the seat of what I have named, “the Official Fat-Bike of Fall,” the Cogburn. And winter? Winter is the season fat-bikes were invented (in Alaska) for. The very first time I rode a Pugsley back in 2005 was in late winter with fat-bike pioneer (and Pugsley designer) Jon Evingson. As I rode down a local snowmobile trail and out onto Linwood Lake, I remember thinking, “I’ve found my snowmobile.” I garnered strange looks from the ice fishermen going by in their pickup trucks, with their drivers’ doors open, but I gave them strange looks right back. One of the early Cogburn advertisements showed the bike being used for ice fishing access. I’m not an ice fisherman, but I get it. It’s far safer to ride a 35 pound bicycle out on lake ice than a 3000 pound pickup truck. Side note: one time while riding across a frozen Chequamegon Bay on my fat-bike, I looked down to see a fish frozen in the ice. That wouldn’t have happened in a truck or UTV.

How will my eventual changeover to an e-bike, something that is drawing ever closer now that I’m in my 70s, change all of this? Right now, that’s hard to say. I believe a lot of it depends on factors like what specific e- bike I buy, what rule changes take place on their use on state and county public lands, and how my health fares in the months and years to come. I do know that I won’t give up the Cogburn. We’ve had too many adventures together, and it’s restored the fun to mountain biking that I thought I had left behind.