Couple completes first fat bike journey from Point Hope to Utqiagvik
Published 11:51 pm Saturday, July 22, 2017
HOMER — In the past 10 years since fat bikes have become popular for riding on beaches and snow in Alaska, people have regularly ridden them from Anchor Point to Homer or into the snowy backcountry of the Caribou Hills. On Saturday, Homer couple Kim McNett and Bjørn Olson finished taking their fat bikes where no one has ever ridden before, about 450 miles in a 24-day trip from Point Hope to Utqiagvik, much of it on Arctic beaches.
On what Olson calls The Roof of the Arctic trip, they used pack rafts to make river and bay crossings, but the bikes with wide tires that can ride on sand and softer snow proved perfect for traveling the barrier island beaches of the northwest Arctic coast.
“It was by far the most incredible trip I’ve done,” Olson said on Monday after returning to Homer. “This one had so many elements wrapped together — one of them this uncertainty it might not be possible.”
Read the rest of the story here.
