A winter fat-bike descent from Ontario’s James Bay to Smooth Rock Falls.
words :: Colin Field // photos :: Eric Batty
If you ask yourself, who are the most hardcore fat bikers in Ontario, there is little doubt that Buck Miller, Eric Batty and Ryan Atkins win the prize. And Ted King, even though he’s an American, gets an honourable mention. These guys are as hardcore as they come.
After a successful Algonquin Park ski crossing in February 2018 (see MLBM Winter 2019 issue) Miller, Batty and Atkins hatched a plan to ride from Attawapiskat, Ontario, to Smooth Rock Falls, Ontario, stopping by Akimiski Island on the way. The trip would round out at about 700 kilometres. And the winter would be punishing. They convinced King to come along and they set off on February 4, 2019.
Packing 14 days worth of food on board, their fat bikes were fully loaded with about 90 pounds of gear each. With plans to head nearly due east of Attawapiskat they headed out onto the frozen James Bay, heading for Akimiski Island. But the weather gods had other plans.
“Open water prevented us from making it across,” says Buck Miller. “We crossed the border into Nunavut but we didn’t touch land. Then we headed back to the mainland and headed down the James Bay winter road to Moosonee.”
Their route would take them 640km south along the coast of James Bay, then onto the Wetum winter road to Smooth Rock Falls. While riding on a road may seem easy, Miller dispels that myth quickly.
“The roads are super rough. It’s carved out of ice, but it’s made over top of muskeg, cranberry swamp. It’s really rough and lumpy. If you take an ice road in Temagami or Muskoka, that’s beautiful, you can play hockey on that. But these are full-on chunder,” says Miller. “Every winter road section was like riding on beach sand. It was super tough. And this is coming from a guy that got paid to race bikes. It was bloody hard.”
When an athlete of this calibre says it’s hard, you know it’s true. And this entire crew is a badass bunch. Ryan Atkins is a world champion obstacle course racer. Eric Batty is no slouch either, having raced bikes forever, athleticism is in his gene pool; his younger sister is Canadian Olympian Emily Batty. And Ted King is a legend in the cycling world.
“The road is super rough. It’s carved out of ice, but it’s made over top of muskeg, cranberry swamp. It’s really rough and lumpy…full-on chunder.”
“None of us had ever bike-packed in the winter,” says Miller. “For Ted it was huge, because Ted had never camped before! He spent his last ten years living in Girona, Spain and California. I think he camped once in the back of a car. He’d never been proper camping and definitely not wilderness camping and definitely not winter on the James Bay coast. It was a totally crazy experience for him. But he’s tough. The guy did Paris Roubaix, the Tour de France, he’s done every Grand Tour, he raced the world championships. Suffering is suffering, right? He did really well, he didn’t complain, he did awesome around camp. It was like he was a pro. And he’s awesome on the bike. We could just ride behind him as long as we wanted. He’d just sit in the front all day.”
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Once they abandoned the idea of getting to Akimiski Island they covered ground quickly for the first couple of days.
“We did at least 50km a day, with 120 being our biggest day until we got to Moosonee. On the fourth day a full-on blizzard rolled in just outside of Moosonee. It nearly collapsed the tent. We woke up with the tent on our face, at three in the morning. We got 40cm overnight. It went up the sides and buckled down on us. That day everything was shut down. The roads disappeared. They’re not roads other than in the winter. They build them over swamp, there’s no guard rails, no snow fences. So when a blizzard rolls in it takes days to clear it and open it again. The next day we got 4km in because it was all fresh powder. Fat bikes are pretty versatile, but they can’t do anything in actual fresh deep powder. We sat in Moosonee for the day. We went to the public school to do some talks and motivate some kids. They were crazy, crazy pumped. We were like astronauts to them. We were totally out of this world.”
Using a single-poled tipi tent, with a small titanium stove to keep warm and cook, they would eat one backcountry, dehydrated meal daily.
“I had 20 litres of just dry food, for day-use-only food,” says Miller. “We were using the Untapped maple gels because they don’t freeze in -40C. All the other gels freeze. We ate candy, chocolate bars like Snickers, trail mix; trail mix is a bit tough in -40C, but it still goes down the hatch. And we made a bunch of sandwiches with Nutella, honey and peanut butter, with strips of bacon on it. Frozen stiff, just crack a piece off, thaw it in your mouth for a minute and roll.”
The team rode Cannondale Fat CAAD 1s and 2s. The 2s were fully rigid, while the 1s had a Lefty fork. But suspension didn’t really work in -40C. They didn’t grease any of the cables as that will freeze at those temps and potentially break shifters. Their tubeless Woven wheels (made in Ottawa) and 45NRTH Dillinger 5 studded tires ran perfectly and even at 2.5 PSI didn’t develop a single problem.
“There’s real adventure right here in Ontario. You don’t need endless resources to do it.”
“On day six we followed the first loader out of town and tried to stay behind it. We only ended up doing 30km that day. We kept camping and doing our thing, riding our bikes down the road and eventually got out after ten days.
“The outdoor adventure world is interesting because they market heli-skiing, high alpine, Nepal, these pretty cool awesome things, but there’s real adventure right here in Ontario,” says Miller. “You don’t need endless resources to do it. If you own a fat bike, that’s 90 percent of what you need. Between a fat bike and regular camping gear, there isn’t a lot of specialized equipment. And you can be at the start of the trip in one day’s drive from the GTA. And it’s an amazing challenge.”
Covering 640km, the James Bay Descent raised nearly $8,000 for the Timmins Native Friendship Centre’s Moosonee office.
This article was originally published in the Winter 2020 issue of ML Blue Mountains.
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