Similar discussions have been held on here before and worth looking for.
I'm don't think I'd get one for UK use. Since you have ridden one already, you know what you get and as in doubt... let it be. When you need one you surely can borrow or hire one.
Or move to the Alps, get one and enjoy 5 - 6 months of fun in snow. I absolutely love how fatbikes combine my love for winter, ice and snow with biking. I love how I can ride in places where riding shouldn't really be possible.
I had 1 - 2 bad crashes every winter for 4 - 5 years due to ice hidden under a thin layer of snow and got to a point where I'd had enough of it.
I put on studded tyres.
This transformed the biking again. I remember riding over an off camber overflow, which dropped into a small ravine whilst a group of ski tourers had to go a long way round.
omedunk wrote: ↑Wed Oct 02, 2019 6:25 am
Because the tires are too bumpy?
Sorry to jump on this question.
Yes. No matter what pressure, they bounce more, much more than regular tyres thanks to the large volume. It's nowhere near even a rubbish suspension fork as the tyres have no damping at all.
Well... a tiny little bit if you run tubes - but tubes in a fatbike a cr@p; you can't run ambient pressure (I've torn off valves a few times) and when going for the only sensible tyre width, which is above 4.5", tubes are really heavy. So just for the sake of an insignificant smaller amount of bounce (due to friction between tyre and tube) I'd definately not run tubes.
Once you ride at a certain speed in rough stuff, the bike gets hard ro control as you have to work against the bounce. Even just on rather regular Alpine descents I was amazed how much I had to adapt my riding.
For me there's a clear line. My fatbike - as much as I love it - only gets out when there's snow, or when I go building sand castles.
Then there's Iceland's highlands. A perfect place for fatbikes and exploration. No?
I've traversed Icelands Highlands 5 times on different routes under own power and never felt a fatbike to be necessary. Only perhaps 3 % the tracks are so soft, that a 2.6" will have to be deflated to dangerously (punctures) low pressures, nothing risky here for careful riders. My girlfriend and I like to let it go on descents and we had not one single tyre problem - despite rather lightweight casings. For the other 97 % I rode - sticking to various types of single and double tracks - the 29+ hardtail seemed perfect.
When I hiked across the highlands, I hiked off track by bearing for most of the time - there it would've been different, but then riding off tracks is illegal.