Thanks to Facebook and the internets, we now know that Salsa has apparently been working on a carbon version of the BearGrease racing fatbike. We’re assuming it is going to be shown off here at FrostBike which starts tomorrow. From the looks of things it has a tapered head tube and a press fit BB with a traditional seat post. We’ll track down more details in the next two days.
Updated: More details after the break!
So unfortunately, while the carbon BearGrease was at FrostBike, we were not able to see it. We’re told the official release will be just before Saddle Drive – QBP’s show out west in July. We were able to gain a little more knowledge of the bike though, especially on the XX1 group that will be speced on the bike. Yes, XX1.
In fact, apparently QBP has worked a deal with SRAM that allows them to be the exclusive distributor of the aftermarket XX1 100mm fatbike crank for the first year of availability, as well as Salsa being the exclusive OEM for the crank for the first year as well. As far as we know, all the other parts remain the same so you could probably build yourself a bike with different crank. The hub though will be interesting, as we heard rumblings of an even wider fatbike hub than the 170mm hubs on the market right now. We have no firm details, just a few rumors.
The XX1 equipped carbon BearGrease is claimed to clock in around 24lbs which should be no problem considering we saw an aluminum BearGrease at QBP that was right at 27 lbs and supposedly had “heavy” wheels. There will be two versions offered with the XX1 model retailing for $5500, and an X9 version for a more reasonable $3499. After riding fatbikes that are 35+ lbs, I can’t imagine what riding something that light would be like, except awesome. More around July.
