While trolling social media over a cup of coffee, I stumble upon a video posted by Bergur Benediktsson, Lauf’s Production Manager, Brand Ambasador, and booth model. After dropping my kids off at school, (because you never know with these guys), I came back to watch some whack job athletic specimen climbing some insane, never-ending staircase on a fatbike… then I saw it was actually Berg doing it!
Of course I hit him up and asked if he could put it on YouTube so we could bring it to our loyal audience. Besides, I thought that this would be a great up-lifting video to take your minds off all of the 12-speed and e-bike drama unfolding this week…
media c of Sara Benediktsson
Despite working in this industry, like most cyclists, we gravitate towards difficult, and sometimes pointless challenges with our bikes. The guys at Lauf, based in Iceland take these things to a whole new level as we experienced in a rather adventurous trip to their headquarters last year and I’ve watched these guys party 10x harder and feel 10x better than everyone else the next morning. True Viking blood is all I can come up with.
I asked Bergur what possessed him to do this, and this is what he had to say:
Since I first tried a fatbike I have been constantly trying to find out what can and cannot be done on a fatbike. In Akureyri, where I grew up, there is this set of 10 stairs with 10 steps each plus a couple of short stairs at the bottom and one short at the top right up to the church. 112 steps in total. These stairs have been used for urban downhill races. The first time I brought a fatbike with me to Akureyri, Christmas 2014, I thought to myself that it would be pretty rad to ride up the stairs instead. I gave it a try but failed miserably, not even close. Now, a few thousands fatbiking km later, I have developed some skills and endurance so I decided to give it a try again. My Fatback Skookum with a Lauf Carbonara fork was the obvious weapon of choice. After fine tuning the tire pressure for maximum traction without damaging the rims I got the feeling that I could do this. After a few failures I was getting tired and frustrated so I decided to sit down in Bláa Kannan, a local coffee shop. After a cup of cappuccino and a chocolate cake I managed to send it bottom to top in first try. Huge thanks to my sister Sara Ben for filming and cheering me on!
