Our colleague, Andy Williams at Grand Targhee Resort, alerted us that the Methow Valley Sport Trails Association (MVSTA) in Winthrop, WA has a new snowbike page on their website announcing that they’re opening up some of their trails to fat bikes this winter:

While the Methow Valley has many passionate fat bike riders, this is the first year MVSTA has piloted a few trails to fat bikes. This will be a pilot program with selected trails open at selected times depending on snow conditions. The ski trail conditions will still remain as our top priority… These locations will be assessed on a day by day, snow conditions, user compatibility basis.

This is a significant development because 1) MVSTA is the nation’s largest cross-country ski area; and 2) of the variety of land owners that make up the MVSTA trail system. From their mission/history page:

Some 52% of the trail system is on U.S. Forest Service (USFS) lands with another 0.02% on U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) lands. Of the remaining lands, 2.1% is on Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) land, and another 1.7% is on Washington State Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW) lands with 20-year permits (MVSTA 2005). The remainder runs over a complex of private lands on which MVSTA has entered into long-term agreements with landowners.

And with the recent early season snow, the MVST staff went on a winter fat biking outing this week. See their Facebook album of 9 photos: