When you buy a mountain bike, in most cases you are buying more than just a welded (or carbon fibre) frame construction with two wheels and a connection to off-roading. For many, the mountain bike is also a little piece of freedom in our otherwise so regulated world. The mantra "Go anywhere, do anything" has played a central role in the sport of mountain biking since its invention - long before Jeep adopted the slogan as the motto for an advertising campaign.
In North America in particular, the combination of freedom and mountain biking is currently experiencing a major renaissance. Bikepacking and fatbikes are their most important trends. However, although fat bikes have a reputation for being able to go further where a simple mountain bike reaches its limits, they have always had major problems. One of them: The Q-factor. This is because the cranks had to be massively widened in order to fit the monster tyres into the frame. Not a trend that the rider's knees particularly welcomed. And the extra-wide fatbike hubs are not to be found in the spare parts stores of the average bike shop.
Tumbleweed Prospector: A bike for travelling the world
The Tumbleweed Bicycle Company introduces itself and its bike.
The newly founded American bike manufacturer Tumbleweed has now solved these problems, among others. The Tumbleweed Prospector is based on a steel frame optimised for bikepacking, which offers space for up to 4-inch wide tyres (26 inches) in the frame. Nevertheless, thanks to the 73 mm bottom bracket, simple standard cranks can be used. Your knees will thank you and it's also easier to find the right parts in remote regions.
For the rest of the bike, too, emphasis was placed on components that are as common as possible and have a high level of durability. For example, despite the fat tyres, normal 135 millimetre wide hubs are used at the front and rear. If you really want to fit the bike with fat bike tyres, you can either ride it as a single speed bike or use the Rohloff Speedhub, for which the frame was originally optimised. In this case, specially designed dropouts allow the chain to be tensioned without changing the geometry of the bike. If 4-inch wide fat bike tyres are too much for you, you can also fit the bike with 27.5 or 29-inch plus tyres. In this case, you can also use normal derailleur gears and multiple cranks.
Tumbleweed endurance test: six weeks in Mongolia
The tumbleweed (plant) thus lives up to its name. This is because plants of this type allow their seeds to be carried by the wind and can therefore spread over thousands of kilometres at lightning speed, even in the most inhospitable regions. To test the durability of his bikes, company founder Daniel Malloy put the prototypes through a first-class endurance test. Six weeks of bikepacking across Mongolia. Here is the award-winning video.
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The award-winning long version of the Mongolia clip.
Click here for the Tumbleweed website. The frames are available from 1300 dollars, prices in euros are not yet available.
Adrian Kaether
Editor
