Winter cycle touring basic tips

“Don’t eat yellow snow.” Is the winter tip we all know. I posted lots of info, tips and trip winter trip reports >HERE<, but here is a summary of my tips on winter cycle touring. These tips are aimed as an introduction for people planning to cycle and camp in the extreme cold. I learned most of my lessons the hard way while cycling in Lapland with Helen last winter.

Preparation:

Bike: Some obvious modifications to the bike are Spike tires, Sheep skin saddle cover and Pogies to keep your hands warm. For Rohloff users its essential to thin your gearbox oil using cleaning oil (50/50). For my other winter modifications see >HERE<.

Gear: It almost goes without saying, but make sure your gear is in good condition, making repairs at -30 is not easy or fun. Bear in mind that many items are more easily broken (especially plastic) in the cold. Tape up any metal parts you are likely to touch with ungloved hands to prevent your skin sticking to them.

Self: I’m not usually an advocate of training for a trip and usually get fit on tour. Winter cycle touring is a lot more demanding than standard trips. More pushing the bike to warm cold toes, heavier gear, and all elements of camping in snow are infinitely more demanding than camping on a nice green grassy field. Therefore for my next trip I’ll be making sure I’m a little fitter before I start.

Planning: Plan a shorter route and shorter daily distances than usual. Generally there will be less day light, packing up in the morning takes twice as long as usual as does just about everything else in the cold. You may also have the push the bike a lot more than usual to help keep toes defrosted. Cycling itself also becomes a lot slower and harder once under -15.

Clothing:

Feet: Keeping feet warm is one of the biggest challenges of winter cycling. Forget spd and cycling shoes, get winter boots with removable liners. Forget breathable socks and get vapor barrier layer (VBL) socks, plastic bags work fairly well too. VBL means your feet will be wet but sweat will not move into your insulation layers (boot liners, more socks). If these layers get wet they end up freezing. When all else fails and your feet are cold and numb, the best thing is to walk more and cycle less. good luck!!

Hands: Potentially a big problem while cycling but thanks to my Hotpog Arctic Poggies (handlebar covers) I rarely had cold hands while cycling. Whilst working and cooking around camp I used an old pair of Goretex gloves that worked reasonably well, the important lesson was to always put them inside my jacket if not on my hands as they were generally wet from sweat/soup/coffee/water and would freeze within minutes. For dry work or reading in bed at -15 I found my  Marmot Fleece gloves very nice.

Other areas:  Other clothing is all about the balance between breath-ability, comfort and warmth (yeh yeh stating the obvious). Sweat is your enemy as once its in your outer layers it will freeze. Many folks choose to not wear so much to reduce sweating but I find with a lower core body temperature my hands and feet get colder quicker which can cause bigger issues. I’d rather cycle slightly warmer and deal with the sweat. Next trip I’m going to experiment with a VBL jacket from RBH designs. The theory being all your other layers stay dry, only your base layer gets sweaty, this does mean more temperature management though.

For the full story on clothing that worked and didn’t in Lapland see >HERE<.

One big change for my Canada trip is the addition of a ColdAvenger mask.

Camping:

Camping in snow brings a whole new chapter of challenges to cycle touring. Just getting yourself, gear and bike 20m off the road and into the woods in deep snow is quite an undertaking. I’m even considering taking snow shoes on my next trip to make wild camping easier.

First of all here is a nice video from Hilleberg with some very dodgy music with tips on setting up a tent in snow.

As a cyclist you probably don’t have ski poles with you but you have all kinds of other handy things to attach your tent to like your bike. I also have a handful of snow pegs with me but mainly use my panniers or empty dry bags (from tent, sleepingmat etc) as snow anchors.

For tent camping its also worth digging a small trench in the entrance of your tent, this makes it easier to get in and out, easier to sit and cook and has several other advantages.

Another option in milder weather is to just dig a snow hole to keep you out of the wind and then just sleep in a bivvy bag. This means less work to pack up in the morning and gives a great view of the night sky and maybe northern lights.

By the end of our trip Helen and I had this down to a fine art to include kitchen, couch and walkways around camp.

Sleeping system: I’ve written an introduction to winter sleeping systems >HERE<. I use a combination of Thermarest foam mat and Protlite air mat, plus Cumulus Excuitic 1000  down sleepingbag with VBL and gore-tex bivvy.

Cooking:

Things you should know: Bread freezes within an hour or two at -15 as does most stuff you’d normally eat. Here’s a glimpse into our daily menu which worked well enough.

Breakfast:  Porridge, the breakfast of champions……with a handful of raisins, usually I also have honey in my porridge but it freezes around -10. Instead we added chocolate drink powder for taste (Helen also added about 100g of sugar to her’s…..).

Snacks:  Rather predictably we ate alot of trail mix as a snack, though after 3 weeks couldn’t face it anymore. For a longer trip it would be better to start with a simple trails mix and make it more luxurious as the trip progresses rather than starting with Shane’s super awesome trailmix mix on day one… Dried fruit such as raisins and apricots stayed remarkably edible despite the cold, frozen chocolate is also not a problem.

Lunch: Crackers are the key, a great bread substitute and they don’t freeze. Our staple lunch was crackers with cheese or salami and sometimes a soup. The salami and cheese needs to be cut into slices after buying it and separated into portions.  Each morning the cheese/salami for the day would then go into my fleece pocket for defrosting by lunch time, the rest could stay in the freezer (front pannier).

Dinner: Pasta of course, though with a twist. In 20,000km of cycle touring I had never eaten so well before this trip. Thanks to the cold it was possible to carry meat, ice cream and frozen vegetables. One evening would be pasta with meat and veg, the next cheese and veg, though it doesn’t look so nice, it was some of the best camping food I’ve had.

Cooking takes longer and uses more fuel in the cold, especially snow melting requires a lot energy (1litre of snow = about 100ml water). Folding knifes are not so handy, plastic utensils also become very brittle. I found a home made insulation blanket for my pans, water bottle and flask helped a lot, but even still drinking water freezes quickly, as does food in the pan if not eaten quickly.

For my next trip I’ve made a cooking box for more efficient cooking and snow melting.

Winter cycling can be quite demanding and potentially dangerous but its damn good fun and winter creates great landscapes and photos.

Other random tips:

• Toothpaste, shampoo, moisturizer, liquid deo etc all freeze.
• Damp cloths not worn at night freeze.
• Tent, sleeping bag etc become more bulky and are hard to pack with cold hands/gloves on. Use larger stuff sacks than usual.
• Hygiene: Dehydrate wet wipes then rehydrate with warm water when needed.
• Batteries have a lot less power in the cold.
• If you are a social media addict take a stylus so you can type with your gloves on.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments section. Also check out the useful links below. Here is a video impression of our Lapland trip.

Cycling in Lapland from ShaneCycles on Vimeo.

Useful links:

Toms bike trips: Film maker, blogger and a nice resource site.

Mountainbike expedition team : These folks do some serious expeditions and give lots of info and tips about their trips including some great nutritional information.

Icebike.com :  A good resource site but mainly aimed at commuting and day trips I think.

Bikeforest.com : A great trip report from a trip into Canada’s arctic.

Bike-nord.de : Nice pictures of two Lapland trips but I can’t read any German  .

Wintertrekking.com : A great info site for winter camping, lots and lots of info.

Ultima Thule 2011 : Not a cycling site but an interesting look into tried and tested gear for Arctic use by Jaakko Heikka. Though the solutions are bulky, certainly food for thought.

Daylight calculator : Website to show how many hours of day light there are at a giving location and date in the year.  In some parts of the world it can be handy to delay a month in order to get extra daylight.