How Slippery Is It?
Technical Discussion of Traction on Ice
How Safe Is It?
What are the risks injury in Icebiking
WindChill
How to figure the Effective Temperature
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Riding
Techniques
Fresh Snow
New fallen snow presents problems for cyclists due to the extra effort need to get
through it. Six inches of really light powder is tireing and slow, but you can go
for long distances. Its very little worse than riding against a good stiff
wind. Even a foot of powder is manageable as long as you get there first, before
someone else makes a mess of it.
Six inches of heavy wet snow is all but impassable. Even 4 inches can a lot of work
Then too, there is the risks you don't see. Ruts in the underlying surface can
provide a wheel diversion when you least expect it. The only consolation is that
snow is softer to land on than ice.
Make a New Track
You will find it much easier to travel in totally undisturbed
snow than to follow car tracks, or even another bike. If you are the first vehicle
along the route your biggest problem is the extra effort needed to push through the
snow. If you are following others you also have to contend with their ruts and the
front wheel diversions these cause.
Surface Hints of Hidden Problems
On open road ways, watch for small bumps in the snow which appear without any apparent
cause. These can signal debris in the road, or potholes under the snow.
Studs
In real deep snow, studs are not much help. Look back at your track.
If you see compacted snow at the bottom of your track then your studs are probably not
touching the ground at all. Usually you can see small dark holes in the compacted
layer if your studs are providing traction. (You may have to stop the bike to see
these). Never the less, in sharp turns you will feel, and often hear, your studs
grinding into what ever is under the snow, provided it is not so deep as to keep your tire
suspended above the real surface.
Techniques
You will find that things happen slowly in heavy snow.
Falls take a fair bit of time to happen, and you will find that most are avoidable by
quick bike handling. Sharp turns that would only exacerbate a fall on ice are quite
viable recovery techniques.
By a "sharp turn" I mean turning the handlebar in large increments, and
fairly large lean angles. You may feel you front wheel slip sideways. Don't
over react. The snow will supply resistance to this sideways slip, but it
takes time to kick in (your tire has to compact a couple inches of snow as it slips before
there is real resistance). Maintain forward motion, wait for the tire to catch.
More often than not, the side slip will simply cease with you still in the saddle.
If you dab, you dab. No big deal.
This is tiring work. Gear down to a sustainable speed.
Trafficked Snow
Road Snow
Heavy snow that has been traveled upon by automobiles is one of the most difficult of
surfaces ICEBIKERS have to deal with.
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Not only do you have the wheel diversions
caused by the ruts, but also the polished smooth surface underneath where cars have spun
tires trying to get going.
The best technique is to avoid this stuff, riding in the undisturbed snow at the side
of the road. While a lot of work, undisturbed snow is always easier to deal with
than trafficked snow.
If your balance good you can sometimes make progress following the tire track, but
don't count on it for very long, and certainly don't expect to make good time. Also,
there is a thin layer of highly compacted snow at the bottom of the track, that tends to
squirt out from under your tire throwing you slightly left or right.
If the snow is still white, (above) it has probably received no sand or salt, and has
been trafficked by fewer than 30 cars.
Chocolate Mousse
After a while it begins to look like the mess shown here, which is called chocolate
mousse or brown sugar, or just "Car Snot".
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This stuff is difficult to traverse, as it is one constant series of wheel diversions
set on a slippery base layer. Snow, once worked to this degree has lost much of its
angularity and now provides very little traction. This, combined with the fact that
it usually tends to be on top of some rather slippery ice means that any wheel diversion
started by the ruts will be accentuated by the underlying ice.Studs may help, but often they simply pack full of this stuff and you end up slipping
around quite a bit.
Techniques
Getting through heavily trafficked snow is seldom elegant, often a lot of work, and
always a nerve wracking experience, especially if there is automobile traffic nearby.
Frequently, the falls that seem inevitable from second to second can be avoided by
continuing to apply power and steering as best you can. Your side slipping front
wheel often bites when it hits a slightly more solid ridge, and if you can delay the fall
for half a second or so you may find that you can recover. Don't be in a hurry to dab,
stay on the pedals and apply power. This is a lot like riding in loose sand.
As you power through this stuff, you will have to make rather large steering
corrections to compensate for impending falls. This preserves your balance. You
will, however, find yourself going in a direction slightly (or not so slightly) different
than you intended, and this can not always be permitted if motor traffic is in the
adjacent lane.
It is often possible to power out of the ruts in these
Chocolate Mousses, because this material is almost always unconsolidated, mushy and
loose. Unlike hardpack ruts, you can steer right out the side of a rut.
Lower your tire pressure. Hard tires just wallow
around in this stuff. If you have more than a city block of trafficked show to plow
through, let air out till you have visibly bulging contact patches. On typical
mountain bikes you can go as low as 20psi. With SnowCat rims you can get down to
10psi.
Get up out of the saddle. You have better body English, and will probably need
the power anyway.
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