Ride out the cold
Lake Winnipeg serves as Antarctica during test trip of cycle tour to South Pole
HECLA ISLAND, MAN.— Cold feet have woken me for the fourth, no fifth, time. With a moan I reach down, eyes still closed, to begin the cycle again — rub feet until warm, fall asleep, wake when feet turn to ice — but feel an icy drop on my cheek, then another and another. Snow? Is the tent ripped?
I panic, feet forgotten. I worm an arm out of my frost-covered sleeping bag and reach for my headlamp. My hand burns with cold when it brushes the tent wall. Ice? With a click, the beam of the headlamp illuminates a sparkling world. I relax. It’s frozen breath. With each exhale moisture is trapped by the tent wall and freezes; any movement shakes it loose. So this is what it’s like inside a snow globe.
I dig out my watch. It’s 6 a.m. and -14 C inside the tent. No wonder I’m cold. I begin rubbing life into my feet again, while trying to remember what we were told about staying warm.
“Energy in, as food and water; life-sustaining heat out, as waste from our internal combustion engines,” Ben Shillington, our lead guide, said before we left. “Calculate the right balance of calories, dress appropriately, avoid sweating and winter camping is a cinch.” I dig out a granola bar I’ve put in my sleeping bag to keep from freezing and sip water from my frost-covered thermos. A cinch may be pushing it.
Twelve of us, 25 to 68 years old, are near Hecla Island in the middle of Lake Winnipeg. We’re testing the feasibility of a plan hatched by TDA Global Cycling, a Canadian cycling tour company, to pedal to the South Pole in December. The company has dubbed the 18-day trip “the Last Degree” because participants will cycle the last degree of latitude on Antarctica.
“This is the first trip of its kind,” TDA founder Henry Gold says at our orientation meeting. “We have trips on six continents. For two years my staff have been trying to convince me to make it seven. They finally succeeded.”
Gold explains the Antarctic presents such different challenges than cycling from Cairo to Cape Town, that they need a test trip before they attempt the real thing. However, given the trip will cost people $70,000 (U.S.) each, more than triple a normal TDA tour, running a test on Antarctica was out of the question. So they settled on Lake Winnipeg.
Apparently February on the 10th largest freshwater lake in the world is a decent approximation of a continent covered by a two-kilometre-thick sheet of ice.
“It’s all about systems management,” Shillington says. “Plans that make life easy and limit the chance of error.”
For two days, he and assistant guide Cameron Dubé, take four clients, four media, Gold and the bike sponsor through a series of winter cycling “modules.”
We learn how to sleep, cook, dress and pack our special “fat-bikes,” named for their 10-centimetre-wide tires.
It all made sense in a cosy conference room, but when tired and cold things can go wrong — quickly.
It’s a trite example, but my feet were cold because I hadn’t bothered to make a hot water bottle the night before. It’s the type of lesson you can only really appreciate in a tent in mid-February.
With my granola bar done, I decide to heed another lesson: when cold, move. I dress and step into the predawn light. My watch reads minus -34 C. I start walking.
We’ve only cycled 45 kilometres during the three days. Not much on a normal bike, but given the plodding speed of the Humvee-like fat bikes, along with the cold and wind, it was enough to learn important lessons about preparation, fitness and how to keep warm.
It was also enough time to gain some insight into people who were thinking about spending the equivalent of a luxury car on a twowheeled trip across a giant ice cube.
Before meeting the group, I had assumed it was simply bragging rights they were after.
But, while stomping warmth into my feet amid the long shadows of dawn, I understood and realized if I could afford to cycle to the South Pole, I would, cold feet and all. Why? It’s fun. Thomas Hall’s trip was sponsored by TDA Global Cycling, which didn’t review or approve this story.