Tips for Riding in Snow/Adverse Conditions

[Tim Kelley]

I’m putting together a piece for winter riding, with a focus on how to ride when it’s snowing or when there is snow or ice on the ground.

I’d welcome any suggestions you have for your favorite tips. Like:

-If you are riding through slick areas, try to apply pressure to the pedals evenly. Don’t mash the pedals up and down or else the rear wheel can spin out.

-If you see a short slick patch ahead, enter it with your front wheel pointing straight and don’t turn while you’re in the slick patch to keep from losing your balance

-Wider tires, or tires with studs in the can provide more traction on slick or loose surfaces

-If it’s really icy, sometimes the best course of action is to get off and walk your bike.

Anyone got anything to suggest?

Topic

[Steve O]

@Nadine 132538 wrote:

This picture was taken a year or more ago, right? You don’t have snow on the ground in MD yet… Do you?

@Steve O 132492 wrote:

. . . I got some complaints last year that I posted this advice at the end of FS instead of the beginning. so with snow in the forecast for late this week, I hereby present this reprise:

😮

[Terpfan]

The straight line advice should top any of the lists. It helped me a lot last year, especially on Trollheim’s ice-land that lasted for weeks on end.

Which would bring me to the advice of be very wary of those wooden plank bridges. This is actually good advice regardless of season. I had 7 stitches to prove it from perfectly good weather on a bridge I had crossed hundreds of times (the bridge I hate because NPS thinks banking planks on a wooden bridge around a turn makes sense somehow, somewhere, yet I’ve literally met over a dozen people who have fallen on the same one).

[Powerful Pete]

Yup on what Steve O said in his useful post and especially on Terpfan’s point: Trollheim gets to be extra special exciting in the wet/snow/ice. The number of folks who go down on that bit of path each winter is… impressive.

[Arlingtonrider]

Also, in a pinch, bikeshare bikes make great snow/slush bikes. And someone else gets to clean up the drivetrain afterwards.

[Boomer Cycles]

@Steve O 110378 wrote:

The street I am standing on in the photo below–taken this morning–is completely rideable, even on a road bike (not recommended, though; my druthers is my heavier, wider-tired, 3-speed), if you use the techniques above.

While I often relish in disagreeing with SteveO, he’s right on this one. I took his pic last year while riding my Trek roadie with 25mm slicks, that was my main ride throughout FS2015. That said, I broke out my old steely hybrid (El Gordito)with 26×2 inch knobbies especially for snowmaggedon, and it’s even easier to ride over/through snow/ice IMHO.

[Author]

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