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Riding in Cold Weather

Riding in cold weather presents you with four problems. You have to stay warm. The roads may have worse surfaces. Traffic is different—easier in some ways but more difficult in most. Your bicycle will suffer more.

Staying Warm

As the temperature drops, fingernails are the first places to feel the cold. With your fingers stuck out in the wind grasping cold bars or brake levers, your fingernails start hurting at about 40ºF. If you don’t realize how cold it has become on a fall morning and your fingernails hurt, ride with one hand closed into a fist behind your back, alternating hands frequently. Gloves are naturally the better remedy, and gloves supply the first lesson on insulation. At temperatures between 25ºF and 40ºF when there is insufficient precipitation to justify wearing your cape, your hands will get wet. Therefore, you need gloves with insulation that works when wet. All practical clothing insulation works by creating numerous very small air cells through which the air travels very slowly, if at all. Getting most insulating materials wet destroys their insulating quality. There are three reasons. Heating water to body temperature requires much more of your body heat than heating air does, the water conducts heat away much faster, and the water collapses the insulating cells flat. This is why a cotton garment that seems quite warm when dry becomes dangerously cold when wet.

Wool is better because it stays springy when wet and doesn’t collapse so much, but when wet it still holds water and therefore loses some insulating ability. Closed-cell flexible foam loses practically no insulating ability when wet because the water cannot seep from one cell to another. That is why it is used for skin divers’ wet suits, which work when totally submerged. Therefore the best glove for conditions in which your hands may get wet are skiing mittens lined with closed-cell foam. When the temperature stays below 25ºF or when it will be dry, down-filled gloves or mittens can be used, but they are expensive and the improvement in comfort is not as marked as one would think.

Woolen gloves or mittens, which seem adequately warm for most outdoor activities, are ineffective by themselves for cycling. The second principle of insulation is that most clothing insulators must be protected from the wind. Wind seeps between the cells, blowing out the air that you have warmed and blowing in cold outside air that you have to warm. Therefore, you have to protect woolen gloves with windproof outer mitts in order to benefit from wool’s insulating power. This combination is fairly effective, but no more so when dry than the foam-lined mittens. Woolen gloves get much less effective once water seeps inside.

Any gloves you use should have gauntlets with elastic cuffs, both to protect your wrists and to prevent the wind from entering your jacket sleeves.

The same principles apply to toes, which start getting uncomfortably cold at about 35ºF. Your socks don’t keep your toes warm because the cold wind blows through the holes in your shoes, not merely the hot-weather vent holes but the lacing holes and the gaps around the tongue. Simply windproofing your shoes with an outer windproof cover will enable you to ride in temperatures of 10–15ºF, provided that you keep warm elsewhere. The emergency cover is a plastic baggie, worn either between sock and shoe or over the shoe, extending above your trouser cuff and closed with a rubber band. A better cover is one made to fit. Proper shoe covers are light and flexible; although they cover your ankle they don’t interfere with ankle motion, and they can be carried folded flat for use when necessary.

Ears require similar care, but conditions are easier. I expect that you are wearing a helmet, which reduces the wind cooling effect. A woolen skier’s headband both covers the ears and cuddles them flat against the head, thus conserving heat. When temperatures really fall, put on a woolen watch cap instead, and—removing your helmet’s sizing pads—protect both head and cap with the helmet. To keep the wind out completely, use a helmet cover to fill the helmet’s holes.

The rest of your body does not feel the cold as readily as your extremities, partly because your legs and trunk are your powerhouse, where the physical activity that drives you along the road generates a lot of waste heat that you have to get rid of. However, when the temperature gets more than a few degrees below freezing, conventional clothing becomes marginal, and better insulation is needed. A down jacket is a useful first step, because it can be worn on a cold morning and taken off as the sun warms up and it can be easily compressed into an easily carried stuff bag. Dry down is a useful clothing insulator because it is thick while you wear it, and therefore warm, but can be compressed into a small space when you want to carry it. Always carry a windproof nylon shell jacket with your down jacket, to protect your other garments if you take off the down jacket. However, never let the down get wet—or if you get it wet, find warm shelter immediately—because wet down collapses into a bitterly cold poultice.

At about this stage, when you have been feeling adequately comfortable, with legs warm and chest cozy inside your jacket, and fingers and toes protected, you may discover the chink in the armor. Your genitals can get really painfully cold for the same reason that fingers and toes hurt. The low blood flow brings in little heat, and the draft through your trousers carries that heat away. You need both extra insulation and extra windproofing. Some cyclists who ride frequently in the cold make special garments. I stuff the down-filled hood of my jacket inside the front of my trousers.

As the temperature drops lower, to 15ºF or so, you will learn the third principle of insulation: insulation doesn’t make you warm. You can be quite comfortable except in your fingers and toes, but no matter how much more clothing you put on them they are still painfully cold, or get that way in half an hour. Don’t stuff more socks into your shoes; you merely flatten the air cells and destroy the insulation you have got. In an emergency, put old socks over your cycling shoes and cover them with a plastic bag secured above your trouser cuffs with a rubber band. Or buy winter cycling shoes large enough for more socks, or winter cycling boots or overboots. Don’t forget to make sure that your toe clips and straps are large enough. However, as long as you merely add insulation to your fingers and toes, they will still get painfully (and possibly dangerously) cold, because you have ignored the third principle. Your fingers and toes are cold because there is little warm blood flowing to them. Insulation can only slow down the loss of heat, and if your blood isn’t supplying replacement heat, your fingers and toes will in time assume the outside temperature, first with pain and then possibly frostbite. The remedy is to insulate your legs, body, and head thoroughly so that in its effort to get rid of surplus heat, your body directs hot blood to the fingers and toes, thereby allowing the socks and shoe covers, and foam-lined mittens, to keep them warm.

In normal conditions, about 20 percent of your heat loss is through your head. However, cyclists cannot dress like arctic explorers, because they have to be able to see behind. Replacing the watch cap under the helmet with a balaclava (a close-fitting knitted hood and collar) and protecting the nose with a skier’s face mask is about all that can be done.

For insulating the legs and body, much more can be done, providing that it is done carefully. The problem is sweat. Yes, sweat in the cold. Your body loses water through the skin in any case, and if you get too hot in an effort to stay warm, the body sweats. The water ruins your insulation, so the next thing after being too hot is being painfully cold. Wool clothing used to be the old standby, wool from the skin out, because although it absorbed water it wicked the water away and remained springy when wet. This moved the cooling evaporation of the sweat away from your skin to the depths or the outside of your clothing, where at least part of your clothing protected you from its heat loss. Nonabsorbent clothing was believed to be cold and clammy, as indeed many fabrics are. However, this belief has been changed by a new invention: absolutely nonabsorbent and water-repelling polypropylene fiber fabric. The stuff is marvelous. It hates water so much that it passes the sweat right through. It is made into deliciously warm underwear and middlewear that stays dry even when you sweat a reasonable amount. Such clothing is increasingly easily obtained—Damart is one brand I have used.

So, underneath, you can wear long underwear of polypropylene fabric, and be reasonably confident that you will have dry insulation next to your skin. A polypropylene shirt might also be useful, making one more reasonably dry layer. Down jackets have reasonably windproof covers, but woolen trousers aren’t windproof. So over woolen trousers you can put skier’s overpants, which have artificial fiber insulation inside covers that are wind- and waterproof, and have zippers up the outside of each leg so you can put them on or take them off without disturbing any other item. I haven’t tried these last yet, but I think that with the sweat danger reduced by polypropylene underwear, you could cover most of your body with windproof material and ride at 0ºF for quite a long time.

As you ride, you can expect to build up sweat inside well-windproofed clothes. Indeed, the danger of losing your insulation by sweat buildup may be the limiting factor. Therefore, it is important to control sweating. Adjust your clothing by opening or closing zippers and by removing or adding layers so that you feel warm all over, including fingers and toes, but not hot. You will still sweat, but allowing airflow inside your wind-protective garments will both reduce sweating and dry your clothes. Cold-weather windproofing garments may be the one useful cycling application of vapor-permeable fabrics like Gore-Tex.

However, when traveling in conditions that are cold for you and your experience, I think it wise to remain within reach of warm shelter and on roads with sufficient traffic that you can expect assistance in case of trouble. Otherwise, getting too cold as a result of miscalculation or efforts to repair a mechanical failure, as little a thing as a badly damaged tire, can put you in a dangerous situation.

Road Surfaces

The roads will frequently be slippery in cold weather and also rougher than in summer. First, remember all that you know about cycling on slippery surfaces. Keep your hands on the drops for good steering control. Stay in medium or low gears, because with higher cadence it is much easier to control a spinning rear wheel. Be gentle on the brakes, and take turns slowly so you don’t need much lean. Recognize that a laterally sloping surface, like a high-crowned road, requires sideways traction even when you aren’t leaning; the angle of lean for traction forces is the actual angle between the ground and your wheel, regardless of your angle with respect to gravity. Recognize that the ice-edged ruts caused by other traffic are equivalent to very slippery diagonal railroad tracks. Just as in the rain, shiny surfaces are often more slippery than dull surfaces. In fact, ice is most slippery when it is just melting and has a layer of water to lubricate its smooth surface. There are other comparisons with rainy weather. Snow covers the holes and bumps almost as completely as rainwater puddles do. Even long after a storm, when the road surfaces are generally clear again, shaded corners or places that drain poorly frequently contain icy patches. You already know how to handle these situations; it is just that instead of being rarities, as in summer, in cold winters they control all your riding.

There are some special ice and snow skills. In the rain, I recommend that you avoid all puddles unless you know the road so well that you know they don’t conceal chuckholes. Likewise, in snow you generally want to ride on the cleared pavement and avoid the snowy places. This frequently means riding in the tire tracks left by motor traffic. However, at temperatures near freezing, the cars crush the snow into ice, or into slush that becomes ice, and under these conditions fresh snow is less slippery than “used” snow and ice. Only trying will tell you, so if you suspect that this is the case, try a bit of fresh snow instead.

Traffic in the Snow

I have often pointed out that motor traffic is at least as much help to the cyclist as hindrance, and this is true in cold weather also. The motor traffic smashes down and pushes aside the snow—and the more traffic, the quicker and better this is done. Besides, during storms, the snowplows concentrate on the main roads where most traffic is, leaving the clearance of minor roads for later. And, of course, bike paths aren’t plowed out and are unusable in cold winters. So ride where the traffic and the plows have cleared the roads.

At the start of a snowstorm, traffic is very bad. All the people who don’t usually drive during snowstorms try to get home, and they are those with the poorest snow-driving skills. Where snow is a very rare event, this can be worse because people without any snow-driving skills drive out to play in the snow. In places with severe winters, later in the storm, many of the less competent drivers have reached home and stay there, so there are fewer and better-driven cars on the roads. All drivers when in snow should stay much further apart than normal, and experienced snow drivers do. Steer to allow yourself more room. If you find that a driver is following you so closely so you couldn’t be avoided if you fell, signal the driver to stay further back by waving your hand in a vigorous stop signal. If you fall, roll out of the way immediately.

Generally, motorists will treat you better in bad conditions than in summer. They know that driving in those conditions is difficult and dangerous and uncomfortable for you. They figure that if you are out there, you will be just as competent and careful as they are.

There are some conditions in which you should not ride. Don’t ride away from town either when it is very cold (this depends upon your clothing and experience) or when a storm is coming. The weather alone can kill you. Don’t ride in the dark when big, soft snowflakes fill the air; neither you nor other drivers will see well. If you must, stick to well-lit streets where the streetlights compensate for the ineffectiveness of reflectors and weak bicycle lights when snowflakes obscure vision. Don’t ride on suburban highways when snow is piled up and the only clear area is a pair of car-tire tracks in each direction. You can’t ride through the snow, where you normally would, and too many of the motorists who overtake you will veer wildly as they leave the cleared tracks.

However, there are compensations for cycling instead of driving. One is that your vehicle is portable. Motorists who get stuck themselves, or who get held up by others who are stuck, must either sit in their cars or abandon them. You can just hop off and either push or carry your bike across the difficult spot.

Maintenance

Your bicycle will suffer more in cold than in warm weather, from ruts, moisture, road sand and dirty slush, and road salt. If you normally ride narrow tires, you can reduce the frequency of tire and rim damage caused by going over rough surfaces by switching to wider tires. Also, because it is difficult to boot a cold, wet casing, it is advisable to carry a spare casing in addition to spare tubes. Have space in your saddlebag or panniers to carry your winter clothing if the weather warms up, or for a long climb.

The moisture, grit, and salt problems are kept in check by regular cleaning and lubrication. In bad conditions, a hub gear is more reliable than a derailleur, because its works are all inside and are well lubricated. When riding in snowy conditions, I have had a derailleur dragged over the top of the cluster. It either picked up a chunk of ice, or slush inside it froze and jammed a jockey wheel. Before the bad-weather season, inspect your bicycle’s paint for chips and touch them up as necessary to prevent rust. Naturally, you expect to keep your mudguards on throughout the snow season, to keep both you and your bike cleaner. Let your bicycle warm up and dry out at every opportunity. Water, grit, and salt will enter the bearings—even the “sealed” variety, to some extent. Therefore, the best treatment is flushing out by regular overoiling followed by laying your bike on its side so the surplus will drain, carrying with it the contaminants. Chains cannot be so completely cleaned out, so wipe off the surface mess and apply fresh lubricant. When you have time to do a little extra work, before oiling your bicycle, spray it very lightly with water to dissolve the salt and wash away mud. Then, after oiling it, wipe it over with paste wax.

Lubricate your lock with powdered graphite, either as a dry powder or as lock fluid. If ice jams your lock, melt it out with hot water.