Cycling across a lake on the most amazing ice

A ride across the frozen Jonsvatnet lake in Trondheim, Norway.

#mtb #cycling #wintercycling

[Applause] hello today I’m out on a little winter ride the plan today is to be um riding over a lake a frozen lake I don’t know if you’ve heard about it but there’s this uh website called vow viewer which is a place where you can uh pull in data from your straa

Account and look at all your riding data in more detail and straa allows it also has this feature called the tile exploration so it basically takes the entire world divides it up into a square grid and then the challenge is to uh visit as many of these

Tiles as you can in my area here it’s uh it’s not so easy because uh the the terrain is not particularly flat and we also have lots of uh remote areas where there aren’t really any roads or Trails you’re you’re just deep in the forest you can’t just ride them you have

To get off and Hike into the woods and things like that so I’ve been doing some of that and uh this winter I’ve been doing some snowshoeing uh but for a number of years there’s been a a few tiles that I just haven’t been able to get because they’re on a big

Lake it’s the lake that we use for drinking water here in trhe one relatively easy way to get those tiles is to ride on the lake in the winter when it’s frozen or go skiing or or ice skating there’s only like a brief window or opportunity because for most of the

Winter the lake is snowed in I just realized I forgot to bring a pump today so I hope I don’t get a puncture anyway so on Facebook there’s this group of crazy ice skaters who are just longing for this short period early each winter where when the Lakes just

Freeze and you can go ice skating except these people go ice skating when it’s only the Ice is like just 2 or three CM thick they totally expect to go through the ice occasionally and sometimes they do but they are always more than one person and they

Have the equipment to uh help help somebody up and they also always have h a change of clothes so they can quickly get into dry clothes so still it’s quite crazy of course but the thing is that they have this Facebook group so I can follow them

There and I can get a good impression on when the leges are ridable so what I’ve done today is that I’ve taken uh the track that one of them posted on Facebook we’ve just had a cold spell in the region here where it’s the temperature has been around 15 15° for quite a

While so it’s been quite cold and but today it’s milder and right now it’s -3° C so winter cycling is I mean it seems like people who aren’t used to it think that it’s just horrible but it really isn’t I mean winter cycling it can be very nice if you have

The right kind of clothes also the right kind of tires on your bike you definitely need studded tires I actually have three bikes that are equipped for winter cycling right now so I have this one the mountain bike cel and I have a fat

Bike and I also have my tro Mane Road or slash gravel bike the winter tires of different width have uh different pros and cons so the Fat Bike obviously is perfect for riding in groomed ski or uh or snow snowmobile tracks in the woods the road bike is perfect if you

Basically want to go on a road or Gravel Road which has little snow on it but where there’s a risk of ice and then this one the hard tail is in between it’s uh this one is actually the one that has the best grip on on ice because the fat

Bike because the the tires are so wide uh the weight is distributed over a larger area so there’s less weight going down into each Spike and into the ice so uh this one is actually the best on uh really icy conditions I’ll be taking to the right here

Going down to where the lake begins I have the lake on my right hand side now I’m going a little further to where my track is starting it seems to be more snow on the lake than I was expecting I see some people going skiing out [Applause] there this is the place

Actually lots of parked cars here that’s also a good sign oh yeah and uh definitely some ski trails here a look at this yeah there’s just uh there’s just a thin layer of snow on top of the ice how do I get down here

This is the this is the lake you can see straight through the ice look at this look at this uh this kind of this strange kind of flaky snow it’s not really even snow it’s kind of yeah Frozen I don’t know let’s try this then there’s an ice skater to my right and

Uh this is where it looks like the ice is different but it’s just that all this snow has been blowing off it I mean there’s some Rifts in the ice here but it’s still frozen solid again here it’s different because now I can’t see anybody’s

Tracks so I mean if at any point I sense that the ice isn’t Rock Solid I will just turn around but it really it really is solid ice here and also I can see some tracks in front of me but it it kind of feels quite surreal

Yeah I mean if I didn’t see this ice gator in front of me I’m not sure I would have done This e some rougher ice here oh I got out of the wind there now that was nice [Applause] wow look at this ice more rough ice let’s go around it wow I can see the bottom very clearly here somebody’s playing hocky I am getting close to the end of my Lake Crossing

Here I’m going on to a road just in just ahead of me here now that’s it I made it oh so good to be out of the Wind I’m currently riding my newest bike I just bought this a few weeks ago it’s um going to be my off-road bike packing bike it’s an Ora Alma and uh I’ll be taking this one to Morocco to do the Atlas mountain race in February [Applause]