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Antarctica-bound fat bikers train for the ride in a similar, ‘perfect’ environment: Lake Winnipeg

The Last Degree, a fat bike ride to the South Pole planned for next winter by a TDA Global Cycling, isn't cheap—either in terms of the cost of admission or what it demands from participants, physically and mentally

The Last Degree, a fat bike ride to the South Pole planned for next winter by TDA Global Cycling, isn’t cheap—either in terms of the cost of admission or what it demands from participants, physically and mentally. When it comes to riding in the snow and braving the biting, unforgiving cold, though—a challenge many Canadian riders are increasingly up to—it’s a can’t-miss opportunity for the hardier cyclists among us.

This week, the cyclists participating in next winter’s frozen fat bike odyssey are on Lake Winnipeg, which Canadian Cycling Magazine previously reported would be the training grounds for the ride. And as a tour leader told the CBC, it’s a near-perfect simulation of what awaits in Antarctica.

“The temperatures there, in the traveling season for Antarctica,” said Ben Shillington, who heads up the pack of hardy, cold-defiant cyclists, “get down to -35, -40, and then you can throw some windchill on that—and that’s why Lake Winnipeg lends itself well.” Speaking to the CBC, he said that the conditions aren’t likely to get quite that cold, however. Such deep, bone-chilling cold is a “worst case scenario,” he told reporters, but the conditions on Lake Winnipeg nonetheless remain an accurate primer for what participants can expect. When the ride hits the ice fields, the cold is likely to plunge to -26 or -29.

And that’s just the average temperature.

With training for the ride kicking into high gear in Manitoba, riders are learning not just how to get through such forbidding conditions with their spirits—and their skin—intact, but essentials like changing a flat without losing fingers to frostbite. The boot camp is mandatory for participants, Shillington said, and it also includes more day-to-day, survival-oriented skills, like how to keep a campfire going or how to set up a tent in the cold. It also gives riders the chance to back out before the ride officially kicks off, he added.

While training on Lake Winnipeg, riders are also put through what Shillington calls a “systems check,” ensuring that their gear load-out includes everything that cycling across the brutal Antarctic environment requires. Shovels, tents, camp stoves, food and other items, the CBC indicated, will be on the list—and that doesn’t even get into things like pumps and tire levers.

There’s also a psychological aspect to the ride, for which the conditioning offered by Lake Winnipeg also offers a stark preview.

During the squad’s trip south, they’ll be crossing between 110 and 120 kilometres of seemingly endless snow and ice, Shillington told the CBC, the landscape virtually without a horizon. As much as enduring the effects of polar cold on the human body, the mental aspect of traversing that environment by bike presents challenges in itself. “You can get to a point where there’s no visual land reference,” the trip leader told reporters. “[You] get basically a pretty perfect simulation of what we’d be encountering down there.”

The Last Degree fat bike ride to Antarctica is scheduled to kick of in December 2016.