SNOW BIKING · Preparation

COLD-WEATHER RIDING SYSTEMS: LAYERS, HANDS, FEET

8 min · Full library · written from fifteen years in the terrain

The point

After this lesson you can build a clothing system that keeps a working rider dry and a stopped rider warm, and manage the two failure points that end snowbike days: hands and feet.

Half the answer, free

The Technique

  1. Moto gear is not snow gear. Standard motocross kit breathes hard and insulates barely; the snowbike system is built like backcountry ski kit that happens to fit over armour: wicking base, insulating mid, waterproof breathable shell.
  2. Ride cool, stop warm: you generate huge heat riding and lose it instantly at stops. Vent early so you never soak the base layers, and carry a static insulation layer - a packable down or synthetic jacket - that goes on at every stop longer than a few minutes.
  3. Hands are failure point one: insulated riding gloves that still feel the levers, a second dry pair sealed in the pack, and heated grips or bar guards if the kit allows. Wet gloves at minus ten are an injury schedule, not an inconvenience.
Still under the glass
  • 3 more technique steps
  • The 3 mistakes that undo it, with fixes
  • The drill that builds the reflex
  • The safety non-negotiables

It opens when you book a trip that runs snow biking - these are the exact drills you run with your coach out there. Your booking unlocks this whole library.

Book a trip, unlock this libraryOr put $200 down - unlock it today

Ridden with us already? Enter your Union key.

First Tracks

New lessons, new film and new Intel land after every Recon. First Tracks reads it before anyone else.

← Riding With Sleds: Group Dynamic…Trip Prep: Spares, Fuel & Field … →

← Full snow biking curriculum

Get In Touch

LET'S BUILD
YOUR
ADVENTURE

Whether you want to surf Japan's legendary powder, ride the Old Telegraph Track to the tip of Cape York, or chase a New Zealand winter - tell us what you're dreaming about and we'll build the trip around you.

BaseAustralia · Operating Globally
Instagram@deej_ayes_an_alias

Read this before you send

These sports kill people. Not rarely, and not only the reckless - every season they kill riders who were experienced, fit, well equipped and doing everything properly. That is the honest starting position and everything else we do sits on top of it.

The mountain does not know who you are. Snow releases on people with twenty years in it. Machines roll on riders who have done that line a hundred times. Water, rock, trees and other people are indifferent to how good you have become. Every time you go out you are accepting a real chance that it goes wrong, and no amount of skill removes that chance - it only changes the odds.

What that looks like in these disciplines, plainly: avalanche burial and asphyxiation, being crushed under a machine, head and spinal injuries from falls and impacts, drowning, hypothermia, and collisions with trees, rocks and other riders.

We work in remote country, so distance is part of it. A serious injury usually means hours before a helicopter can reach you, and weather sometimes means no helicopter at all. Help being close is not a feature of any trip we run.

This is exactly why we prepare the way we do. Training before you ride, gear standards, minimum party sizes, people who know the ground, and a willingness to call a day off. All of it is about improving your odds and making the group capable of looking after itself. None of it makes anything safe, none of it makes anyone competent, and passing our training is not a qualification. Anybody who tells you they can make this safe is selling something.

Everyone out there is relying on everyone else having been honest about what they can actually do. If reading this has made you hesitate, that is worth listening to rather than talking yourself out of.

The enquiry cannot be sent until this is typed.