What bike works best in temperatures colder than your freezer?

Douk Skis made the Touring skis used in the Mountain Pass film. The bike was a ‘hacked’ Izoard XCR frame set up with a gravel focused fork.

As product tests go, it doesn’t get much tougher than an Alpine Col. That’s why we spend so much time out in the mountains. When you add in varied terrain - like we can when testing on climbs and descents like Finestre in the Susa Valley - you’ve got everything you need in that wonderful mountain environment to benchmark or develop your ideas for geometry, materials and parts.

That’s all well and good in the Summer, but Winter in the mountains is a completely different challenge. In January, at altitude, you’re stepping outside of what anyone understands or probably cares about in cycling.

But that’s exactly what we did when we took two bikes to Col D’Izoard in mid January for our new short film, Mountain Pass. The temperature can drop down to -30 degrees and for that and a few other reasons, it’s just too extreme to be relevant to most people, or for the most part safe.

Despite the obvious practical challenges, the opportunity to share one of our favourite places with you in darkest winter was too much to resist and we set about deciding on two bikes that we thought might handle a ride up Izoard in January. They needed to be able to carry skis, and handle well enough for the conditions we might meet.

Ben’s ski-bike from Mountain Pass

Ben’s ride was this handmade Spoon Customs Mountain bike, made with Tig welded Reynolds 953. Built with Shimano XT and RockShox SID forks.

Ben’s bike belongs to our good customer Garry. He’s an avid back-country skier, so when I called him and asked if we could borrow his bike, he was only too happy to help.

He was also very close to Ben in stature so the bike was likely to be a good fit.

The bike is made from immaculately Tig welded (thanks, Alberto) stainless steel from the Reynolds 953 range. It’s unpainted save for a protective laquer coat and some logos, so it’s ideal for loading. Interactions with straps, skis, a clumsy boot, aren’t going to bother it too much and if they do, it’s an easier fix.

It’s also very light for the type of bike it is, and whilst it’s suspended at the front with a Rock Shox SID fork it has a lockout, so it’s not going to disadvantage the rider when climbing. This ride is essentially just a climb after all.

The Thomson dropper post also isn’t needed, but turned out to be helpful for Ben was mounting the bike as he opted to carry most of his gear on his back. The ability to adjust the saddle to his preferred height when in position was great. HIs TailFin rack carried his packable items and his approach meant he didn’t lose front end stability like I did with my skis trailing out of the back of the bike (more on that later).

The XT gearing has super wide range. Ben’s been touring all winter, but doesn’t cycle at this time of year so that helped him keep the load off his legs. The long tour up was going to be hard going enough, so this was essential. He span a very high cadence the whole ride, and this kept his legs fresh for the rest.

The Rene Herse tyres are a dirt tyre, but the Onza Porcupine-esque knobs were pretty good on the ice and snow, and despite the fear of the black ice in the shadowy sections, we had much less trouble with traction than we had expected.

Wide bars helped him keep the thing tracking straight, and controls familiar from his mountain bike made it easier for him too.

The wheels on this bike are really special. Handmade by Ben at Sharp Precision Wheels they’re DT Swiss rims laced to Onyx Racing hubs with a completely silent ratchet mechanism. It’s not a ratchet at all in fact, Onyx prefers to manage freewheel engagement with a Sprag Clutch, with infinite points of engagement.

Andy’s Gravel Ski-Bike

This gravel bike didn’t start off life as a gravel bike at all. The frame is in fact an Izoard RR XCR frame handmade with Tig welded Columbus XCR tubing, which we hacked to do the job for this film.

So how do you turn a fast road race bike into a gravel bike? It’s not actually as weird as you might think.

Road geometry isn’t so bad off road as anyone that’s raced Paris-Roubaix will attest. And, if you look at Pinarello’s geo charts, you’ll see their road bikes and gravel bikes aren’t that different at all.

The truth is for our own project bikes we sometimes also have to make do with what we have, so took a look around at the spares we had in stock and we swapped out the 120mm stem for a 90mm, to give us a little less length in the bike and allow for a wider bar. The stubbier stem seen here is painted in Sam’s own Fern Green Matte, and we matched it to a Columbus Futura Cross + Adventure fork, which replaced the shorter road fork that was in it, giving us marginally more stack height and more rake. Good, right? But surely there’s a down side? Well, yes, there is. The make-do changes also had the effect of reducing the bottom bracket drop, which, if we were designing this bike from scratch we might have avoided. Especially given the likely benefit a lower BB can give in terms of confidence on slippery surfaces, and improved feel when descending. Otherwise, the bike handled pretty well on the 650b tyres and was actually a lot of fun even with the slightly reduced 73.5 degree head angle we ended up with. It felt like a road bike with big tyres, which we always kind of like anyway.

When loaded with the skis out back however the bike became a different animal.

With my position higher and further back in the bike my own weight distribution was already off and much further back than the handling balance we shoot for when we design around a rider’s actual position.

Poor weight distribution (as is so often a problem on an off the peg bike, especially for bigger riders who need room on a bike and often find themselves too far forward or back) in this subtle but overly rearward position meant the bike would likely turn in and corner in an unbalanced way, with more weight than ideal over the back you have less balance than you need on the front tyre. It’s tolerable of course, most people manage with the off the peg bikes, but it’s less intuitive than our approach to a custom bike. The weight over the back also gives lift to the front wheel when ascending.

This was the biggest problem as when you then load up the bike (which already has short chain stays anyway) the weight distribution issue was now not at all subtle and this made the bike horrible to ride. I felt like I could give Jake 100 a run for a his money, that was how little time my front wheel felt feeling properly planted. Even on a flat road, lifting the front wheel was easy.

The eagle eyed amongst you might have noticed that my bike was also running a mix of Campagnolo and GRX. Purists will be furious. I think this might be the first 1 x GRX Super Record EPS gravel bike ever promoted by a bike brand (!!!). This was purely down to what we had on the original bike in road configuration, and a need to hack up a suitable set up. With a maximum cassette size of 29 on Super Record EPS, I needed a pretty small chain ring up front to manage the extra kit we’d need to carry.

It was still much broader than a compact though and that set up gets most people up Izoard in ordinary circumstances, although it’s far more common to run slightly bigger cassettes these days on a normal 2x. The shifting was pretty luxurious as you’d expect, and actually Campagnolo shifters are much easier than Shimano for a very cold gloved hand. To finish off the hacked build, Dov from Parcours lent me his demo Alta 650b set up with WTB tyres. They were great for the job, and rode flawlessly.

The Skiing Touring equipment

Ben’s touring set up

Ben rides a Jones Split Board in the Mountain Pass film. This is essentially two skis mounted with rotating bindings when separate designed only for hiking up. When at the top you attach the two skis together to form a conventional board shape, and slide back down as if riding a normal snowboard.

Ben had a Transceiver, Shovel and Probe (TSP) from Arva. With a triple antenna, which in my view is essential for off-piste work. Where we were riding was pretty low risk - we deliberately avoided our original planned route thanks to the fresh snow and high temperatures in the two weeks before the trip, but if the worst happens a triple antenna set up can save you valuable minutes in tracking down your mate if they go under the snow.

Ben had a selection of winter gear from POC Sports, and Giro Gravel shoes. We rode POC Ventral road helmets, and also had POC’s best Mips equipped ski / board helmets for the skiing sections of the route. Sunglasses were Aspire. Goggles were also POC and performed flawlessly.

Andy’s Touring set up?

My POC equipment was largely the same as Ben’s. It was fantastic and performed as it should. The snowsports gear is a notch or two above anything I’ve used before and I can wholeheartedly recommend the goggles and helmets. They’re simply awesome.

My jacket is a current issue French Army Surplus Goretex shell bought for £60 on ebay about six years ago, and it’s always been flawless for the money. An equivalent branded technical shell is well north of £300 as a rule, so that’s an absolute bargain. It also packs down really well for something like this. It has a big hood which easily fits over a ski helmet too which detaches or folds away. It’s basic but it’s a bargain.

My Skis were handmade by Louwey at Douk Ski to my design. We planned to make a bespoke pair but we ran out of time and used his own All Mountain moulds in the end, so the shape, rocker and camber follow his own designs.

The top and bottom sheet were designed by me on Procreate in the week before we left for the trip. We’d like to and have plans to develop this ski design together, with slightly wider tips and tails and less camber. Even at my winter weight, around 90kg I’d like to need less pressure to keep my edge in on harder pistes so I’d like to take some camber out in the next set when we design them together, but for the job they needed to do on the day they felt instantly confidence inspiring with magic carpet like lift in the powder. They’re also extremely light with the set up I opted for. And streets ahead of any ‘off the peg’ ski I’ve ever ridden.

The Salomon Shift Pro 130 boots are in my view stiff, light, extremely comfortable and perfect for aggressive all mountain skiing, with a pin or alpine binding.

Cold weather specific equipment problems?

So what issues did we encounter due to the extreme cold? Well not that many really, amazingly enough.

POC make excellent cycling kit, but at -22 to highs during the day of -17 any kit would feel transparent, so we layered up more than you might normally. It was still bloody freezing, and both Ben and I were pre-hypothermic by the time we reached Cervieres and needed assisting to the crew car to warm up before the ski tour. This isn’t shown in the film for obvious reasons, but it was a real risk and had to be managed.

We think the sealant froze, but we didn’t have any punctures so can’t be sure.

The batteries in my bike performed as they should which is awesome. Cold can hit lithium batteries hard and cause big problems with discharging. We didn’t see this and they worked all day. Whilst we had some small issues with the grease in the freehub in the morning, this is perhaps to be expected in stationary parts at -22, this was quickly overcome as the assembly increased to a more normal operating temperature, when under load and after a few minutes went back to working faultlessly.

Both bikes did a wonderful job despite the ‘design’ challenges we built in to the hacked together road bike. I still maintain it’s not a good idea to ride on icy tarmac however… but if it’s a ride to champagne powder and you can take your skis with you, I can make an exception.

The full film is available to watch now over on our YouTube channel.