Cycle Antarctica? Could Antarctica be the next big thing for cycling tours?

Why not? After all, I’ve touched on big rides in all other continents; so why leave out the South Pole?

Maybe we could start by trekking across the Ross Ice Shelf. Would a Mongoose Malus Fat Tire bicycle be best for that? I’m sure of this much: to cycle Antarctica would be extreme icebike!

An Antarctic two-wheeled trek would be a great opportunity to penguin watch; and to get acquainted with the continent’s animal life in general. There’s other wildlife to be seen besides penguins; and maybe it’s not quite fair that penguins seem to steal the show all the time!

A bicycle ride in Antarctica in itself sounds mad enough, doesn’t it? You might want to get really, really crazy; and use your fat-tire bike to go  zooming up and down the slopes of Mount Erebus!

My fantasizing, it turns out, isn’t completely off the wall. I though I was writing a humorous bit about what cycling “way down South” might be like. Some people have, indeed, done it. One of them used a bicycle with 8 inch wide tires!

The Antarctic Summer is cool according to my experience of temperatures: parts of it get up to 60 degrees (~15 degrees Celsius). See here for more on Antarctic weather.

Several months of the year, the sun never sets. Even at that season, parts of Antarctica seldom get above freezing; so you might want to wear a scarf across your face, and forget about sunblock.

And you might need special goggles to guard against snow blindness; super high-tech polar clothing; and who knows what all else.

Come to think of it, I don’t believe I’ll try to cycle Antarctica.