First to bike on all five Great Lakes: One army veteran’s extreme winter cycling feat

If there’s any nugget of truth to the Velominati’s rules, then Eric McKinney is officially a badass.

Because, per Rule #9, "If you are out riding in bad weather, it means you are a badass. Period." And few places in the United States boast worse weather than the Great Lakes in the dead of winter. Yet, McKinney tackled the uncharted, icy wilderness to become the first person on record to have biked on all five Great Lakes: Erie, Ontario, Huron, Michigan and Superior.

McKinney grew up around Cleveland. So, for him, frigid, wind-swept winters are familiar territory. He left Ohio for some time and, after a decade in the military, settled in Nebraska, where he would commute to his construction job on his road bike through the unforgiving Great Plains winters.

And so, it’s not too far of a stretch to understand why McKinney set himself this challenge.

He started experimenting with ice riding last winter, wrapping his 26-inch wheels in a pair of studded two-inch Schwalbe winter tyres and messing around on local ponds to see how his mountain bike might handle a frozen path or road. From there, he ventured a bit further afield, taking a ride onto a frozen Lake Erie, which abuts the whole of Cleveland’s northern edge.

In order to determine whether or not the ice would be thick enough to hold his 175-pound frame—a minimum of four inches of thickness—McKinney regularly checked a NOAA website where ice conditions would be updated via satellite in order to alert shipping companies of the ice accumulation of the Great Lakes.

Still, that information only gave McKinney a ballpark idea of which routes might provide the best ice. From there, he used simple Google searches to locate ice fishing forums online. There, he could find daily, on-the-ground ice-condition updates from people reporting on their fishing trips. McKinney also relied on his own senses.

“I would do a lot of research, sure. But I would also just pay attention to the weather,” McKinney said.

After his successful ride on Lake Erie, McKinney decided he was going to take a ride on each of the five Great Lakes. He outfitted his old mountain bike—a rigid, steel Trek 930—with a milk crate that held a dry bag stuffed with an extra hat and pair of gloves, a space blanket, ice picks, flotation devices, snacks, extra hand warmers and a bottle of water. On his body, McKinney wore a full dry suit, a life jacket, handlebar mittens, a hat and a ski mask.

On January 3, McKinney set off for Bay City, Michigan, where he rode across Lake Huron from the mainland to a small island. The ice on the eight-mile out and back over the frozen Saginaw Bay was so clear that McKinney could see straight through the 10-inch-thick sheet as he cruised smoothly toward Shelter Island.

Two weeks later, McKinney decided to traverse three lakes all in one go, taking on Lake Ontario on Friday, Lake Michigan on Monday, and Lake Superior on Tuesday over the course of the long holiday weekend celebrating Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

On Ontario, he set his sights on another small island which sat about four-and-a-half miles from the mainland in northwestern New York. The ice was good, but with the temperatures reaching -11 degrees Fahrenheit (-24°C), the cold proved to be his biggest adversary.

McKinney was dressed well enough but with a half mile or so to go to the island, his chain snapped, forcing him to push his bike both to the island and back to the shore.

After a stop at a local bike shop to get a new chain and his derailleur fixed, McKinney headed toward his next ride. Facing a windchill of sixteen below zero off the shores of Green Bay, Wisconsin, he headed toward a lighthouse in Lake Michigan for another nine-mile out-and-back.

“At those types of temperatures, you get a full ice beard,” McKinney said. “All of your breath freezes right onto your beard.”

After that, McKinney drove across Wisconsin and set off from Ashland, riding atop Lake Superior, loosely following a ferry route across the Chequamegon Bay. There, he found more snow than he had on his previous rides, making pedalling a chore.

Finally, on January 24, McKinney returned home to take his final ride over Lake Erie, where he rode five-and-a-half miles from a point called Catawba Island toward a small town called Put-In-Bay on South Bass Island. However, he never quite made it to the shore due to icy conditions McKinney likened to "broken China scattered across a hardwood floor."

“When I look at ice biking, it’s kind of like a brand-new thing,” McKinney said. “And a lot of my ride was just to show people that this was possible; that this was something you could do."