Episode 167: Cody Cirillo

Ski Bikepacking Iceland’s Ring Road

What happens when you strap skis to a loaded bike and set off to cycle 1,700 kilometres around Iceland in winter? Skier and filmmaker Cody Cirillo did exactly that — and documented it in his film A Hundred Words for Wind.

Cody is a professional skier who’s chased remote lines in Mongolia, Morocco, and Iceland. In recent years he’s started cycling to his ski terrain instead of driving, what we call ski bikepacking. It’s completely changed how he experiences the places he travels through.

In this episode we cover:

• How ski bikepacking started including his first trip from Telluride to Utah, off the couch, on a wobbly Walmart rack
• Iceland’s Ring Road in winter and dealing with brutal crosswinds (Cody gets blown off the road and does a full cartwheel into a ditch). The iced roads, blizzards, and 50kg loaded bikes
• Steph Devry’s guest question: what are your actual tricks for surviving headwinds when skis add extra sail area?
• Breaking eight ribs, a scapula, and puncturing a lung weeks before departure and why he went anyway
• The vinarbröð, hot dogs, Snickers, and tortellini that held the whole thing together
• What it feels like to park your bike roadside, hike for hours in ski boots, and ski a line down to the ocean
• How going slowly created the human connections that made the trip
• Turning a 40-day expedition into a film and why that was harder than the riding

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Links:

• Cody on YouTube: youtube.com/@codycirillo
• A Hundred Words for Wind — Cody’s documentary covering the iceland trip
• Cody on Instagram: @Cody.Cir

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