Riding into Iceland’s winter twilight with a fully loaded bike and skis strapped on for the next climb. Photo: Matthew Tufts.
Cody Cirillo and Matthew Tufts set out to do something that sounds simple until you picture the map, the season, and the wind. In the dead of winter, they bike-packed and skied their way around Iceland on a 1,000-mile, 35-day, human-powered loop. Their new film, A Hundred Words for Wind, released December 18, tracks the whole push, from ice-choked roads and sideways rain to those rare, hard-won windows when the mountains finally opened long enough to climb and ski.
Iceland does not hand out consistency. The film makes that clear in the first few minutes, then keeps proving it. One day is a full-on arctic blizzard on the bike. The next is skinning into spring corn. Then it turns again, and you find yourself skiing a couloir with cold powder filling yesterday’s tracks while gusts shove spindrift across the fall line. In conditions like that, you can have the fitness and the plan and still get stopped by small things. Cold hands that can’t brake cleanly. Wet fingers that can’t work a zipper. Numb thumbs that fumble a binding lever when the light is fading, and you still need to make camp.
Blowing snow and wind on a road push, with hands on the bars and skis on the rack. Photo: Matthew Tufts.
Cirillo’s solution was straightforward. He brought a real glove quiver and treated it like safety gear. As a Hestra-sponsored multi-sport athlete, he’s spent enough days in bad weather to know that hand comfort decides whether you keep moving or burn time and energy just trying to function. That matters even more on a trip where you’re riding, touring, climbing, filming, and living outside for more than a month.
“In Iceland, the weather changes so quickly that we never knew the day’s conditions,” Cirillo said. “Forecasts were spotty at best. Biking in arctic blizzards, touring through spring corn, skiing trenched in cold powder. This trip had a little bit of everything. So a proper glove quiver was essential to keeping us ready for it all over the 35-day period.”
A long, icy road stretch through Iceland’s open winter terrain, pedaling into the cold with skis strapped to the rack. Photo: Matthew Tufts.
On the bike, the workhorse for cold days was the Hestra Ergo Grip Active Wool Terry. The appeal is practical. It has the dexterity you need to manage brakes, zippers, buckles, and cameras, plus a touch of warmth from the wool lining that helps when you’re riding into headwinds for hours. Cirillo leaned on it as a crossover piece, using it for ski touring and mountaineering when he needed finger control without sacrificing insulation.
When the trip turned wet, the Hestra CZone Bike Mistral 5-Finger carried the load. Icelandic rain has a way of finding every seam in your kit and turning “damp” into soaked in a hurry. Cirillo called these gloves a savior on especially rainy days, because even when everything else stayed wet, his hands stayed dry. That kind of reliability keeps you riding when the road is glazed with slush, and the next shelter still feels far away.
A rare weather window opens for a lap of a steep couloir above an Icelandic fjord. Photo: Matthew Tufts.
Then came the downhill days, the moments the whole expedition was built around. For those wintery ski laps, Cirillo reached for his go-to, the Hestra Army Leather Patrol Mitt. It’s the glove you put on when the wind has teeth, and you want warmth that stays put while you ski. After long approaches and cold transitions, sliding into a mitt that simply works lets you focus on the line, the light, and your partner, not your fingers.
The right gloves do not make Iceland gentle. They keep you capable enough to keep going, long enough to catch the fleeting moments that make the whole idea worth it. Those moments are not unique to one island or one winter. Anywhere you push far enough from the easy option, the same truth shows up. Gear that keeps your hands working buys you time, judgment, and the chance to keep moving when the conditions decide the terms.
Watch the film here: A Hundred Words for Wind – YouTube
Shop Hestra Gloves here: Hestra Gloves
Descents. That’s what it’s all about. Photo: Matthew Tufts.