I don't mean to be difficult, but am interested in some of these issues (even though I never intend to ride to Nordkapp in winter):

1) If someone were riding to Nordkapp in Winter, wouldn't it be possible to stick to the coast and thus avoid brutally cold (and thus encounter only really really cold) conditions?

2) At -7 or -15, is humidity really a factor any more? I would have guessed (perhaps incorrectly) that at such temperatures the moisture would have been frozen out of the air?

Again, these are genuine questions...

-15C at 85kmph is -31C and dissipates nearly 2000 watts per square metre of exposed surface area.

Add in darkness for 20 to 24 hours per day

Still not fun, but one of those "because it is there" achievements.

__________________
Tony
Click here for Travel Photos & Travel Map

I will actually be trying to go to the North Cape on my Yamaha Tricity scoot, riding along the coast to avoid the mountain passes. I suspect the temps to be milder, but in February I will most lightly encounter pretty foul weather. Going along the coast, I am bound to use a lot of ferries, especially along the Nordland county coast (Road 17, which in summer is one of those spectacular tourist roads). However, on my route I will need to go over at least two mountain ranges, and the one from Alta to Skaidi in Finnmark - Sennalandet - is notorious for its foul weather, being more closed than open in the winter. Plus, of course, the road to the North Cape plateau itself.

With regard to temps and humidity, here's what I found: From -15 or thereabouts, humidity is getting negligible. At 0 degrees, air can contain max ca 4 g water pr kg air. At -10, ca max 2 g water pr kg air (@-10 degrees, 1.6 g/kg air = 80% humidity), while at -20 degrees, max ca 1 g water pr kg air (for comparison: At +20, air can contain 16 g water pr kg air).

As water/moisty air sucks the heat out of you more efficiently, you may (in winter) actually be colder in "higher" temps with high humidity (e.g. along the coast) than in dryer but cooler inland temps - at least down to a certain point. -25 is in any case very cold on a bike. I have ridden in -30, and that was pretty fresh, I'd say. I have a buddy from the UK who rode his C90 in -40 during his winter trip to Norway. But he's extremely tough.

__________________
HansP
All you wanted to know
about riding in Norway

Relative humidity is the capacity of the air to carry moisture, and it is the measure of humidity which the human body feels (though mostly in hot conditions as it effects the ability of the body to lose heat by perspiration). In cold humid conditions, your body needs to expend more energy heating the water vapour in the air and clothing between your body and the ambient surroundings.

As temperature decreases, the amount of moisture required to have high relative humidity decreases, meaning it is easy to have high relative humidities at very low temperatures.

So if you are an electric thermometer or a concrete post at Nordkapp, -7º C will feel like -7º C. But as a warm-bodied creature, with high relative humidity, and most likely a bit of a breeze and cloud cover, you will feel like it is a lot colder. For us, temperature is only one of several factors (humidity, air speed, intensity of solar radiation etc) which dictate how we perceive ambient 'temperature'.

For example, for me, a sunny clear, still day at -25 in Siberia was pretty nice, whereas a damp, slightly windy day in St P at -11 was miserable, in the same gear.

So my recommendation for gear to take would be thickly insulated mid-layers, with a high quality outer windproof layer.

Having fun in very low temperatures is all about good gear. I have a -40º C Rab sleeping bag and I wouldn't go anywhere cold without it. Lying on the ground in -20º C in Mongolia on nothing but a 2 cm Thermarest (no tent) was wonderful.

My only worry would be riding a motorcycle on ice. I am not a biker, but I know it's a steep learning curve in a 4x4 to master ice... a motorcycle is far less forgiving of mistakes.

__________________
EurasiaOverland a memoir of one quarter of a million kilometres by road through all of the Former USSR, Western and Southern Asia.

Thanks guys for the interesting info re humidity at low temps, very interesting.

I've recently moved from Moscow to Berlin and definitely noticed last winter that "-5" is much colder in Berlin than in Moscow, because Berlin is so damp.