Nokian Hakkapeliitta
By James Sharp

Nokian is a Finnish tire company that is well known for their downhill tires. Earlier in the year we had a chance to review their line of NBX
cross-country tires. We came away impressed by their performance. Recently they sent us a pair of the Hakkapeliitta W106’s. It’s an interesting name for an interesting tire. These are studded, much like car tires are studded, with carbide studs. Some places in North America are already seeing snow flurries, and for the bicycle commuter in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana or Alaska these could be a tool for survival. Here in a Pacific Northwest the weather has been, well… balmy. Nevertheless, we wanted to bring you, our faithful readers, a preview of the tire's performance before the weather gets really bad.

Nokian recommends about 30 miles of pavement to break in the tires and fully seat the studs, so we mounted them up and put in some miles. These aren’t lightweight tires by any stretch of the imagination, weighing in at 933 grams, but they roll easily enough. In order to test them out, we called up the local ice rink and asked for a few minutes on the ice. They were kind enough to allow us some time, and we were off and… um… rolling, sort of. First the disclaimer, the ice was just smoothed out by the Zamboni and is about as slick as it gets. It was perfectly smooth and I had a difficult time walking on it, let alone getting on my bike and riding! Did the tires work? They did. I was a bit shaky at first and under acceleration and braking it wasn’t hard to break the tires free. That being said, I didn’t fall. There is no way I would have been able to ride on that kind of ice with normal tires. I made it from one end of the rink to the other and back.

As I mentioned in the beginning paragraph, this is a preliminary review. The ice riding was pretty unrealistic, rarely, if ever, will a rider come across ice that perfect. Most of the time ice is rough and gives some traction due to surface irregularities. As the weather progressively gets worse, we are going to put the Hakkapeliittas through their paces.

James Sharp is a contributing editor for GearReview.com specializing in mountain biking.

For more information, contact:
Nokian
P.O.Box 20
FIN-37101 Nokia
Phone: +358-3-340 7111
E-mail: bike@nokiantyres.com
www.nokiantyres.fi/bike/