The first challenge is getting the right tires. We didn’t want to run the better part of 5,000 miles on chains or cables, so we had to find good rubber. There’s been a lot of controversy over studded or studless tires, and we heard good arguments for both choices. Studless ice and snow tires use sipes – tiny slices in the tread blocks that allow tires to grip on ice, rather than studs that dig into the frozen surface. But in the end, we decided that as rookies in the Arctic, we’d feel better with studded tires that also feature sipes. So we chose the Hankook iPike series – we put Hankook Dynapro iPike tires on one car, and Hankook Winter iPikes on the other. The Winter iPikes are designed for higher performance, while the Dynapros are a designed SUV tire. We’ll see if one design has an advantage over the other – as well as all our competitors on other brands – when we get out on the road.