“That sounds pretty impractical.” - Hoji
“Sure… but like… what if instead, you drive?” - Stinius
“Biking with all the ski gear is going to be miserable.” - Literally Everyone
Peter Wojnar (“Woj”) knew that combining a bikepacking trip with skiing would objectively worsen both experiences, compared to considering them each on their own. The more weight you add to a bike, the worse it feels to pedal it up a hill, and the worse it handles on a descent. And if finding good snow while backcountry skiing is about being in the right place at the right time, then using a bike for access makes timing a weather window close to impossible for a given objective.
Woj left Whitehorse, Yukon with trip partner & artist Sarah Hicks on their bikes late in May, after a long morning deciding what gear they really needed, and how much oatmeal was too much oatmeal. They hoped to smash out about 90km of the road to White Pass, on the Yukon-Alaska border on that first day—instead, they settled for 60km into a grueling headwind in light rain.
It took until the end of the second day of fighting up the wind for Woj to really understand that his plan to “slow down and relax” at the end of a long winter was actually going to mean letting go of expectations for what distance should be achievable in a day on the bike. Woj is usually pretty happy to grind it out in the face of a physical challenge—and pretty unwilling to let sore legs be the reason for stepping back from a goal. For most of the winter, if he’s not ski touring with a 60lb camera bag and a giant tripod, he’s exploring the mountains around his home in Revelstoke, BC, mostly on foot.
“I genuinely believe that stubbornness and enthusiasm can overcome any lack of fitness or skill. But I’m not sure that anything can overcome the wind.”
But slowly chipping away at a long, windy bike ride still gets you to where you’re going when you’ve brought enough food for two weeks, and before too long Woj & Sarah were in position to ski perfect corn in the sun. The wind changed direction, the rain came and went, and the long daylight hours of the northern spring gave way to a rhythm of breaking down camp, packing bikes, pedalling, stopping to look at the view, and yes, some skiing. Exactly as impractical as everyone said it would be, with quite a bit less skiing than Woj had conservatively hoped for.
And yet, the trip delivered exactly the disconnect from societal expectations, screen time, and convention that Woj set out to find—a slowed down, meditative reflection on another great winter.
“The bike speed wobbles like nothing else, and yeah, it’s frustrating to see sun and snow on the horizon while you pedal, and then to see nothing but fog once you get closer to skiable terrain. But when you remember that the purpose of going skiing, or riding a bike, isn’t actually to achieve anything other than to have a tangible experience that gives you some sort of shapeless fulfillment? Combining your two favourite modes of transportation doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.” - Woj
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