Canada's insider blog

 Every ski resort tries to offer something novel, but Big White, near Kelowna, British Columbia, gets bragging rights for the coolest, strangest and altogether gnarliest new sport this ski season: snowbiking.

It is what it sounds like: biking on snow. But the bike isn’t quite a bike. It’s a hybrid – a mash-up of a mountain bike and a snowmobile. (The bikes have a fun backstory.) Up front there’s a ski instead of a wheel. And in back, fitted over the wheel, is an adjustable rubber track, for stability and traction.

“It feels like a snow sport, for sure,” says “Trailhead Ed” Kruger, founder of Monashee Adventure Tours, who runs the snowbike tours out of Big White. Which is to say, going downhill you steer by working the edge of that little ski, carving like a snowboarder. There’s a learning curve, but it’s steep. Most people get the hang of it within half an hour.

“I really haven’t had a lot of people tumble off of ‘em except in ice,” Kruger says. That’s the other upside: newbie snowbikers don’t nurse a sore butt and throbbing head the next day the way snowboarders do.

In these, the first snowbike tours in North America, you get a taste of both downhill and cross-country. The guide takes you on Big White’s bunny run — up the “magic carpet” lift and down that gentle slope. The rest of the day is spent on the trails.

Muscles you can’t even name come alive. The downhill stuff gets the upper body involved. Riding the flats gets your heart pounding. That’s why Monashee doesn’t even offer all-day snowbike packages, just afternoon ones. A couple of hours of this and you’re cooked.