It was the week before the Easter long weekend, and a ski touring VOC trip to Tetrahedron that I was planning on going on had just been canceled for reasons of snow conditions (for fairly good reason). However, my weekend was cleared, my new ski boots needed breaking in, and the forecast was all sun. Luckily for me, my cycling friend Mirtha Gamiz reached out on Tuesday and we chatted about wanting some bike or ski plans, and then settled on doing both. The idea of Baker was thrown around, but we decided a bike ski tour to Tetrahedron would be a perfect way to test out a combo setup. While seeking out info about Tetrahedron, we also recruited Kai Schwarz, my former roommate and cycling friend, to join in. The most useful info was on the Tetrahedron Outdoor Club private Facebook group that I got access to, where people post hut reservations, and it seemed like there was gonna be plenty of space for the three of us. With a team and a dream, we had two days to figure out our setups. I will admit I had never gone bike packing before and only had my cross bike, but luckily, I had the first day of the long weekend to figure it out.
The setups
We all approached the setups in slightly different ways, but with some common themes: we strapped our skis and poles along the top tubes and attached the skis to a rack, strapped our ski boots to cargo cages on our front forks, had our avi gear and backpacks on the back rack, and then had the rest of the food/gear in the front, or in Kai case, back panniers. Some key points we learned: equal and stable weight distribution was essential. Kai’s bike had almost all the weight in the back and the skis placed above the rack and it resulted in some pretty crazy frame wobbling. For bikes with no mounts like mine, I got a Thule strap-on rack that was rated to 10kg, but over time, it slipped, and I had to strap it to my seat post and carry my backpack on the way back. The way to go for mountless bikes seems to be loading up the thru axle with the old man mountain kits (it’s how I was able to have front cages), and if/when I do this again, I’ll get their rear rack, which can carry much more gear (technically tailfin makes even nicer racks, but they cost a ton of money so that’ll have to wait until I have a real job). Regardless of the specifics, I would highly recommend biking around a bit with the setup before leaving for an actual trip to figure out these details.

The full bike spectrum left to right: Kai on his steel frame Landyachtz, my Liv carbon Brava, and Mirtha’s aluminum Brodie Ronin. Kai and I had taken off our backpacks from our racks to stabilize our bikes at this point.
The actual trip
We left Vancouver at 5am to make the 7:30am ferry, but the biking was much more doable than we thought, and we made it in time for a coffee stop before boarding. After the quick 40min ferry across, we started the 50km to Tetrahedron. We took the road to save time until the entrance, at which point the wall of 1000m of gravel climbing in 10km was the only thing left to bike. All was good until the gradients started getting over 12 per cent, maxing out at around 20? A decent amount of bike pushing ensued. But, after about two and a bit hours of sweating, we made it to the top. We stashed our bikes in the forest, transitioned to skis, and made our way to Edward’s cabin.
Initial bike setups, entrance to the park, and bushwhacking to hide our bikes. I had a tiny lock to lock together wheels to prevent a crime of opportunity but it would have taken a very motivated thief to find these from the trail.
The Tetrahedron huts might be the most well-maintained huts we’d ever seen, with firewood, wood stoves, sleeping mats, tools, and more. We shared the first night with a group of six at Edwards, got some good laughs about using our cycling shoes as hut booties, and after a lovely lazy morning, made our way to Mount Steele the next day. We dropped off our overnight stuff at the hut (which was even nicer than the last one, with hut slippers, cards and cribbage, and toilet paper in the outhouse, and we had it all to ourselves), and made our way up Steele. The view from the top was magnificent, and we got some good lines down some sun-warmed snow.
Views from around Mt. Steele. Unfortunately, the post sunset snow crust was absolutely horrendous, but luckily we made it back down without breaking any knees.
After a cozy dinner full of sharing our various food options (honourable mentions to the Dollarama fruit gummies and cookies, Kai’s loaded potato mash, and Mirtha’s backcountry Shepards pie with ketchup), we played Go Fish, and settled to sleep in the toasty hut, or in Kai’s case, sleeping outside because the weather was so nice. The following day, we got up before 6am to make sure we could be skinning out by sunrise, as we were very uncertain about how long the various legs of our trip would take. The snow did unfortunately end up being as crusty as the night before, which led to much awkward skiing/skinning down, but we still made it out to the parking lot in under 3 hours. Our transition took an hour, and we were off on the bikes. Luckily, the gravel wasn’t too loose, so it went smoothly. At the bottom, we transitioned to our road setups, and were off.
We were all nervous about our setups on the steep gravel, so we took weight off the rear racks and wore backpacks down. Kai and I ended up wearing small packs the entire rest of the way back because I didn’t want to stress about my rack slipping, and Kai wanted to eliminate (some) wobble.
We made it to Sechelt in about a half hour and chilled out with some cyclocross friends we ran into by the Thai food truck. After lunch, we rode to Langdale, and with some extra time before the 5pm ferry, we went to Persephone and had a pint. We reflected on just how incredibly pleasant our entire trip had been, with no hiccups, no mechanicals, all of the timing according to plan, and just lovely weather, company, and conditions. We are all type 2 fun people who don’t mind a suffer fest, but this trip was basically pure type 1 fun. We rolled down to the ferry at 5pm, unloaded at Horseshoe Bay by 6:30pm, and pedaled back to Vancouver by 7:30pm to catch the sunset over Lions Gate. At this point, it was almost comical how nice the trip had been, so we did one final stop at Prospect Point to bask in the sunset, and made our way home.
In conclusion
Bikes and skis together are a great time, especially with a good bit of planning. We gave ourselves lots of time for potential problems but didn’t run into any, so we had downtime to enjoy the beautiful scenery and each other’s company. The Tetrahedron Outdoor Club maintains the best cabins we’ve ever seen, and the park has fantastic views. Lucky to live in a place that allows for such adventures, and even luckier to have experienced people like Kai and Mirtha to do these shenanigans with. Until next time! (Next stop, Baker??)
Very impressive Helena, I actually made it of Sechelt for some bikepacking but didnt make up any elevation.
Sounds like a blast
I feel a little guilty about cancelling the original trip but I’m glad you guys still got up there and had a good time. Definitely will have to give those huts a visit.
Admittedly, the ski objective was a bit chill for a 3-day trip and I’m not sure it would be worth the cost of the ferry across on its own, so you probably made the right call. We probably could have had a comparable experience with snowshoes, more of a proof of concept : )
Nick work! Looks like a good time.
Another ski carry option is to put the skis vertically on the rear rack. I like it as it doesn’t interfere with the top tube. I also have a milk crate on my rack though which makes it easier to mount them.
That would definitely have some pros, as getting the exact mounting geometry right to prevent leg rub was a bit tricky. The skis rubbing on the top tube was also a bit of an issue for some of us unless you cover your bike with electrical tape like me. However, I’m curious: Does that make your bike more unstable/wobbly with all the weight in the back?
I haven’t used that setup with overnight gear, just day trips. I did ride down the Seymour ski hill road with it and it was fine. If I had overnight gear, and the ability to, front paniers would be good for weight distribution.
I did do an overnight with skis horizontal and everything else on the back, that was a while ago and don’t remember it being too bad. I don’t think the horizontal vs vertical skis would change the weight that much.
Nicely done! I second Nick’s comments – having skis on the rack vertically is like having a single pannier full of stuff – you get used to it as soon as you get on the bike. It’s very catchy for the general public though, like carrying a big weird antenna :).