How do you stop?
The same way you would stop on skis or a snowboard. You can turn across the hill and skid sideways hockey-stop style. On a skibike, you also have the added advantage of being able to put your feet down “Fred Flintstone” style, and use them to slow down or come to a complete stop. We recommend only using this method as an “Emergency Brake”. Within two or three runs, most people feel very confident skidding the bike sideways to stop.
How do you turn?
You lean the ski-bike over to make it carve a turn to the left or right. This feels identical to leaning your bicycle over to make it turn. There is very little turning of the handlebars involved in this, just like on your bike, it is more of a lean than a turn. Once you are carving a turn in a certain direction, you can then skid the back ski around to sharpen the turn. Before you know it, you’ll be standing up on the pegs and doing short-radius skidded turns all the way down the mountain (see video page).
How do you carry the bikes on the ski-lift?
There are various methods of doing this. The method we like is as follows: you keep the bike between your legs, sit on the chair, lower the safety bar, hook the bike seat over the safety bar so that it hangs in front of you from the bar, then before taking your hand off the bike, you clip a bungee carabiner to the safety bar so that it is impossible for the bike to fall. See photo sequence below:
If you don’t have a bungee-caribiner, you can just use a snowboard leash and clip it around the safety bar instead: see below
At the top, you unclip from the bar, raise the bar, place the bike on the snow between your legs, take two or three quick steps forward and hop on the bike and ride down the ramp.
Where can you ride them?
There is an up to date list of ski-bike friendly ski-resorts on the American Ski-bike Association website . This list is updated as more and more mountains are allowing the bikes each year.
Is it hard to learn?
Learning to ski-bike is one of the easiest things you’ll ever do. If you can ride a bicycle, you are already in possession of all the skills you’ll need. Most folks are amazed at how easy it is to control the bikes, and how much fun they are to ride.
Learning to ski or snowboard is a very athletic endeavor. It involves lots of time, money and energy, and plenty of falls in order to get proficient enough to head out and explore the intermediate terrain on the mountain.
Ski-biking is not like this at all. After two runs down the hill with someone giving you pointers, you will already feel comfortable enough to go out and explore all the intermediate terrain the mountain has to offer.
It is also much less strenuous to ride a ski-bike than it is to ski or snowboard. If you are into sitting back and effortlessly cruising around the mountain, then ski-bikes are for you!