Bike to Ski – McKenzie Highway to the High Cascades

We kept saying to ourselves, “why haven’t we done this before?” as we skinned up the mountain for our third lap skiing down. We’ve lived here in Central Oregon for 28 years but we’ve never put together the classic bike to ski combo. A couple weekends ago we made our first and very successful strike mission to ride up Highway 242, known as the McKenzie Pass highway, and find some snow to link up for some turns.

McKenzie Pass is a lovely road ride in the spring, when Oregon Department of Transportation plows the road, but keeps it closed to vehicles. Perfect for a bike ride! This is usually a stretch of three to four weeks in which the weather can range from freezing blowing snow to warm and sunny. We knew the weather this particular weekend would be clear, warm, and offer up some classic spring skiing conditions.

We needed to carry our skis, boots, poles, some clothing, and small backpacks for the ride up, but outfitting the bikes was pretty simple. Since I don’t have any eyelets on my Juliana Quincy, I had an Axle Pack with FLiP Cages on the front, and a thru axle mounted Divide Rack on the back, with one Ponderosa Pannier.

Hello! I’m Katy, the CEO of Old Man Mountain. My husband Chris is the COO, and when we’re not working hard to bring you the best products, we try our best to get out on our bikes as much as we can. Lucky for us, we are located in Bend, Oregon, so we have tons of opportunities to get out and ride on all types of bikes.

My ski boots graced the front FLiP cages and my skis attached on either side of my top tube and on to the Divide Rack. Chris had the same set up on his Kona Libre. The bikes rode SO well with those boots sitting low on the front end, much like a low rider style front rack would feel. (Hint, hint…new product idea?)

We rode 8 miles up to the pass, climbed up a snow bank, unloaded, changed into our ski boots and left our bikes there. Since we started at about 5,300 feet elevation, we had to start with a bit of boot hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail, with our skis strapped on to our backs. When we reached larger snow patches higher up that we could connect together, we skied up in amazing spring corn conditions, surrounded by black lava rock outcroppings. This area is a volcanic wonderland with vast expanses of lava flows that flowed from several large craters in the area thousands of years ago.

Getting up to a plateau, we had views of prominent volcanic peaks of North and Middle Sister, the Husband, Belknap Crater, Little Belknap Crater, Mt. Washington, Mt. Jefferson and Black Butte. It was a beautiful, bright sunny day to see the Oregon Cascades in their glory. We scrambled up to the top of Little Belknap Crater to get the 360-degree views. Hot tip: hiking up chunky lava in ski boots isn’t the best idea. We made it work!

But we were on a mission – we had to get some telemark turns. We found our run and did several laps, hooting and hollering on the way down, cheering each other on. It’s hard to stop when it’s so much fun, but the reality of skiing and hiking back to our bikes AND riding back down the pass, finally sunk in. Better head back.

The bikes were a welcome sight and getting the ski boots off felt good. Some knuckles were bumped to each other, then back on the bikes. The ride down was a dream, screaming down the highway with all of our gear. People riding up looked at us like we were crazy. Maybe we were, but it was all so worth it to be in the high mountains on a beautiful spring day!

I see more bike to ski adventures in my future. Where will your bike take you?