Folks on here have been so good to me, I'm just going to carry on asking about stuff and see if people carry on helping.

Having crossed Europe and North Asia, and having met up with my girlfriend, I'm now in BC Canada. I know it'd probably not the ideal time of year to be visiting, but hey, we're here and it's now.

There are a couple of things that we're really keen to do while we're here, and HU seems a good place to start asking questions...
One thing is staying in some kind of cabin for a week or so, and the other is skiing.

So does anyone know how we can do either of these activities on the cheap? We're travelling on a pretty meager budget, but feel there must be some way we can do these things without hemorrhaging money.

We're not after anything luxury. One option we've noticed is that there are kind of public free use cabins, often on forest service roads and the like. This would probably suit just fine (more than happy with no electricity/running water etc), but we've not found any specific information about these..

Skiing may be more difficult, but there are less expensive local slopes where you can hire the equipment, right?

Any help appreciated, please pm or post here. We're now in Langley, just East of BC, and both on dualsport bikes.

Cheers..... Gabe
www.GABE-RTW.co.uk

Hey Gabe,

In regards to skiing, you are pretty early indeed. You'd be hard pressed to find any hills open currently. Whistler is your best bet as they target US thanksgiving to open and even though the conditions are early season (i.e. marginal), they make snow so there is enough to have a good time. For equipment, you can rent from a few spots when things get up and going (which will be soon-ish). Other hills in the interior (such as Big White) target a December 1 opening. Early season packages for ski gear, tickets and accomodation are usually pretty good so you may want to look into that.

As for cabins, you have a few to choose from and not many people in them as it is shoulder season (i.e between winter and summer). Check out the Alpine Club of Canada website for their huts. I can recommend a few different ones, there and elsewhere, you'll just want to be aware of the snow line as it is coming down.

In addition, if you need a place to stay for a bit, I'm 4 hours north east of Vancouver and have a bed and for road weary travellers. Feel free to email or pm me if you have any questions. Cheers.

Cool, thanks MountainMan. I've talked to a couple of other folks too, and the unanimous response seems to be the same; too early for skiing and too wet and cold for biking to be much fun.

We did a little jaunt up to Lillooet, taking Fraser Canyon. This was wet and really miserable riding conditions.
On the way back down 99 we ran into (what we, as lame lame Brits, would call) heavy snow. So we spent much of the afternoon picking our bikes out of snow filled ditches, and warming ourselves over the petrol stove.
Not easy to navigate overloaded bikes down steep snow covered roads.

So we're now staying in Whistler for a day or two, and then I think we'll head south. It would be cool to meet up, where is 4 hours East of Vancouver? Maybe you could PM me, and we could arrange something?
We may not get over that way, but would be cool to meet if we do...