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Every year around this time, mountain bikers evacuate the hills to make room for their winter counterparts.

But if two Vancouver Island construction workers have their way, skiers and snowboarders will have to learn to share the slopes.

The pair have created a kit, called the Ktrak, that transforms regular mountain bikes into downhill mountain machines.

With a ski on the front and rubber track around the back wheel, Ktraks allow riders to pedal through powder and soar over jumps.

It's the brainchild of Kyle Reeves.

Mr. Reeves has taken out a second mortgage on his house and, along with his business partner and childhood friend Jason Scoffings, has invested more than $700,000 in a quest to create a brand new winter sport.

This week, the duo appeared on the CBC reality show Dragons' Den, where investors offered them $500,000 in return for 50 per cent ownership in the company. They turned it down.

"I'm not one of those guys who's going to be pressured to cave and just give away my company," says Mr. Reeves, 37.

He has reason to be optimistic. Since the company began production in 2006, more than 1,000 kits worth about $500 each have been sold, and Ktrakkers are now tearing down the slopes in Europe, Canada and Japan. A Russian dealer has ordered 750 more kits since September.

But like Jake Burton and snowboarding's other founding fathers, who struggled for years to overcome suspicion and snobbery about their new sport, Ktrak's biggest challenge is winning over the ultimate gatekeepers: the resorts.

"It's just like the old days of snowboarding," Mr. Reeves said. "Every mountain is different."

Mr. Reeves's eureka moment came in the fall of 2005 during a long, boring ferry ride from Vancouver to Vancouver Island, where he lives with his wife and two children in Qualicum Beach. The owner of an excavation company, he was already familiar with rear-drive tracks like the ones used on backhoes.

"What if I put one on a bike?" thought Mr. Reeves, a recreational cyclist.

He tinkered with the idea in his garage before heading to California, where he worked with a company that develops prototypes.

The result was an apparatus that attaches to a standard mountain bike (right now, it fits a 26-inch wheel, but smaller models are in the works). The front wheel is removed and a shortened ski is attached to the forks. The rear wheel is replaced with the Ktrak drive, which looks like a triangular track on a skidoo.

The sport is surprisingly easy to pick up, according to its testers.

"If you can ride a bike, you can ride it," says Larry Mitchell, a friend of Mr. Reeves who took his new kit on a test run at Mount Washington, a ski resort on Vancouver Island. The ride is soft, turning is easy, and the brakes work just fine, he said.

But among the resort's management team, the jury is still out.

"We don't think the fit is that great on a busy day," said George Trousdell, Mount Washington's maintenance manager, who observed several Ktrak test runs. "They do get going pretty fast and if they do fall there's a bike flying through the air, possibly."

The mountain often gets inventors begging to test out their latest gadgets, he said. Some look like they've been cobbled together in someone's backyard.

Others, such as the Ktrak and a snowboard developed on Salt Spring Island called the Hangboard, which involves riders suspended horizontally over a board, stand out because of their professional design, he said.

"I definitely think there's a place for them," Mr. Trousdell said of the Ktrak. "Where that is, I'm not sure."

Mr. Reeves and Mr. Scoffings are optimistic that all it will take is more time, and more test runs, to convince the resorts that their invention is safe - and good for business. This season, they've secured more trials at Mount Washington and Whistler.

And while they're still on the hunt for the right investor, both men have no regrets about the decision to turn down the Dragons.

"We know where this is going to go," Mr. Scoffings said. "We feel very confident."