Its been a crazy season since the last time we posted here about the happenings in Canada, first things first congrats to our crew on the instructor training course, who has once again this winter, achieved a 100% pass rate on the CASI level 1 instructor exam. Solid effort team!
The Canadian Association of Snowboard Instructors is the governing body for snowboard instruction in Canada and has 4 levels of instructor certification plus two park certifications. The level 1 obviously the rung on the ladder and gears up brand new instructors to work through a beginner progression and get people up to riding green runs for the first time. The exams are marked on both the candidates riding skills and teaching proficiency so we split up the training to include a good mix of both, with some extra time set aside to hunt for some pow.
After the exam its time for a well earned celebration and its not hard to get a party pumping living in a town like Banff. Alberta, the proving where Banff is located, is know for its excellent beef so we headed to The Keg restaurant for some bad ass steak to give us the fuel for a big night out. On our courses you get a weekly credit that works at 6 different restaurants in town and were pretty pleased to have the keg as one of those partners. Once everyone had a solid base to stack drinks on top of it was off to one of our favorite bars in town, Mel’s. If your looking for a classy cocktail lounge this is definitely not your place, Mel’s is the kind of place where anything goes. Beer pong tables and stupidly cheap drinks means it’s pretty easy to get yourself set up for a big night out. We had a couple heated discussions with our ski friends from the basecamp instructor training program about the ole ski VS snowboard issue and figured the only way to solve that was a good ole boat race. Im pretty pleased to say the snowboard team continued their tradition and smashed the ski crew out of the water. From there we headed underground to the Hoodoo nightclub for some $3cdn (£1.5) jagerbombs and that’s about when things get blurry.
With the level 1 and a couple well deserved rest days behind us we step things up a notch and start working towards the CASI level 2 exam. The level 2 gears instructors up to start taking students into steeper and bumpier terrain and even includes a little freestyle component. For the groups this essentially translates into more time spent pushing their riding in some of the amazing terrain Lake Louise has to offer. Luckily for us as well we received almost 38cm’s of snow this week so it was the perfect reward for everyone after completing their exams.
Lake Louise is known for having one of the best maintained parks in Canada, regularly hosting events and shoots for some of the top riders and film company’s, check out Snowboarder Magazines 2015/15 movie, SFD, for a full Banff section if you don’t believe me. With a little freestyle element in the level 2 were making sure that we get the groups in the park whenever we can to help push their skills. With a top to bottom park run and over 50 features of all shapes and sizes its pretty easy to find something that suites your level and build up from there.
Lots more good stuff coming up in the next few weeks so make sure you keep checking in on our facebook and the new instagram account @tickettoridegroup for the full recap as the season progresses.