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Has anybody been to Canmore in Alberta Canada. If so, whats it like?

It has a wendy's hamburgers.. that's about all it's got going for it. You mayswell go to Banff since it's 15min up the road and closer to all the mountains.

Can ya rent property in banff? like get a flat?

Yeah but it's hell expensive...Banff is kinda like Queenstown on steroids if you can imagine.

Canmore is a pretty chill little town, with reasonable rent prices and way more laid back...

However in my opinion all those fields round Banff/ Canmore are kinda shitty, some great terrain and parks at all of them, but just so busy, you end up spending half your day in the lift line or waiting to pay $15 for a sandwich.

I'm in Golden at the moment (about 2 hours westish of Banff), and it's pretty cool here I pay $400 CAN a month for a room in a sweet house, flatting with 2 others. It's got Kicking Horse about 15 minutes away, Revelstoke about 1.5 hours and Panorama about 1 hour away. They are all sweet hills, with no queues, with the possible exception of Panorama, but I could imagine Pano would be sweet with some snow.

Yea i heard those fields can get pretty busy but heard they had some sick fuk terrain! how big is golden? is it a prety laid back town?
whts the park like at Kickinghorse or any fields around golden?

Wnna find a place with sick parks and mean backcountry but wna stay away from whistler because of olympics ae.
Chur.

Golden is small, about 4000 people in winter. Real chilled out, but good nightlife/ social scene for sure. Get in early like 3 months before you leave and you wont have a problem with finding accommodation. Lots of the hotels/motels do really good deals for long term stays (like $400 CAN a month) if you can't get a house.

Kicking Horse, doesn't really have much of a park, it's fun, but most features are small. You don't really go to Kicking Horse to brush up on your rails...it's more of a big mountain hill, pretty steep terrain, mean natural hits and cliffs etc. They have just put in a "Burton Stash" knock off thing, that looks promising, but still needs some work over this coming summer.

http://kickinghorseresort.com

Revelstoke doesn't even have a terrain park, but is sick in much the same way's Kicking Horse is... but Panorama, has two terrain parks, the big one is cool and the little one is good to chill out in...they have night time sessions every Friday with lights....it's fun times.

The terrain at the hills around here craps all over the banff/lake louise fields really...if you want powder and steeps, this is the area to be in round these parts.

Yup, have done two seasons in Canada. Totally agree with johnnymac.

I don't really rate the banff area. It's pretty much a bunch of aussies, calgarians on the weekend, and while the terrain big/varied compared to NZ, there is way better stuff elsewhere.

pretty simple really. just head straight to fernie. i've lived in a fair few mountain towns and nothing beats fernie

dope. whats the park like at fernie? i head it was only rails or something??
whats it like getting jobs over there. if i rocked up in october wud i get a job easy as?

Yeah, fernie is owned by RCR who are f*ckers and now the fernie park is essentially 10 (?) different rail/box set-ups. They took down the jump line at the end of 2007. And at that time they also owned Louise, so their jump line was also taken down and was only left with a few rails/boxes.

Their reasoning is because people hurt themselves going over jumps rather than rails/boxes...right......

BUT, hey, when there is good terrain and regular dumps, the whole hill is your park!

Hey done 14O odd days at sunshine season before last (15mins from banff) great fun alota aussies yes which is good ina way cos farkin pussys leave the good stuff alone. but yea check fernie or red mt in Rossland as well, RCR bought back the jumps at least to lake louise check they mayhave brought them back in other rcrs too

Yeah, Louise have got their jumps line back only because they aren't owned by RCR anymore.

RCR is back to owning just Fernie, Nakiska and Kimberley.

Yeah Lake Louise had some sweet hits this season, pity about the rest of the mountain...and at the end of the season they put in this farkin huge airbag setup that was pretty sick...twas a 30 and 60 foot option onto it.

It wasn't like those other airbags you mighta seen, you could actually ride off this one if you stuck it right. The only problem as I found out a couple of times is if you start rag dolling and don't regain control before the bag-> snow transition, you ate serious crap, more so than just regularly stacking it on a real jump that big I would say. Quite a few people broke hips and collarbones this way (not me).

I posted some photos in the photos section of this website about a month back check them out...

Airbags look like so much fun. Yes, haha, pity about the rest of Louise.

I've seen lots of photos/videos from airbags in Europe/Scandinavia but never seen one where you can actually ride away from it. Very very neat!

Got any videos from the Louise airbag?

Sucks about the people with the broken hips/collarbones though! Do you reckon all those injuries were because they were riding (or trying to ride) WAY beyond their ability just because there was an airbag? I have seen a lot of people get injured because they "huck" off stuff when they can't even ride their board flat...

Didn't get an any videos, was mostly riding by myself and the days I was riding with my buddies we just wanted to ride the thing, not film it.

Go to:

http://katalinnovations.com/videos/

They have a web site with some cool video on it, check it out. The guys that ran it are a few post grad uni students from Calgary. Awesome guys that were fully approachable and keen for feedback...was talking to them about the problems and they are going to install a 30ft kind of gym mat at the end of the bag to help with coming off the bag in future.

There was certainly some people hitting it that really shouldn't have been, a couple of people didn't get anywhere near enough speed and ended up landing before the start of the bag, or crashing in to the side of the bag hahaha... the people that hit the side of the bag didn't hurt themselves but a couple of the people that hit the flat bottom seriously nailed themselves. A couple of retardos ended up coming close to firing off sideways and totally missing the bag on landing too.

But yeah email your resorts back home and let them know this is something you want if you're in to it...chances are they will print it out + stick it on the fridge so that they can laugh at the idea of spending their precious money on snowboarding while they drink their coffee at break time. But Katal are fully decent guys that are stoked on progressing snowboarding and fully deserve to do well. So make some noise.

Cheers.