Skijor is no more in Banff. The Alberta town has cancelled the popular snow sport from its winter festival after the community was overwhelmed in January with trash, crowds and rowdy revellers.
“It’s been such a one-of-a-kind experience on Banff Avenue, so I certainly can understand that this could be disappointing news to folks,” Mayor Corrie DiManno said.
Skijoring, pronounced skee-JORR-ing, is a unique winter sport where skiers are pulled behind galloping horses and can perform tricks, including soaring off snow-packed ramps.
For five years, it was a big part of Banff’s winter festival. But the snowballing popularity caused problems.
On a relatively warm winter Saturday in January, the sidewalks were overrun with onlookers. Parks Canada staff had to direct bottlenecked traffic.
DiManno said parking scofflaws trapped residents in their driveways and that there were issues with unruly festivalgoers.
“We saw behaviour in the downtown core that we simply don’t condone as a community. We saw open drinking of alcohol, and we saw excessive littering,” DiManno said. “It was a real shock.”
Afterward, the town said it would review how it would host the event in the future.
Leslie Bruce, president and CEO at Banff and Lake Louise Tourism, said it took five months to decide to cancel it. “This is one of the hardest decisions I’ve been a part of in my career,” Bruce said.
It would have cost too much to accommodate the concentrated swell of tourists in the town of 11,400, she said.
For one, they would have to add bleachers to manage complaints that people couldn’t see the event. Then, it would likely need more security and other additions, such as portable toilets.
“It would have really impacted the rest of our event lineup and meant that we had to cancel a number of events in order to be able to afford to do this one weekend event,” Bruce said.
Sam Mitchell, founder of event organizer Skijor Canada, said while it’s disappointed, it will focus elsewhere.
“At the end of the day, they have to do what’s right for their community, and they couldn’t make that work,” she said. “No hard feelings.”
Mitchell disagreed with the mayor’s characterization of the unappealing aspects of the event.
“I think we had tens of thousands of people in town that were really well behaved and respectful,” she said.
“I think when you throw a big party, it’s your responsibility to add some extra trash cans, get someone to help clean up, get a little more management in there. I think we just probably had more people than that outfit was prepared for.”
Banff has struggled with big crowds for other celebrations. Last week’s Canada Day event began earlier in the day to try to reduce late-day traffic buildup.
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