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On the slopes at Sunshine Village

Ski & Snowboard Instructor Course Resort Guide

Snowfall

Simply put, Sunshine Village in Banff is Canada’s most snow-sure ski resort. With Canada’s longest ski season, lasting from mid-November until mid-May, Sunshine Village receives more snow in the average year than any other ski resort in Canada…33ft (more than 10 metres!) of the fluffy, white stuff to be precise. And because it also has Canada’s highest lift-served skiing, this snow tends to be of a very high quality with a low water content making the snow light, dry and fluffy. Sunshine Village’s motto is “Canada’s Best Snow” and they may just be right! Sunshine Village has more tree-skiing and backcountry riding terrain than you could cover in a lifetime. One thing is for sure, you will not get bored spending your gap year skiing or riding at Sunshine Village.

Terrain

And this fantastic amount of powder snow falls consistently over a skiable area of almost 3500 acres and a vertical drop of 3500ft (1050+ metres). Three separate mountains make up Sunshine Village’s in-bound terrain – Goat’s Eye, Lookout and Standish – and each mountain has its own individual character. Whether you ski or snowboard, you will relish the variety of terrain on offer at Sunshine Village…green and blue runs are ideal for perfecting your turns and practicing your drills, black and double-blacks are perfect for those wishing to push their skiing and snowboarding to levels they never thought imaginable. For the more adventurous, the Delirium Dive, Wild West & Silver City offer off-piste ski terrain that will push you to your absolute limits or the new Rogers Terrain Park has enough kickers, spines, hips, rails and table tops to satisfy the needs of any freestyle skier or rider.

The Ski & Board School

SnowSkool has been working with the Ski & Board School at Sunshine Village since 2003 and, in that time, we have made over 300 people into either a ski instructor or a snowboard instructor during their gap year or career break. The course was designed with the requirements of gap year skiers and snowboarders in mind – it is intense but it is extremely rewarding:

"At Sunshine Village, the Ski & Snowboard School prides itself on offering the best ski & snowboard instruction in the Canadian Rockies and we do it in one of the world’s most stunning environments. In the past five years, we have thoroughly enjoyed welcoming SnowSkool students to Banff, we have a great programme in store for them and we have developed close relationships with Phil and his team, both on and off the slopes"

- Stewart Laver, Director of the Ski & Snowboard School, Sunshine Village.