Alberta’s Rocky Mountain town of Banff is saying so long to skijoring.
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.
It has been a popular part of Banff’s winter festival for the past five years, but has now become a little too popular.
In January it drew so many spectators that streets and sidewalks were clogged and there were issues with traffic, parking and unruly behaviour, prompting town officials to conduct a review of the popular event.
“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,” Mayor Corrie DiManno said Thursday. “It was a real shock.”
Town officials estimated nearly 44,000 vehicles entered Banff during the two-day event, not including the vehicles that parked outside the town limits.
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Organizer Skijor Canada, in a statement, says Banff and Lake Louise Tourism’s Board of Directors has made the difficult decision that Banff will no longer serve as the host location for our skijoring event.
Sam Mitchell, founder of Skijor Canada, 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,” Mitchell added.
While disappointed, she said Skijor Canada will focus its efforts 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.”
Leslie Bruce, president and CEO at Banff and Lake Louise Tourism, called the decision “one of the hardest decisions I’ve been a part of in my career.”
However, she said it would have cost too much to accommodate the concentrated swell of tourists in the town of 11,400.
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.
Banff has regularly struggled with big crowds for such celebrations, and next week’s Canada Day event will begin earlier in the day to try to reduce late-day traffic buildup.
With files from Global News.
Too big? I get that. And the drunks stumbling around? I get that too. But excessive littering? C’mon people. Didn’t “don’t be a litter bug” catch on in the ’70s?