In case you haven’t noticed, making a snowman (or snowwoman) isn’t just for kids anymore. At Colorado’s Keystone Resort, effective and invigorating team-building exercises sometimes include snowperson-making contests. Pairing creative workouts with mountaintop dinners at Der Fondue Chessel restaurant 11,444 feet up can freeze desirable experiences into the memory and help melt down barriers in complex situations, according to Angela Andrews, the resort’s conference catering director.
“There are lots of other on-snow options at Keystone Nordic Center as well,” Andrews says. “The group can do some old-fashioned downhill tube races, or a relay race on snowshoes or cross-country skis in conjunction with a mountaintop dinner.”
Staff will also arrange for a winter obstacle course, she points out, led by former Olympian Jana Hlavaty. Team building might include a cross-country ski trek, followed by a snowshoe race and final dash to the finish line on a snow tube down a hill, she says. The resort also offers private night skiing lessons for groups and nighttime ski races on its nastar course, in addition to ice-skating lessons, dinner sleigh rides, private snowcat tours, and other on-mountain activities.
When more cerebral team building is the objective, Keystone staff might suggest The Keystone Conference Center as an appropriate site. As one of the largest event spaces in the Rockies, at 100,000 square feet, the Center’s in-house staff will customize programs. Professional facilitators are available to assist groups in addressing decision-making challenges and other complex business situations. Keystone Science School is located in the Center, and it has snow science, aquatic, geological, and biological interpretive programs that may be “keystones” for outdoor team-building programs.
Even more-serious team building comes out of the Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center (boec) at Keystone.
Orienteering and a ropes course also may help the group meet goals and objectives. Professionals with backgrounds in experiential education, psychology, communication, and organizational development design programs to address work-related issues. They craft group action plans that impact team effectiveness, leadership dynamics, personal development, and the professional environment.
And if the group needs a break from serious indoors business purposing, there’s Keystone’s great white outdoors, always a wide-open expanse just made for sharing some laughs with snowpeople who’ve suddenly joined the group.
