Making use of Banff’s scenic setting is the hallmark of Road West Destination Management Company (www.roadwest.com), which has been in business 20 years and offers programs in the Alberta destinations of Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper.
Group excursions include canoe trips along the Bow River, rock climbing, dog sledding through the frozen pines, and ice walking in Johnston Canyon.
“We’ve done heli-events and heli-picnics,” says Kevin Whitfield, vice president of marketing and sales for Road West.
The company runs 22-minute helicopter rides into the mountains in summer and will often divide groups of up to around 40 into two. In one case, half the group went hiking while the other took a watercolor painting class in a meadow. Another group split into two for a photography workshop and regrouped for a gourmet catered picnic, including wine, champagne and a cellist.
For an adventure, the Great Canadian Moose Rally, an Amazing Race spinoff, can be organized. Optional activities include canoeing and mountain biking, as well as mountaineering through the forest.
Another tour heads up the scenic Icefield Parkway, which parallels the Great Divide, taking in sights of the Columbia Icefields, Bow and Crowfoot glaciers, Athabasca Falls, and Peyto Lake.
“We did a fun event with Volvo, driving new Volvo vehicles and seeing the scenery—the lakes and glaciers. They had lunch at Emerald Lake Lodge on the edge of the Continental Divide,” Whitfield says. “There is a trend to want to make sure the team-building components aren’t hokey anymore.”
One unique event the company organized with Red Bull entailed scaling an ice-climbing wall—ice picks and all. Other team-building options include hockey skills competitions, extreme golf in the winter and racing down a ski jump in a raft.
Team-building activities can also include putting together large animal puzzle pieces and participating in bike rallies. Ice-sculpting contests, lumberjack competitions and scavenger hunts around the Banff Springs Hotel are also part of the repertoire.
“The hotel is massive and it is easy to get lost. There are great old stories of haunted corridors, ghosts, bell captains that didn’t exist,” Whitfield says.
Road West has even organized vertical dancers harnessed outside the hotel in Cirque du Soleil fashion to appear like ghostly apparitions. The company can also organize a haunted mansion theme at Chateau Lake Louise, based on The Shining.
Some groups prefer an educational outlet rather than prescribed adventure.
One of the options is a lecture by Sharon Wood, the first North American woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.
“We bring her in as a guest speaker and do a team-focused speech,” Whitfield explains. “It took a whole team to get her to the summit of Everest and she spins off of that concept to create inspiration.”
