Tuesday, February 09, 2010 - Friday, February 12, 2010:

IPC Para Speed NorAm

Saturday, February 13, 2010 - Sunday, February 14, 2010:

Family Festival (2nd Annual)

Kimberley Alpine Resort is celebrating FAMILY! Don’t miss out on Kimberley’s 2nd Annual Family Festival that will include all kinds of family fun!

Sunday, February 14, 2010:

2nd Annual Boardstiff Rail Jam

Presented by Boardstiff in Kimberley! Come out and cheer on local riders! Keep checking out our website for more details to come!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - Thursday, February 18, 2010 :

Alpine Snowboard NorAm Races

Saturday, February 20, 2010 - Sunday, February 21, 2010 :

Bootleg Sled Dog Races

Enjoy the excitement of watching the Bootleg Sled Dog Races. Kimberley Alpine Resort is a major sponsor for this event! www.bootlegsleddograces.com

Saturday, February 27, 2010 - Sunday, February 28, 2010 :

GREASY Rail Jam (4th Annual)

Skiers and snowboarders will get down and dirty at the Greasy Rail Jam. Our annual rail competition will be set in a jam format allowing each rider ample opportunities to show their moves on a variety of rail features.

Kimberley, B.C., is often overshadowed by Fernie in the Resorts of the Canadian Rockies ownership group, but has its own dedicated group of repeat visitors who love the cruising slopes

Full article here

The Ski More Card is truly the most unique loyalty product on the market with the best value!

For more information or to buy online, visit: www.skimorecard.com – also available for purchase at Fernie Alpine
Resort, Kimberley Alpine Resort, Nakiska and the RCR Calgary Office. Bulk purchases of 25 or more are available
for $63+GST per Ski More Card plus a free card for every 25 purchased. For more information on Bulk Purchases,
please contact Paul Whitham, RCR Sales Manager: pwhitham@skircr.com or 403-209-3312

Thursday, November 26, 2009

By Bruce Constantineau, Vancouver Sun, August 28, 2009

The small East Kootenay town that morphed into the Bavarian City of the Rockies in the 1970s wants to become the Paralympic training centre of Canada in the new millennium.

Kimberley expects to have Paralympic ski teams from Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and other countries training on a dedicated run at Kimberley Alpine Resort just before the Paralympic Games next year.

The Dreadnaught run was developed to accommodate downhill, slalom, giant slalom and super-G events, with safety netting from top to bottom and new communications and timing equipment.

The facility is fully equipped with ski equipment required by disabled athletes and International Paralympic Committee World Cup events were held there in 2005 and 2007.

Now, city officials hope to capitalize on the run’s international reputation by building a $6-million Paralympic Training and Conference Centre at the base of the mountain by late 2010.

“International teams are talking to us now about the possibility of coming here and training in the future,” Kimberley Mayor Jim Ogilvie said. “So throughout the Olympics, we’ll make it known we’re going to have this centre available.”

The provincial government committed $3.9 million to Kimberley’s Paralympic vision four years ago and the city has used some of those funds to help develop the ski run and to make its civic arena and curling rink more accessible for disabled athletes.

The arena’s players’ benches and penalty boxes now are at ice level, allowing for smooth transitions on and off the ice for sledge hockey players, while dressing rooms have been renovated with automatic doors, accessible washrooms and showers, wide benches and equipment boxes.

Curling venue upgrades include covered ramp access and automatic doors leading into the building. The city’s two-year-old aquatic centre is also wheelchair-accessible.

“What we’re saying is come here and train here because we really do have the complete package,” Ogilvie said.

The package won’t be totally complete until the new ski-in, ski-out training and conference centre is built next year, but he said most of the project funding is already in place — including $2.5 million left from the provincial grant, another $2 million in federal-provincial infrastructure funding and $1 million from the city.

The facility will have training facilities, change rooms, meeting rooms, audio-visual equipment and conference space for up to 500 people.

Kimberley didn’t send delegations to previous Games, but Ogilvie noted several international sport federations found out about the city’s Paralympic aspirations at the B.C. Pavilion in Turin in 2006.

He credits renowned Canadian ski instructor Jerry Johnston for giving Kimberley so much credibility as a centre for training disabled athletes. The 73-year-old member of the Order of Canada moved to Kimberley from Alberta in 1980 and brought his groundbreaking training skills with him.

He began training disabled skiers in the early 1960s and he and his wife, Annie, established Canada’s first disabled skiing program; they created the Canadian Association for Disabled Skiing in 1976.

Johnston helped establish the Japanese Handicapped Ski Association and headed the disabled skiing exhibition at the Olympic Winter Games in Calgary in 1988. He’s not an active trainer these days, but he remains an important consultant in Kimberley’s Paralympic plans.

“Paralympic skiing in Kimberley has been very successful,” Johnston said. “Things have really opened up for a lot of teams to train here and they don’t have to run around looking for equipment for speed racing.

“A lot of resorts won’t shut down a hill, but we have an agreement that we can do that for training.”

Kimberley will continue to attract high-level competitions for disabled athletes, he said, but it will be hard to become a permanent fixture on the IPC ski circuit because so many countries want to hold the events.

“It’s good to move the events around because that helps increase the popularity of the sport,” Johnston said. “Disabled athletes still aren’t respected at all in some countries and we have to change that. People thought we were crazy the first time we went to Japan but they really accepted the sport when they saw what the athletes could do.”

Kimberley Alpine Resort representative Matt Mosteller said the proposed new training centre will become a year-round facility for able-bodied and disabled athletes, with fitness and dryland training taking priority in non-winter months.

“The sport has been a very big positive for the community,” he said. “Athletes come to live and train in the area and there’s an economic win when you create and host events.”

Kimberley will host a Nor-Am competition for able-bodied snowboarders just before the Olympics in February next year, then hold a Nor-Am event for disabled skiers before the Paralympics begin in March.

The city expects to attract disabled curlers to its curling venue before the 2010 Paralympic Games and the Canadian men’s sledge hockey team is scheduled to play against an international opponent in the Kimberley Civic Centre on March 1.

Steve Bova, an instructor who runs a disabled ski academy at the resort, noted the Canadian snowboard team trained on the mountain last year and the Nor-Am snowboard event will attract snowboarders from all over the world.

“The main thing is to market what we have now and get the people here,” he said. “From a coach’s point of view, the venues are what’s important and we have them.”

bconstantineau@vancouversun.com

Tamara Gignac, Calgary Herald

Published: Friday, October 03, 2008

Financier Murray Edwards is selling half his interest in the Lake Louise resort area back to Charlie Locke — a former ski hill mogul who owned the property for decades before his company went into receivership.

Edwards, a major oilpatch player and co-owner of the Calgary Flames, controls a string of ski resorts under the umbrella of Resorts of the Canadian Rockies.

But the Calgary businessman is planning to shed half his stake in Lake Louise in order to concentrate on real estate opportunities in places like Fernie and Kimberley, a company spokesman confirmed Thursday.

Read Full Article Here