Adventures and Adversities in Backcountry Skiing

How do you design adventure experiences for success? It is easy to plan big adventures but getting them to be epic for the right reasons isn’t always as easy as it looks. This is especially true when we are building experiences to deliver to paying clients, our friends or family.

Designing experiences that have the right pacing of adventure, and the right flow, can be the difference between epic disaster or exceptional experience.

Joining us to explore what it takes to design the perfect adventure experience is Chris Winter. Chris is the owner or Big Mountain Adventures which offers mountain bike adventures in 14 countries around the world. Chris also teaches and guides steep skiing clinics for Extremely Canadian in Whistler, BC.

Chris shares some of his experiences and insights into how we can structure amazing adventure experiences that we are delivering to others. He also shares some very funny stories along the way.

Key Insights

Designing amazing adventure experiences requires us to:

Know our audience: Who are you actually building your experiences for? What are their needs, interests and capabilities?

Align expectations early: This means ensuring everyone knows what they are getting themselves into. This includes aligning goals, identifying risk tolerance, addressing needs and so on.

It has to be about them: There are experiences that guides, instructors and companies may want to deliver and there are experiences that people want to experience. These two things are not always the same thing. If you want to be successful, build experiences that people want to do.

Get the Right Pacing and challenge: We want to ease into it, build in the challenge in the middle and finish with flow. This allows people to warm up and then consolidate their experience at the end.

Remember the Purpose: The goal of adventure is to push ourselves outside our comfort zone. Adventure is important and sometimes we can forget why it is so valuable. Yes, adventure is often fun, but it serves a pretty important role in our lives. This makes the ability to deliver adventure a key life skill to have.

Guest Bio

Chris Winter is a former ski racer. Level IV CSIA ski instructor, level III high-performance ski coach, celebrated technical skier, sponsored big mountain skier featured in magazines and films. Currently teaching steep skiing clinics at Whistler Blackcomb for Extremely Canadian.

Chris is the Owner and Founder of Big Mountain Adventures. Chris founded Big Mountain Adventures in 2002. During this time, he has built his tour company into the leader in guided mountain bike travel featuring award-winning adventures in 14 countries. Check out their new eMTB trips!

Chris is also the owner of the Bralorne Adventure Lodge. Ready for a boutique mountain experience? Step out the door to spectacular wilderness & endless adventures…then recharge at our backyard spa.

In addition to operating adventure-based businesses, Chris has also created and developed Zero Ceiling. This is an innovative and respected registered non-profit that hosts disadvantaged youth to the slopes of Whistler Blackcomb. From local First Nations to street youth to youth from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, participants benefit from a day of snowboard lessons, or if chosen to participate in a year-long program that teaches them to become employees at Whistler Blackcomb and give them life-long life skills.

Guest Links

Big Mountain Adventures: https://www.ridebig.com

Bralorne Adventure Lodge: https://www.bralorneadventurelodge.com

Zero Ceiling: https://zeroceiling.org

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Episode Photo Credit: Eric Berger