Every path in the road of life has a starting point. The story of Backside Tours starts in Switzerland.

During the winters of 1995-97, the company founder was employed as a ski tour promoter and guide in the heart of the Swiss Alps in a cool little alpine village called Grindelwald. This same little town had a snowboard school and shop called Backside (the name sounds familiar doesn't it?). Through many a late night expanding on the virtues of skiing and riding the local resorts, a concept was born - Backside Canada.

The company was founded in 1999, incorporated in 2000 and operations began in 2001. (*Keep your eyes peeled for the early Backside stickers produced in 1999 exclaiming Est.2001; a few of the originals have stuck around.) The inaugural Backside Tours adventure to Kicking Horse Mountain Resort occurred over New Years 2001/02 and Kicking Horse has continued to be a favourite resort. Kicking Horse was just starting its second season of operation and Backside was on our first. Two buses of Backside patron's had awesome snow conditions with five feet of fresh. Some of our current guides were on that first tour and remember it well. These annual New Years tours have continued to be a big hit with our groups.

So Backside Tours was born, but the lofty goal of creating culture based on the passion for this ski and snowboard culture had only just begun.

In order to bring this vision to life here in the West, Backside had to "undo" the party focused ski trip consumption habits born in the wild 80s and instead, reconnect with the amazing gift of being able to ride on these majestic snow covered mountains of Western Canada.

But how can this happen overnight? The answer is it cannot.

The first step was to hire the right people who shared the same passion for life and for riding as we do. And we are proud to say our Backside guides are some of the most positive and inspiring people we have ever met. We know you'll agree too!

The next step was to change the party-centric focus to an activity based experience. With bus games, trivia, funny videos and great movie options, our guides ensure our customers keep smiling all the way to the hill. That is not to say we don't party! The theme of celebration is central to all our activities on all our trips. But we just think moderation makes for more memory making opportunities!

With a fresh, organized and energetic approach to tour operations, Backside quickly became a favourite among the university crowds. With dynamic guides and entertaining activities, our university trips are our pride and joy - with hot springs visits, pub crawls, theme nights, convenient accommodations, student groups have gotten all they can handle. We continue to build solid relationships with university groups, and as our operations grow, we continue to recruit new guides from these schools.

On the corporate group side - in our over heated economy - our corporate tours appreciate our many on-hill accommodation options and Backside's detailed approach to working with corporate groups.

But we are only as strong as the people we surround ourselves with and our partners reputations speak volumes - Rossignol, Smith Optics, Helly Hansen, Icebreaker and Deuter, Backside is able to provide our customers with even more for their hard earned dollar.

Finally, how do we ensure you our patrons will be able to return to these resort destinations and be able to continue to create memories? With a commitment to our service providers whether riding on the bus, hanging out in our accommodations, or playing on the hill, we establish a relationship based on respect and ask that our patrons do the same. This way, we will always be welcome back to spend our leisure time in the great winter outdoors!

With Backside's commitment to the environment and to learning more ways we can operate in a sustainable fashion, we are confident the respect for the extraordinary experience of our resort based group adventures will only grow making Backside even more Green.

For the 2008 season, Backside Tours is excited to be packaging thousands of days of ski and snowboard adventures for our groups.

We encourage you to contact us as early as possible for planning your group's snowriding adventure. The more advance notice we have, the more suggestions and ideas we'll be able to implement to ensure your group the most memorable ski trip yet!

* Backside Tours carries comprehensive liability insurance and offers a toll-free direct contact line to the office.