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Mount Cain’s Wolfpack helping with park’s popularity

PORT MCNEILL, B.C. – Mount Cain’s ski team’s season is off to a great start.

The five to 12-year-old group known as the Wolfpack recently competed in its first competition at Mount Washington in the Comox Valley.

It was a successful weekend, with Aiden Pratt winning a gold medal in the six and under category.

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“The Pratt family just started skiing this year, so they’ve literally have only been down the snow for about two months,” said Chris Lindsay, Mount Cain’s Director of Events and one of the team’s coaches.

He said nine kids from the team competed, and that everyone had a great time.

Lindsay noted that they hope to expand the age range, so more kids can stay with the alpine park throughout their teen years.

“Mount Cain is really unique, because once those kids hit high school age, if they’re not working up there, it’s like that whole demographic is non-existent. It’s really bizarre,” he said.

Around 30 kids are a part of the program this year at Mount Cain, according to Lindsay.

“We’re just lucky now because there are so many young cabin owners that have young kids, that the Wolfpack just sort of created its own buzz, because the kids at school start talking about it and the kids in the cabins start talking about it. It’s become really popular,” he said.

“It almost makes me nervous, because we only have one paid coach, and the others volunteer, but it’s been really good.”

He hopes that the kids who are a part of the club eventually start working at the mountain, and stick to using Mount Cain as their main training base for the sport.

Lindsay attended the University of Utah and worked as a coach at the Utah Winter Sports Park. There, he helped establish a program that covered ski jumping, cross-country skiing and Nordic combined (where athletes compete in cross-country and ski jumping).

“That was really interesting to see that culture, you know, we basically started with nothing and it took a whole generation of kids to really create the culture and the Olympic mentality. There’s a lot of kids from that program now that were in the last Olympics, but it took a solid 10 or 15 years of developing kids to get to the point where you’re developing an Olympic athlete and not just a club athlete.”

He said he moved to the Tri-Port area in 2015, and began working shortly after at the Port McNeill alpine park.

Mount Cain’s Wolfpack was originally called the Powder Puppies and Powder Hounds, before starting to compete this year as the Wolfpack.

“Interest kind of went away and then the ski school, sort of adopted the program. Like three years ago, we moved here and I saw the need for something more. I talked to parents and other directors and the feedback was that kids didn’t want to go to ski school,” he said.

“I was like, ‘well let’s put together a program and pull it out of ski school and we’ll be our own separate group’. Last year was our first year, and it was basically just director-free skiing. It wasn’t going to be an actual racing team, and we still don’t want to focus on that more, we just want to focus more on kids loving to ski.”

Lindsay said crews from Mount Washington sent a group of kids and a coach up to Mount Cain, which got the ball rolling for the Wolfpack’s recent competition at the Comox Valley resort.

Mount Cain hosts its annual Kids’ Fest this Saturday, March 17th. Lindsay said that parents who volunteer at the event will get a free lift pass.

He hopes the alpine park can continue to grow in popularity, and believes the Wolfpack can help in doing that. For more details on operations at Mount Cain, visit the park’s website.

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