Rent or buy for Banff

If you're coming for the skiing and you intend to ski a lot, it's way cheaper to buy skis. But if you're coming for the skiing I don't know why you're going to Banff. That's just my opinion. But yeah I'd buy skis.

How many days do you plan to ski? That will help with the calc to determine whether or not it's worth it to buy instead of rent. Most rentals are pretty crap skis anyway, unless you splurge and rent the better ones...and at that point, it could be better to buy the skis anyway.

Here's a place in Canmore (close to Banff) that does rentals to get an idea on pricing: http://www.gearupsport.com/alpine-skis-rental-canmore

Pancake_FuckerBut if you're coming for the skiing I don't know why you're going to Banff. That's just my opinion. But yeah I'd buy skis.

I mean whilst its not literally right next to a mountain, norquay is a 5 min bus ride, sunshine and lake Louise are about 40 mins away so I'd say the skiings pretty dope.

And OP, when I was there a few years back, there was one place renting park skis in town (I can't remember the name but its near the English pub on the high street) if you want those. I dunno if they still do them. But if you're there for over 2 weeks then I'd say get some out there and if you don't wanna bring them back due to baggage costs or whatever then sell them on kijiji if you can

Thanks for replying guys. Chose Banff for the variety, and someone I know did a season there and said it was pretty amazing, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I'm only out there for a week, which is a poor effort. I intend to spend as much time as I can in the park, but obviously want to explore plenty of stuff too. Ideally a shop where I could change my skis a few times, and have a good range of good skis would be great. I went to France last year, and a rental shop there had a good range of current years models that you could swap out as much as you wanted - something like that would be ideal?

OMWs are going to set me back around £320 (about $600), plus carriage, so I'm hopeful I can find some decent rentals for less than that, even if they are top price ones.

Rentals suck. I'd just bring my own stuff.

Sunshine park is money right now.

Buy. Worth it in the long run, cause now you have skis for wherever.
The market in the Banff/Lake Louise area is a tourist market, so it's a lot of beginner or carving skis. Plus rentals can be pricy too ($50+ Canadian a day). Plus you can guarantee you get the skis you want, nor can you be sure that the rental place will allow multi day rentals.

I don't know what the demo situation is in Banff, but if you are going to rent you want to demo, to get quality skis. I would buy, as it will cost quite a bit to demo skis for a number of days. If you don't buy I would go and demo some skis with the intention of buying, most places will take at least one demo day off the price of the skis. I don't know anything about the ski shops in Banff, but I would expect they have some good ones.

if youre going to louise id just rent from the rentals there, they've got a lot of differnet variety from everything from park to big mtn you just cant hit rails with them or they get pissed off but most of the time they cant tell

steezkneezif youre going to louise id just rent from the rentals there, they've got a lot of differnet variety from everything from park to big mtn you just cant hit rails with them or they get pissed off but most of the time they cant tell

Thank you for pointing out something I'd not thought of - hitting features with rental skis. I guess it's probably the same story at each rental shop too!

If you are looking at buying skis anyway and using this trip as an excuse to do it, maybe see if you can pick something up while you are here? The Canadian dollar is absolute crap right now, so you may be able to pick up some solid savings while you are here as opposed to buying in the UK.

DowseBigamyThank you for pointing out something I'd not thought of - hitting features with rental skis. I guess it's probably the same story at each rental shop too!

its not that big of a deal, plus they sometimes let you buy rentals for super cheap cuz theyre worn out