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A man for all seasons - Bob Allison sets the bar high for himself

"If you always put limit (sic) on everything you do, physical or anything else (sic). It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.
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"If you always put limit (sic) on everything you do, physical or anything else (sic). It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."

Bruce Lee

He was always an outstanding athlete. But ski racing was his first love. For the undersized teenager from the backwoods of Golden, making the national ski team in 1976 - and competing alongside Read, Murray and the other genre-bending Crazy Canucks - well, that was more than just a dream come true. It was like being part of another world. Wilder, edgier, more adventurous somehow. Exciting too. So exciting...

So what if he was just 17 and barely 150 pounds soaking wet? So what if the national team had ignored his technical talents and switched him to downhill? So what if his success-obsessed coaches threw him into events unprepared and expected him to manage? He was a Crazy Canuck too.

By 1980, it was all over. Barely 20 and already sporting a shockingly long list of broken body parts, Bobby Allison had had enough. "You know, it's kind of funny now," he says. "But back then, the message was clear. If you hadn't reached a certain pre-determined point by the time you were 20, you were done with the team." But what about long-term development? "Forget about it," he says. "It was all about 'now'."

So how bad was it really? You be the judge. Here's Bob describing a particularly tough week near the end of his career. "We were down in Aspen for a Nor-Am race," he recounts. "The team couldn't afford to send any coaches so we'd gone down alone." A long pause. I can see he's struggling with the story. Almost like he's reliving the horrors of that week again. "Well," he starts, "I crashed on the first day of downhill training and knocked myself out. I guess I was in pretty bad shape - but there was nobody there to assess my condition. So the next day I went up for more training and suffered another bad crash." By race day, Allison was totally out of it. "My head had changed," he explains. "I had absolutely no sense of my skis or even my own body. I don't even remember skiing down. People who watched the race said I almost looked drunk - I was all over the place." He takes a long breath. Sighs. "That's when it got scary."

His ski racing dreams were over. That was clear. But what now? "For the first time in my life, I was frustrated with snow and winter," admits the longtime Whistler sports-entrepreneur. "So I changed gears, applied to the University of Hawaii and devoted myself to big-wave windsurfing." His timing was impeccable. Short boards had just made their entry into the sport, and young men and women were just beginning to venture into Hawaii's fabled surf. "I'd been dabbling in the sport for years," he says. And laughs. "But going to Maui? That was really stepping it up."

Along with his Vancouver ski-racing buddy Dave Ezzy, Allison completely immersed himself in the joys of big-wave riding on these newfangled boards and ever-improving sails. Soon he was being recognized as one of the top up-and-comers on the beach.

And the future looked bright indeed. His buddy Ezzy was fast making a name for himself as an uncompromising designer of high-quality sails while he was turning heads in the surf. But after three years of sun and sand, Bobby missed the mountains. So he returned to Vancouver, completed a business degree at SFU - and got totally hooked on rock climbing. I know. Few people can expect to jump from sport to sport like that and still perform at a high level. But Allison just doesn't fit the mold. And within a couple of years, he was already considered one of the bright lights of the Squamish climbing crew.

"Those years were definitely big for me," continues Allison. "I was still a student at SFU, you know, but my buddy Keith Reid and I had made a pact. No matter what, if it was a sunny day, we had to go climbing." A long sigh. Another shrug. "Well it turned out to be a very sunny fall that year - and we both got a ton of climbing in." He pauses for effect. "And we were both put on academic probation for missing too many classes!"

It was during this time that he crossed paths with a young dancer who was also completing a business degree at SFU. Though they didn't know it then, Corinne and Bob were about to enter into a relationship that is still going strong today. "She's the heart of our family," says Bob of his spouse. "We complement each other perfectly."

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the early years. "I guess it was around the same time that I started working for the Blackcomb Ski Club on weekends," he recounts. "And I think I coached a bit like my old mentor Mike Wiegele. Lots of skiing, lots of mountain play. I wanted these kids to work hard, sure, but I also wanted them to have fun on skis."

Bob and Corrine eventually graduated from SFU. Meanwhile, Bob's parents had moved from Golden to Whistler. Score! They now had a place to stay in the mountains...

Still, they were city-bound. "By 1992," he says, "I'd had enough. We were living in North Van, we already had one son, Tyler, and the business climate just wasn't doing it for us. So I thought: Let's move to Whistler! I knew that with my background, I could jump into Whistler life and find myself something to do." Though maybe a tad more cautious about the future, Corinne was ready to move too. So that's what they did.

As he'd predicted, Allison was quickly recruited by Whistler Mountain's race department to coach at the Dave Murray Ski Camps. "That was a really fun job," he says. "The people I worked with there were great. It was a wonderful entry into Whistler life."

Meanwhile, his restless nature had already led him to snowboarding - and his next passion. "I was coaching skiing but snowboarding for fun, you know. And I was having more and more fun with it." It soon became apparent to Allison that something was missing in the mix. The kids who were coming up through the sport needed coaching. "That's pretty much the reason why I launched the Blackcomb Snowboard Club," he says. "We started at a real elemental level, you know, really concentrating on basic athletic movement."

And it worked. Seemingly overnight, Whistler's young cadre of snowboard heroes started bringing home the hardware from regional and national competitions. Greg Salmon, Darren Chalmers. Nelson Jensen, Phil Stiel, Brett Tippie even - they were all part of Allison's program. And word quickly spread.

When the announcement came in 1996 that snowboarding would have its Olympic debut two years later in Nagano, Japan, Allison was the first in this country to understand what that meant. "I guess that's about the time I started the national team program," he says. "And it was great to be travelling with these athletes and coaching on the international circuit." Another pause. "But it really wasn't conducive to family life." He reluctantly retired from full-time coaching at the end of that season.

"You know, I would have loved to be in Nagano," he adds. "But I wanted to be part of my kids' life too... and that's near-impossible when you're an elite coach." Turned out to be the right decision, he says. Besides, Bob and Corinne already had other plans.

 

"My wife is brilliant at business," he tells me. "She started climbing with me while we were still at school - and really enjoyed multi-pitch ascents. One day, she just came out with it: 'Let's build an outdoor climbing wall,' she said. And that sounded good to me."

Remember The Great Wall at the base of Blackcomb? And the long line of kids (and adults) who would line up to pay for the privilege of scampering up the artificial cliff in summer? That was Bob and Corinne's baby. And that too worked. At least for a while.

"We got shuffled around a bit near the end," admits Bob. "But by then we'd already started work on our next project - an indoor gym in the basement of the Sundial Hotel."

Geez. Does this guy ever rest? Apparently not...

The Allisons operated out of the Sundial for the next five years. But Bob wasn't challenged enough. So he decided to pursue the highly demanding certification program required of professional mountain guides. Which he passed with flying colours. "It was a difficult course," he admits, "but it sure was a lot of fun. Certainly one of the highlights of my climbing career."

Interesting. For most aspiring guides, passing the ACMG exam is one of the toughest tests they'll ever have to encounter. They'll use words like "harrowing" and "terrifying" and "ultimately challenging" to describe the process. For Bob it was "fun." Hmm... But as he says: "When the learning curve is steep, that's when you get the most benefits."

Today, Bob and Corinne own and operate The Core, a multi-faceted workout gym located in the basement of the Conference Centre. Their oldest son Tyler is a professional MTB downhiller, (did I mention that Bob is also an outstanding off-road cyclist?) while the family's youngest, Jake, pursues alpine ski racing dreams. "I'm so happy to be living at Whistler," concludes dad. "It's not always an easy life. But it's such a cool environment - a small mountain town with the perks of a big city. I just love it here!"