High School students off to ski in Canada
High school students and staff were in good spirits at the airport yesterday morning, despite the weather threatening to disrupt a ski trip to Canada.
More than 40 students from all four States secondary schools, as well as six staff, gathered hoping to fly to Birmingham before spending the night at Heathrow and catching a nine-hour flight to Calgary today.
Due to poor weather, the flight did not leave Guernsey at its scheduled departure time of 11.10am, but did eventually manage to get away mid-afternoon.
Group leader Richard Sinkinson said that the group had planned to fly over to the UK the day before in case of a delay.
‘We started organising this trip about a year ago and obviously the weather can be unpredictable so we wanted to give ourselves a bit of leeway in case a situation like this arose,’ he said.
This year’s trip sees the group travelling to Jasper – a resort approximately four-and-a-half hours from Calgary airport by coach. They are due to arrive there today, before returning next Saturday.
Mr Sinkinson said a trip to North America for students had been organised every year since 2003, apart from during the Covid pandemic.
‘Usually we rotate between going to Canada, California and New York,’ he said.
‘This will be our first visit to Jasper, in the past we’ve gone to near Montreal, but we wanted to change it up this time.’
He was hopeful that the students would relish the experience.
‘There are a few nerves as I think for some of them it is the first time they are travelling such a long distance away from their families.
'I think ultimately everyone is excited and hopefully we get some better weather when we are out there.’
Student Raif Carre, 17, said he had been skiing twice before, and hoped this trip would be more successful than one of his previous skiing experiences last year.
‘I had an accident and stretched some of the ligaments in my leg.’
He added that he was excited for the flight out to Calgary from Heathrow.
‘I love long-haul flights and being able to watch films and play games.’
Fellow student George Stoakes, also 17, recalled a previous school ski trip to Sestriere in Italy, and was glad that the coach journey once they arrived in Canada was not going to be too long.
‘When we went to Sestriere it took 19 hours on the coach which was painful. I’ve never been to Canada so I’m looking forward to it, I’ve been skiing before and have also snowboarded, so I hope it all comes back to me.’
States schools’ half term starts today.
