On a bluebird day in early March, helicopters buzzed overhead. They were shuttling skiers from nearby peaks to Alaska Heliskiing, a local operator based about 30 miles north of Haines. The conditions lately have been excellent.
“Just blower cold powder, plenty deep. You can't feel the bottom,” said Sean Brownell, who owns the local company. “It’s perfect, cold winter pow.”
It’s the peak of heliski season. But this year, Brownell is also among a small army of locals gearing up to host the penultimate stop of the Freeride World Tour.
The competition draws the globe’s best backcountry skiers and snowboarders, who pick their way down ungroomed, world class slopes.
More than 100 people are expected to arrive in the small town over the next week for the competition, which is tentatively scheduled for March 15. But that hinges entirely on uncontrollable factors, like visibility and avalanche risk – setting organizers up for a major logistical feat.
“That's the hardest part about this event. It's all weather dependent,” said Reba Hylton, the Haines Tourism Director. “We’ve got a date on the calendar, and that date has to be flexible.”
Will the weather cooperate?
Uncertainty has loomed over the months-long planning process. Athletes are set to start arriving in town two days before competition day. If all goes as planned, they’ll leave about two days after.
But if the weather doesn’t cooperate, athletes, freeride staff, borough employees, local organizations and volunteers could be on standby for all of a 9-day weather window. If the event doesn’t happen in that time frame, it could mean cancellation – and a major local financial loss.
The Haines Borough has committed $75,000 for the event. If it were cancelled, the community would still be on the hook for the full amount, according to its contract with Freeride. If rescheduled, Haines would owe half that amount.
“That would be horrible on so many levels,” Hylton said. “But the borough will stand by the commitments we've made to the small local venues.”
There’s precedent for that – as recently as this week. On Friday, Freeride canceled a tour stop in Austria, citing an unstable snowpack. The move came after the tour canceled a February stop in the nation of Georgia, rescheduled for a different location, and then canceled again.
“Freeride is one of the few professional sports that does not control its arena,” Freeride said in a statement. “We compete on natural mountain faces shaped entirely by the elements, and when conditions do not allow for safe and fair competition, we cannot run the event.”
Organizers are keeping an eye on local forecasts. But most seem wary of taking that information seriously – at least not yet.
“I won't trust it till we're like four or five days out,” Nate Arrants, who is on the Freeride planning committee, said during a recent planning meeting.
Brownell said he and his team have been keeping a close eye on the snow.
“It looks good right now to be skiing out there,” he said. “I just hope that continues.”
For organizers, a lot of moving pieces
If and when competition day does arrive, the borough, volunteers, and local partners — which includes a range of businesses and other organizations — will kick into gear to pull off the event.
The first job will be transporting dozens of people to the helicopter launch location on Brownell’s property. From there, two helicopters will shuttle them to the mountain – dropping some at the top, some at the bottom, and most at a spectator area called the “Barbie.”
That’s where tour crew, staff and others will barbecue and watch as the riders make their way down the mountain.
Brownell has spent weeks training his own staff and volunteers, who will be involved in checking the snow, setting up the start and end gates, and standing by in case of emergency.
“I'm not putting anybody at risk, period, up on these mountains,” he said during a planning meeting last month. “It is risky unless you're super comfortable in the mountains, and it's all my insurance.”
The official location of the competition has yet to be finalized. But a top contender is a mountain face known as “The Venue.” Brownell said it’s ideal because it gets a lot of light, is protected from the wind – and holds “really nice snow.”
Still, the competition details are a small piece of a much larger logistical puzzle.
Just one example: the borough is set to host a competition day dinner for 150 people but doesn’t know which day that will happen.
The planning committee has also penciled in activities for every other day, so the visiting athletes can get out and see more of Haines regardless of the weather. Those events should include a welcome drink that the public is also invited to, a bonfire, a movie screening and guided hikes.
“There's so many things that go into the competition day itself,” Hylton said. “And then, of course, that affects every other day on the calendar too, because we want to showcase the best of Haines.”
