It was before noon on a weekday, but about two dozen people were gathered at a bar in downtown Haines. They were there to watch the livestream of an international sporting event taking place in their own backyard.
High in the mountains north of town, elite backcountry skiers and snowboarders were competing in the penultimate stop of the Freeride World Tour. The event is only accessible by helicopter, but it’s livestreamed around the globe.
Onlookers watched as riders picked their way down a near-vertical mountain face. Local Sheri Loomis laughed as she scrolled through a note on her phone with a list of quirky ski terms she’d learned that day.
“Look at all of these!” she said. “A tapestry of fluff. The whole mountain is a tapestry of fluff. They’re lacing it. A bomb hole – that’s where somebody else has crashed and you go into it.”
The event marked the first time in nearly a decade that the tour had come to Haines – or anywhere in Alaska. And athletes and organizers alike are already hoping to be back next year.
“It clicked really well as an edition one. And that makes me think that we really have a common future,” Freeride CEO Nicolas Hale-Woods said in an interview over the weekend.
The Haines stop was one of a handful around the world. At each, the athletes ride down massive, ungroomed mountains – earning points for their lines, control, fluidity and style.
Typically, the competition happens at some point during a 9-day weather window. But the Haines event was pushed up due to a short snap of perfect weather.
Reba Hylton, Haines’ tourism director, said that left organizers scrambling.
“We had planned for there to be a delay,” she said. “Then for it to be early, that is the one thing that none of us foresaw at all.”
That posed new challenges for the already complicated event, which brought more than 100 people to the small, remote town – and required a $100,000 local investment.
Those challenges included booking last minute flights to get everyone here in time. And it gave the athletes significantly less time to prepare.
Typically, they get a chance to check out the mountain face using binoculars the day before the competition. Then they can study the mountain and plot out their runs overnight.
“This time we got the pictures and had a look this morning. And then straight up to it,” Michaela Davis-Meehan, a snowboarder from Australia, said during an interview after the competition.
Davis-Meehan said her run in Haines wasn’t her best. Still, she said Haines lived up to its reputation of being the so-called “Dream Stop.”
“Just riding Alaska, it’s amazing to be here, and I hope we get to come back,” she said. “I think that’s the only place I’ve heard of in Alaska actually: Haines. This is where you come. This is the place to be.”
The winner of the women’s snowboard competition agreed. Mia Jones, from Truckee, California, has been impressive this year, despite it being her first time on the tour.
“The mountains are so incredible. I was so mind blown, and the snow is amazing,” Jones said. “Seeing the spines, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”
Hale-Woods, the Freeride CEO, said moving the competition up by two days took a lot of work and collaboration between his staff, the athletes and the community. But he thinks the conditions were well worth it.
“Riders who rode yesterday and even today, were saying they had one of their best – if not the best – day of skiing of their lives. And these guys are on skis 150 days a year,” he said.
Asked if the tour would return next year, Hale-Woods said that’s the hope.
“It’s more than on our radar,” he said. “When we organize an event, it’s because we believe that the event has a long term viability.”
Hale-Woods acknowledged that $100,000 is a major investment for Haines, particularly in comparison to the tour’s other stops at major ski resorts.
“We can show what the return on investment is for Haines and the community in terms of, first of all, local spending,” he said. “And then the promotion of Haines, globally, as an incredible skiing destination.”
Hylton, the tourism director, said she’s already thinking about how to secure more corporate sponsorships, to make it more likely the tour can return.
“I do have some concerns about the borough being able to make a contribution so significant again,” she said. “I don’t think that’s feasible.”
