Tailgate Alaska

The King of the Hill is a contest that was started by Nick Perata in the 90s. Although the last one was held ten years ago, it seems like the time is ripe for the return of the big mountain snowboarding contests as is evidenced by the growing popularity of the North Face Masters series. Tailgate Alaska seems like the perfect event to bring back one of the original big mountain snowboarding contests: the King of the Hill.

I woke up on day seven of Tailgate Alaska to bluebird skies, however, I decided not to fly for two reasons: 1) I had worked my shoulder the day before taking a nose dive in the sun crust, and 2) I wanted to get some runs in with the New York boys who were heading back to Anchorage the following day to catch their flight home. So I gave up my spot on the heli list to Gabe, and got some chips for the Big Mountain Taxi to do a few runs with Paul and Rob instead.

I woke up on day six of Tailgate Alaska freezing my butt off. Apparently the heat in the RV stopped working again so getting out of my sleeping bag was a tedious affair. On the plus side, the sky was looking only slightly overcast, similar to the morning conditions on Tuesday. I was hoping the sun would burn away some of the clouds and we would get to go up. The ABA guides seemed positive about it so the decision was made to fly on day six.

Wednesday in Thompson Pass turned out to be a down weather day. Even though it looked promising when I woke up, which compelled me to get my gear together and walk over to the helipad, it didn't take long for the window to blow over and for clouds to roll in. When I got the official word from the ABA guys that Wednesday was going to be a day for “window shopping” (i.e. waiting for windows in which to fly), I decided it would be a good opportunity to drive the RV into town to get gas and a few supplies.

I woke up on Tuesday morning to what looked like overcast skies. Even though I didn't think the helicopters would be flying, I decided to get geared up anyway. I put on all my snowboarding stuff, my climbing harness, avalanche transceiver, and loaded some Clif Bars and water into my pack and made it over to the village area. This was a good decision as it happens, because what looked like clouds was actually valley fog which was quickly burned off by the sun. By 9AM, the skies were starting to look bluebird and the helis were getting ready to fly.

I woke up early on day two of my Tailgate Alaska adventure, but since Anchorage is a whole four hours behind Ottawa, it felt a hell of a lot later than it was. First on the agenda was to finish the paperwork that I needed to do to get my rental motorhome on the road. While I was at it, I met up with a few other tailgaters that were renting their own RVs and also making the drive to Valdez later that day. Paul, Rob, and George from New York in one RV, Justin from parts unknown in another.

Earlier this week, I went to Mont Tremblant for the third try at passing the freeride teaching component of my CASI level 3 instructor's certification but didn't meet the standard yet again. The reason this time was that it was judged that I hadn't pushed the students hard enough during my lesson. Whether or not they left as better snowboarders was irrelevant; apparently the alliance has become more about creating return customers than about making better snowboarders.