Tailgate Alaska

I recently attended the 2011 installment of the World Freeride Festival. This annual festival takes place on Thompson Pass in Alaska, and draws riders from all over the world to tailgate and ride some of the sickest terrain on the planet; hence its name, Tailgate Alaska. A friend told me that the problem with going to Tailgate Alaska is that you end up being compelled to return every year. My response to him was: so what's the problem? As it turns out, he was exactly right.

Tailgate Alaska officially kicked off yesterday (7PM AKDT) at mile post 29.5 on Richardson Highway. The bad news for me is that I'm writing about it while sitting in the flat eastern timezone. However, my official departure for AK is not too far off — less than seven days away — so I'm not too bummed about it either. It will give me a bit more time for some last minute preparations before I leave; like securing a good map for example.

The January issue of Backcountry Magazine arrived in my mailbox this week. During my initial flip through to determine which articles would most interest me, I came across an ad for Alyeska Resort in Alaska. The full page ad consisted of a picture of skier Clint Butler riding in fresh pow, presumably at Alyeska resort, with the caption: Alaska, the last frontier.

While I was in Alaska for the World Freeride Festival (better known as Tailgate Alaska), I brought along a GoPro HD Hero camera to document the occasion. I wound up taking more than four hours of video footage while I was there — which might have been more were it not for dying batteries and filled up memory cards — so in the last few weeks I've been sorting through it and putting it together for your enjoyment. The following video is the first chapter of the Shred Labs: Expedition Alaska video series.

Friday was a cold, bluebird morning which was as good a day as any for my last full day in Thompson Pass. Although my heli budget was completely exhausted, I was planning on making use of the Big Mountain Taxi service as much as I could since I had to return the Spark R&D bindings to Erik, and I was too lazy to put my Betas back on the plates (and frankly not interested on going back to riding plates after trying the Fuse bindings).

Thursday was another bluebird day on Thompson Pass Alaska. Although I had exhausted my heli budget, I was determined to get some snowboarding in. Plus I still had the Fuse bindings that I borrowed from the Spark R&D guys the day before. I had already tested them going downhill, but I figured today would be a good day to test them going uphill as well.

I woke up on Wednesday morning to the wonderful sight of bluebird skies and the feeling that I would be blowing the rest of my heli budget. However, since I only had a few runs left, I had to wait until the afternoon to get the rest of my time in to give priority to the full day groups. In the meantime, I planned on making use of the Big Mountain Taxi service as much as I could.

It was still snowing on the Pass on the morning of day eleven of Tailgate Alaska. The clouds had rolled in and it was impossible to see the peaks of the mountains so it seemed unlikely that the heli was going to fly. However, Happy, Badger, and Patrick were milling around at the base thinking that the clouds would break and that we would get to go up. So Justin and I put our names on the fly list for the day. I was hoping that it would be a good one to use the last half day of my heli time. I got lucky, the clouds broke and the decision was made to scramble the helicopters.

I woke up on day 10 of Tailgate Alaska to total greybird skies. It seemed unlikely that anything was going to go down, even Big Mountain Taxi was grounded; the light was really too flat to see any terrain features whatsoever. I've learned, from watching the movie “Lines”, that when in Alaska, you should expect strings of days like this. The trick is finding something to do on them.

The NOAA forecast for Valdez on Sunday called for snow showers in town, and snow in the Pass. This time they were right because I woke up on day 9 of Tailgate to see snow falling to the ground. On the one hand I was glad since the Pass could use a little bit of cover to bury the tracks from the past week, but on the other hand I was a bit disappointed because it meant I couldn't go snowboarding. However, since it was Easter Sunday, I thought I should go to town anyway to call my family and wish them a happy Easter.