Latest / Doug Has Questions / Episode 16: Tom Wayes; Chasing Lines, Building Gear, Racing Rocks: The Relentless Pursuit Of Flow

Transcript

Episode 16: Tom Wayes; Chasing Lines, Building Gear, Racing Rocks: The Relentless Pursuit Of Flow · Doug Has Questions

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Doug Haskle.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you enjoyed today's conversation, please like and subscribe.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: We're available if you want to watch us on uh YouTube or if you just want to listen to the podcast version on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and each episode goes live on Thursday morning.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I hope you enjoy this episode and we're happy to have you listening.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for joining us for this uh edition of Dougass Questions.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Today my guest is Tom Ways, uh Hell of Ski Guide, Timberfaller, off-road truck racer, and we're gonna save the best story for last of uh uh diverting a bear attack with the tomahawk.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna we're gonna save that to the end.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: But thanks for joining us, Tom.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: You're welcome.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: Stoked to be here.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: No, I've known each other for 20-some years coming up here to Haynes, and seems like each time uh you come to town you've got another good story, and uh I hope we can share some of those with uh with the listeners today.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, stoked to be here.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Nice blizzard we have going on outside.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Get to town, it was super cold, and uh and then this big storm came in, and uh it's looking like it's gonna be another great year.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Excited to be here.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I hope there's a lot of good snow for you guys.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: So let's let's get started.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: First off, uh growing up in Pennsylvania.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Do you grew up you grew up on a farm with your parents and did you have siblings?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one older sister, and uh we we I grew up in Berks County.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: We had a stone farmhouse and a farm that was uh originally a regulated shooting ground for uh a lawyer out of Philadelphia.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so basically there was a regulated shooting ground.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: What does it mean?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was like a bird hunting uh bird hunting place, and then the guy uh had a dog kennel with his hunting dogs, and there was basically like birds being raised in the barn and pheasant hunting was crazy.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like the deer, the deer deer hunting was you know, everywhere.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: The deer were everywhere.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: They were like hunting rabbits.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so grew up on a hate.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: We had a little bit of hay and a few animals.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: My parents were both in education, but the uh we did like, I don't know, it was like 13 or 15 acres of alfalfa back then, so learned how to bail hay, and you know, we had old equipment because you know we moved there in 1979, and uh we had a 1937 John Deere Model A tricycle, flywheel start.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that was like the first tractor I ever drove, and you know, we bailed hay and butchered pigs and you know got to grow up like uh I don't know, with a diverse ability to do different things.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: So it and the the reason I want to start in Pennsylvania is I've been to a little bit of Pennsylvania.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: And for somebody to become a downhill skier in from the state of Pennsylvania, it seems to be a reach.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: How did that start?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: What was your first intro into downhill skiing?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's a little ski area next to uh where I grew up.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was called Dome Mountain Ski Area, and it was a small little ski area, it was like 400 vertical.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I grew up skiing there, and you could go night skiing and 400 vertical feet?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, four or five hundred, yeah.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's not much, that's some short runs.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so uh yeah, so that was where I started skiing and then really wanted to start ski racing and was really excited about ski racing and um went out and tried out for a ski team and ended up uh ski racing all through college and then um that kind of evolved into some downhill mountain bike racing for a while and then I started doing skier cross back in uh in the X games and then did X games and and then the whole time was starting to do tree work and loved ice climb and started incorporating climbing with a lot of different things including skiing and uh um So when you when you tried out for a ski team, yeah how old were you when you first got the when you wanted to race?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: I was going into being a freshman at col in college.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Freshman in college, yeah.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So super late for ski racing.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And where did you with the I'm I'm guessing you weren't learning to uh ski race at the I was training a little bit at that little ski area and I and I met a local guy that was helping me uh train slalom and then uh we started skiing slalom GS and and then we were in a Division II school which was NCSA and uh we were racing against a bunch of other schools and uh yeah we had some really good coaches.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: We were training at a Pico ski resort in Vermont, and then after that we were at Killington, and then uh we raced against some pretty good schools, and uh when we would go out west to Nationals, that's where we would race a bunch of European, um really good skiers, low point skiers, and um yeah, but the whole time was still trying to ski stuff and yeah, that was kind of the start of it.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so you're doing slalom and GS.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, those are the two.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: So how did that we'll we'll get back to the downhill bike racing and mountain bikes and everything else.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's a little bit of that.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: But but with the with the skiing, so you you just went to a junior college, you said, or was it a four-year?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: It was a four-year-old.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so you raced for all four years?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I did, yeah, and we went to nationals.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Was that scholarship deal where you get go to school?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: I got a little bit of scholarship, yeah.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: The coach was excited and you know, to go and to to go from being you know a rookie to by the end being a valuable part of the lineup and to getting pretty fast.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then out of college, you said that's when you went to X games?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Snow Cross.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: After after college, I went out to I went out to uh Squaw Valley back then.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's called Palisades.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I went out to Squaw to to race uh a World Cup downhill mountain bike race, and then I was going to go down to Mammoth and race the Mammoth Kamikaze downhill mountain bike race.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh went down to race that and then came back and um met a friend of mine now who owned a bike shop on the West Shore and I was building a bike because I broke the frame and then I was building a bike in his shop, and then he's like, Hey, won't you won't you stay?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: So decided to stay, and then everybody back then was trying to take pictures, you know, and get on the cover of Powder Magazine.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when was this?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well mid-90s, late nineties.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Mid-90s, 94 to 99, 99 was a big year in skiing.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of big winners around in that time, and um yeah, just getting opportunities to partner up with different companies and to be able to go explore the world and go anywhere I wanted to was really cool.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: So, how how how did that work?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: Did they know you from your ski racing days and were they contacting you?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: No, are you like pounding on doors saying, hey, I want to do this?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um I met a few different people in my travels in like Shamini, I met the the head of Hestra Gloves, and he wanted to bring Hestra Gloves to the United States, and I was the first athlete I think he talked to and helped bring Hestra to the United States.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was uh the local marker rep who was turned into like the vice president of Nordica, which was owned by Benetton at the time, so like I loved going to Chamonix, so I flew over there, got a rental car, drove all around from Chamonix to Saint Antoine, Austria, all the way down into Italy in a rental car was port out A4, um, and just drove that thing for a month straight.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, Europe was was really fun back then for me.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And to to to ski for a brand that you're going to where they make their boots or something like that in Montepaluna is cool.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's neat to be able to be part of the process and be like, hey, I'm trying to do this with this boot.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And like back then I was trying to put Vibram soles on the bottom ski boots, which they didn't have back then.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I literally would take a race downhill, plug boot, and then I would take it and I'd either put it on a planer or a belt sander, and I would take off a few mills off the bottom, and then I would barge cement and screw vibranum soles to the bottom of my ski boots so I could run around on ice cliffs and rock ledges, and you know, but like I I I'd love skiing off anything back then.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then we got to explore Russia after that.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I went to Kamchaka, Russia in like 2000, 2001.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: My dates are a little off sometimes, so forgive me, but that general time frame.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: So what what led you to go into Russia?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: How did that come about?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I was telling somebody that story today.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I met um a guy that owned a magazine that had some athletes with him, and they were taking pictures and they were down in Portillo, Chile, summer skiing.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I was I was I was wound up, I was really excited to do anything and everything, and like I get there and it was like everything's been done before.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Well, what about because it's this big square building, right?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's a big archway, and there's a pool in the back side, and I was like, the owner, Henry, I was like, hey, so has anybody's like, yeah, what jumped off the roof into the pool?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's been done.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: What about this?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's been done too.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, man, it's tough around here.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, but anybody jumped off the roof before?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then to where?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, to the to the roof of the bar and then to the roof of the entryway and then onto the woodshed.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, no one's ever done that one before.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: So like literally, I was on the roof like 10 minutes later after he said yes and was jumping off the roof and doing like a stage jump down the hill.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: With your with your skis?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Just going from building to building.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was off the building.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was off the building.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Off the roof line to roof line to roof line on a uh three-stage building, yeah.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh what kind of vertical drop are you talking about on that?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, it was like three stories, probably top to the first shelf, and then I don't know, it's a decent sized building.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, Russian.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and the owner said yes.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so like met a bunch of Russians there.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: They invited me to come to Komchatka, so put a story together for Powder Magazine, and my ski partner Jim Morrison and I did that with uh photographer from Jackson Hole.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And Jim and I did a bunch of our trips together.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: He he just skied the north face of Everest this past year.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: He was the guy that did that.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: That he was the one that went down the horn beam area, the north face, yeah.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: That was my that's my old ski partner.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we did a bunch of stuff together, and like that was crazy watching that.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's he's he he uh he's he's uh he's a really good skier.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like him and I skied uh the south face of Mount St.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Elias together.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: So really, yeah.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: That was uh that was my buddy Jim.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: So like Jim and I Jim and I did a bunch of different stuff together.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like we did three different years in Russia together.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: We did Kamchatka and then we flew into let's get to okay.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: You're with Jim.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: I want to I want to get the in-depth here on Kamchatka.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're you're putting something together, you met this guy in Chile.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's got a ski.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Come over, you'll be my you'll be my guest.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: He's got a ski magazine in Russia, yeah.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: But you talk to Powder Magazine to see if you can do a story for powder while going over to do the trip with Article.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Do they do they pay you like if you get the story that's the amount, do they help sponsor your flights, your travel, your helicopter topic?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: You have to pay for all that out of your own budget.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: But they give you a set amount for the piece when it's done.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: No?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing like that.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: You got nothing for it?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: You don't get anything.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: You get the you get a piece of paper back then saying, hey, I'm on editorial assignment with Patter Magazine and whatever you can do, thanks.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we paid for the helicopter.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is where your Russian buddy helped out, or were you guys paying for the helicopter out of your own pockets?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: We paid for it for everybody, but it was so cheap back then that it's insane.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like the Russians didn't have a they didn't care about the price of fuel, they didn't care about helicopter time.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like we flew around in these huge giant MI8s, and I was telling the story to somebody today because they were asking me about it, and literally, like we f couldn't fly directly from here over.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: We had to fly to New York and then New York to Moscow, and then get on Aeroflot Airlines and fly from Moscow to Petropolos Komchatsky, which is another nine hours and nine time zones.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: So now we're like twenty-something hours into the travel to get there.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then we get there and we went and negotiated with the pilot with Artem doing the negotiating, of course, and uh we came back the next day and we're like, we get to the airport and this helicopter's hot.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're guess we're guess we're going in this.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Guess we're getting in this one, right?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we had negotiated for like a hut master and a cook, right?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we're like, alright, whatever.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we come dragging our bags across the tarmac and we get over there and we look inside, and there's a snowbill in the back.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's like 12 people in there, 10 people, there's a fuel tank, a snowmobile, two weeks worth of food, and there's people everywhere, and I'm like, guess we're getting in here.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And quickly look around and start like adding up the weight in my head and thinking like there's no way this is key brain, you know, like flying around in French helicopters and eight B-2s, and you know, the amount of time, like anyway.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: So these things are incredible.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: They pull like it's like a semi with a tram under it, and uh pulling 25,000 pounds of weight, I bet.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we flew for like a week down the peninsula picking volcanoes to land on and just pointed at stuff.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: You just point and they'd bring you over and drop you off.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And well, there's the only time in my whole life I heard a pilot tell me that they were too light, I'm having a hard time landing, so just jump out.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, I can do that.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, literally we jumped out and like we weren't skiing the active volcanoes because I just didn't think that was a bright idea.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: But like they were eight to ten thousand foot ski runs.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Holy cow.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it was neat.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I was a long ways from 400 feet in Pennsylvania.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean to be able to like try to knock a snow slough off of a volcano into the ocean was like my goal.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I wanted to be able to knock a slide into the ocean.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it would be neat.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: But no, the in in a whole we were there in February, it was cold, but it was neat.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: There was all these hot tri um geothermic uh pools and stuff like that, and hot tubs.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure it's totally different now and it's developed, but back then it was pretty neat, and then the next year we went to we flew into Sochi, and then basically they were like, Yeah, we're gonna build this tunnel and then we're gonna have the Olympics.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Yeah, right.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Sure you are.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we were based they called it Kras uh Krasnaya Polanya, which was Valley of the Red Fields.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: They said it turns like the ferns turn change colors in the fall, and it's this beautiful valley, and goes up towards the Georgia border.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And they said it was like a KGB recreation facility in the in the old days, and it was all diesel power, five chair lifts.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: They just completed the fifth one, so we were there right in time for that.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we were the first Americans ever there, and uh, we were there for a month, and then we came back the next year, and we were there that time.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Jim had an accident and landed on his beacon and his avalanche transceiver, and we used to wear them like on our body here in the old days.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he landed on a rock and it broke his rib cage and punctured his spleen and he started bleeding out internally in Russia.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we were in this chute, and I skied down to him and I was like, That didn't look good, what's up?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Oh, just let me sit here.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And his lips were turning blue, and I was like, No, we're not doing that, let's go.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, No, just let me rest.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: I bear hugged him and he was quite mad about it.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Skeed him down, stuffed him in a helicopter, he started losing a level of consciousness, and then we flew him down to like the soccer field basically or football field next to the sky.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: And there was like a local doctor there, and he was like, I'm not taking responsibility for this American, he's gonna die on my table.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't this isn't okay.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: So they flew the heli down to Sochi and grabbed some paramedics and then flew him back up.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then we all jumped in the heli and you know, backpack on still, and this huge bird freaking skis on the floor, like ski boots on, still buckled, you know, like just jumped out of the helicopter, and like now we're in an ambulance bouncing over, and they're like, your friend needs to get operated on or he's gonna die in 20 minutes.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: So they cut him open.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: He uh he in the ambulance they cut him open?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, they cut him open in the hospital there.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, they got him to the hospital in that time.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: But it was just terrifying environment there, like the hospital and everything, and then like they wouldn't let us stay there, so we had to go back up to Skyria, come down the next day, and then he's in the recovery room, which was freaking ridiculous and lean gnarly, and then he was like, I got a medjet transfer to Moscow, but they wanted 18,000 back then for it, and we had to pay in full before it would take off from Moscow.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we threw down our credit cards, he got a jet ride, his wife flew from Reno from Truckee, and then flew over to meet, and then I was like, What do you think, Jim?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Ski em up, boys.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, really?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yep, see you soon.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Bring my bags home.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, that was one of my uh ski partners for a long time, and then uh we well, let's see, so then I was um then I decided I really wanted to ski guide and uh got my EMT and got my Avalanche certs, a few different levels of that, and uh started guiding in 1997 or 98 in Cordova and uh started to kind of pioneer, help open up that whole bottom end of the range up to the Copper River, and then really wanted to go into the Rango St.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Elias Park.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, St.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Elias had been the longest unskied descent in the world at that point, and I really wanted to ski it.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, we went in there the next one of the next years after that, I think it was.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, we we were there right before Easter, and uh we ended up skiing, I think, at the crux of the of the ski between 14, 5, or 15 and down to Hayden Cole and uh Yeah, we got our butts kicked and freaking snowed on us a bunch.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: We lost a tent and then got our snow cave caved in and had to take a few snow caves in one evening and barely managed to pull that off, but uh managed to get out of there, and then Paul Klaus came and picked us back up.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, went uh back to doing some ski movies and started doing more snow machining and was definitely uh excited to incorporate riding some sleds and being in Canada a lot and being with a Canadian brand at that time for outerwear made a difference there.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: What brand was that?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Arterics.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I started with those guys in '99 when they were still privately owned and got to design a little bit of clothes with those guys.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh right when they started the snow sports brand and got to be with those guys for a few years, and that they were a huge push to be able to do fun things.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't worried about like, hey, ask us every single time for permission.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like they were like, do good or we'll fire you.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that was neat to get encouraged like that and to be able to go try to do different things.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so for them, because now you're talking about you're doing skiing, you're doing snow machining, they just wanted you to be out in the outdoors bringing them back ideas on how they could make the product better.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: Were they doing ad programs with you?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: How was what was that?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: There was some ads.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: There was some ads back then.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: They made some t-shirts.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: That I mean, they did a bunch of different things, but I mean they were primarily a brand that was really particular about how they were gonna make cool gear at that time.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh not like to meet the guy that invented the waterproof zipper, that was really cool.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that guy was really a cool part of that company back then, and uh I've always been particular about my gear and what I like and what I don't like, and to have opportunities to give people input.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: They I did it a little bit at Nordica, we made a little bit of clothes, did it at Arterics a little bit, and then really got to dive in with both feet with Eddie Bauer making the first uh first ascent line and making the snow sport making the SIBA guide kit and getting to design a jacket, a bib, and gloves and a backpack and stuff that I thought worked best for me here, you know, working.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: And uh how does how does that process work?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Are you just sitting in a room tell or do you do they give you Samples and you're going out and trying them, you're like, this one sucks, this one sucks, this is about right.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think it usually starts where you're like, hey, what's your benchmark, right?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then you go buy like two of your favorite competitors benchmark piece, and then be like, this is what I like about this, but hey, I like this, this, this and better.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Can we add this?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like that.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, can you put the belt loops closer together by the button so I just don't have this huge gap on my belt all the time?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or like, what's your pocket angle?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or like, do you put zippers on your hand pockets and then you put your knife there the first time and you break the zippers off?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, or does your knife always fall out of your pocket?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or I don't know.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: So you well, but you're you're pretty in pretty in-depth in the design process.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, totally.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: They they they they definitely were like guide built, guide trusted was what they were saying back then, and that was really how they really liked uh to us to be like, you know, hey, this is what we like, and and then a lot of our uh a lot of our clients that we were skiing with would be stoked on the stuff because we were designing it and then they'd want it too.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's neat to be able to make stuff that was specific.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like there was some jackets where like back then I'd keep my I'd my main my main main radio, my radio harness, but I'd have a second radio, like a like a Motorola talk about back then.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd put it in a in a shoulder pocket, and then I could just push the button through the through the jacket and just talk through it without having a second hand mic.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh just getting rid of extra stuff that's just like hanging on your collar is nice.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And whenever you get a chance to streamline your kit, it's always nice to change stuff up.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Snow's coming off the roof.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: The roof slid.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Warm enough, roof slid.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what a crazy temperature swing they got like 20 degrees.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: So what is what is this when you're talking about lightening your kit?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna lead into the story that I've heard about you.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: But first of all, what all do you have in your pack as a guide when you're going out there?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um depending on the time of the year.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Depending on the time of the year, and it changes a little bit.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right now I'm running an Arterix electric fan pack, so it's an avalanche airbag pack and it runs on a battery.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've ran on a cartridge style before that runs on nitrogen, and then all the fittings are all the same actually on a lot of these systems, where it's like an O-ring fitting and there's like a purse seal, but some of them in the older systems ran dual balloons, single balloon now, and there's a few different styles of Avalanche airbag backpack.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so like that's my favorite pack right now.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I did some work using a modular kind of avalanche airbag pack system.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that's probably one of the bigger changes in modifiable setup where I could lose some weight, and then um some years ago, Petzl started making a static rope called rad rope, and it is like half the weight of a traditional static or whatever dry ice climbing rope that you'd use in the past, an 8mm, say, and it's significantly lighter, so that's a spot where we we you know lost some weight, and uh like McCrobe, his carbon fiber might not be a lot lighter, but a little bit.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: But there's ways to try to not carry as much weight.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: The reason I'm asking, you can tell me if this is a myth or not.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the story I heard is you were guiding, and one of the clients went down, wiped out, tore up his binding, and got in rough shape.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: You come down behind, grab his ski, pull a new binding out of your pack.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's not true.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's not true.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: No, that's not true.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: No I was told that you'd replaced the binding on the mountain and got the guy going back down the hill.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um no, but like uh no, the closest was like I used to like skiing the same powder ski, really got attached to it.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I would put the photographer or the cinematographer on backup skis and then have multiple sets of holes because you only have so much adjustment range in a binding for skis.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I would have extra holes in the tail, so you could leave a posse screwdriver in the dash of the helicopter and take the binding and move it, repo the bindings from the film crew, and then use them yourself?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: That was the only closest I'd be that.
• 26:50
  unknown: Yeah.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: See the the the myth of Tom Way is there's these stories out there that you shouldn't have gone with it.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: Should be like, yeah, that was me.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: I carry spare bindings.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: I I I don't know.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've been known to carry beef jerky and mountain dew, but I don't know about extra bindings.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: Extra bindings.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: So you said Cordova.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: Did you ever ski did you ever guide in Valdez?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: I skied there in the beginning of the early 90s.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I skied there as a customer and uh yeah, and then went back another time to there and uh yeah, was skiing with H2O back then and uh yeah, got to do some ice climbing in the canyon there, which is world-class ice climbing.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's neat to be there when you're when you like climbing.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And when was your first trip to Haynes?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: 2005.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And what brought you here?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um the film with Rage Films, and uh I showed up and was skiing with uh with Scott Sunberg, and he had he was still working with Sean Dog at that point in time, I believe.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: With Alaska Heliskiing?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, with Alaska Heli Skiing, and then uh I shot a segment for a ski movie here, and then um Nick asked me from SIBA.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: We were flying at 18 that day, and he asked me if I wanted to uh quit messing around and qu quit doing ski movies and come work for him.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that was uh that's when I started uh coming back relentlessly to Haynes.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so have you, other than COVID, have you been back every year?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: Or were you even back in COVID?
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was here in COVID.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: You were deharded, that's I was here in COVID and then because you guys were here before everything.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: We got asked to leave.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was a weird year.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: That was crazy.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was really good skiing too.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was a shame.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: We had customers, and I remember you're like, you can ski, those people are ready to leave, and then you have to go home.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, there was no one on the roads.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was a crazy drive home.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: No one on the road, it was like a ghost town.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: But you've been back every year?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a couple that you've missed or there's a little bit in there?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there was some there's a little bit of time in between there.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: There was some years, yeah.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Mostly here.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: What keeps bringing you back to Haynes?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's my favorite place to ski in the world and just have an intimate knowledge set of everything from the Davidson and Mount Harris.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of runs here that people do that you were the pioneer on them.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a lot of stuff here for sure.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I definitely wasn't the first person here, but there was a lot of the classics that I definitely was the first one to ski.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's pretty neat because we were looking through some old hard drives the past few days that Wisman was digging out and uh some old footage of skiing different things.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, there's so much I mean that you can see from town too, which is the neatest part.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like I could sit there with a laser pointer right there and point at stuff in the rainbow towers and point at all the different things that I've skied.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's really kind of cool.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to be able to see the different variations on how this place has looked certain ways, certain years, and looked differently in different spots and it's a super confusing complex area, and between the top of the garrison to the willard is one of the craziest places in the world.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's got the craziest glacial ice features and the amount of granite that's in this valley, and the size of the spires and the couars and the pillows and pillows and spines and trees and this place when it snows down low to sea level is like nowhere else in the world, and that's what makes this place like I wish I could have seen it earlier this winter before it rained a little bit.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: We always get a rain, which you know it is what it is.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: A rain on snow event and a rain crust is pretty normal in the world these days.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh but yeah, up the Talking River, I mean it's it's it's such a unique, complicated little place.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's 35 miles really of terrain from the Davidson to Boundary Peak and Bigger and all the way to the Big Well and Yeah, it's and it's and it's a neat place to explore with a snow machine.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um I didn't bring a sled up this year, but to to actually like ride on glaciers here in the you know mid you know 2013-14 range.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um pretty neat.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty neat to be able to go up mosquito to Nataga and back up that way.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of amazing country here.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: So when you're talking about some of those features that you're skiing, because a lot of us we see the videos and it's all just like this extreme downhill.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this place is more than most people need.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: But that's what I'm wondering.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: Are there people is there places to go skiing for somebody that's not the professional skier?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: There is, but yeah, but but 95% of the population doesn't need to go to the top of most things in Haynes.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like uh we I started joking around years ago and making all these mid landings and the shoulder of, and like instead of going to the top, you're just like, no, we'll just go right here instead.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, but there's so many classic, huge features that are just so legendary in this town.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's incredible, incredible classics, and if you compare them to the rest of the Chew Gatch, and like there's there's some classics in Cordova.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's some classics that you know, the Schwinx, Cordova Peak, pontoon, those are classics.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: But we have our own here.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Sitting Bull, um, Crazy Horse You Can See from Five Mile, like the north face of that thing's really neat.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, there's so many classic Mount Krauss.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Mount Krauss is like the head of the Willard.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like that is that thing is probably one of the most intimidating east faces you'll ever find.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's one of the longest ski descents there is.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not so longest, Sanitarium is longer to the river.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the top of Sanitarium, which is the the north side of the Tauking River, up out a few miles up and left.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's uh it's this big padded valley, and there's a spine in the middle of it, and there's some side spines, and you can ski that thing all the way to the river, and it's that's you know over 6,000 vertical.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's the biggest ski descent in the whole valley.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then Mount Krause is up at the head of the valley at the head of the Willard, and it's this huge East Face, and it feels like you're skiing off the end of the world.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's right at the corner of the park and the top of the Willard, and there's a peak at the top we call the snow cone.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Kraus itself is huge.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: The the top of that thing to the valley floor.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: I used to say it was 5,000 vertical.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a little bit of a stretch.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a little shorter than that.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: But anything that's over a 3,000-foot face is absolutely huge.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you see something that's bigger than that and you put a person on it and you see the scale, the speck of how small somebody is, that's when you really see the size of this country.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: And like when you're up in the garrison, you go garrison, right?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's where a Tomb Raider is.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's so many huge classics that are that are monumental in this mountain range.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: So 3,000 vertical feet, how long of a how long from when you start to you get to the bottom?
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: How long does that take you to go 3,000?
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I mean, if you I mean there's context to everything though, right?
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if you were gonna ski down something like that with with with uh with clients with you, you you'd probably break it up and you'd ski down to a save point and regroup and then ski down again.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: But like if you were just gonna nuke it and there was no reason to stop, like you could be down it pretty quick.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um for sure.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just you're not flashing stuff like you're doing it for a ski movie.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're skiing it safe and fun.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's well the reason the reason I'm asking is um I'm just thinking because you've got your your day of skiing.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, like how many times would you be able to do that?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: How many times can I do a run in one day?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Or how many runs can I do in one day?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'd have to ask Trimble and get the official record because I heard it got broken last year in the Ferby.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because they really stacked a bunch of two helis right in one zone and really started getting a bunch of runs.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think they got like almost 19.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: 19.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was at 14 or 16 was my record.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like 30,000 vertical is like a pr like 25, 27 is pretty easy to hit, like almost 30,000 vertical.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you figure 2500, 3,000 average, whatever.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, like you can get a there was some years where like we had a bunch of clear days in a row and we had great weather, and you just keep skiing.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, it's pretty pretty remarkable.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: What uh have you had any close calls?
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_02: Any you care to share?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um not really.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's just a big it's just a big question, and you know, if you do something long enough, like bad things happen and um bad things can happen to friends and friends can pass away, and it's uh it's a it's a long time to continue to take people's skiing and take and keep them safe and send them home.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I take that responsibility really seriously and uh yeah, it's amazing to be able to ski stuff that's really fun and uh ski stuff that's you know, it's gotta be right though.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can't just force it.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can't you gotta allow you gotta allow stuff to to evolve and and to ski stuff.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there's years where you know stuff looks perfect and the stability's perfect and the group's perfect.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't pay attention and and don't make sure everything's always lined up right and you're not like making a decision for your own personal reasons or for someone's pushing you or whatever, like everything's gotta line up.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta be able to be like, I don't know if I feel good about it because this, this, this, and this.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: So database decision making is is is important to be able to do, but it's also important to be able to not ruin your love for the sport and to be able to take people skiing safely and step it up when you when things are in good shape.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: How do you figure out what a person's ski level is?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: Because if if you've got a new client their first time here, and like, oh yeah, I can ski anything, do you guys have some kind of a matrix or do you guys kind of work?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: Do you work them up from something?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: So most of the time, there's never really that like nobody knows this person because the market is so small of people that want to come ski.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the time when people end up in Haynes, they're here for a reason.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and they've gone everywhere else and they want to see everything else, and when they get here, they're like, Okay, like I want to see this place.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they may have gone somewhere else first, and someone else said, Well, you should probably go here.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody's like, Well, I want to ski spines, everybody wants to ski spines, and this place has more spines than anywhere.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh but it's also got more Kuars and granite, and I mean the Trinities, the Holy Trinities, which is basically the front side of Emmerich.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean Emmerich off the top.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh was I mean it was three of us, but I was on in in the ship the first time that Emmerich ever got skied off the top.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I skied it last year, first week of the season.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was great.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I just I enjoy being able to be like somebody's like I guess tracks right there.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, what?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like when your seaplane you just point, you're like, right there.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a lot of terrain here.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's not a huge place though.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like it gets busy, and uh, I'm glad it's uh a limited amount of uh operators and aircraft, I think, is a healthy thing.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_02: How do you how do you decide how and do you have this conversation with the clients before you go down on how you're gonna attack a run?
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: Is that something as you're going up in the heli?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, are you kind of pointing out where they need to be going?
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so basically, like if you're you're skiing with a group of four, so you can't have more than that with uh so four is usually what's what's so one guide for clients.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: So basically um say we're in a valley and we're like everybody's like, hey, that looks really good, and you're like, okay, well, we're gonna go over there next and ski that, and then you know, you you kind of uh you want to identify landmarks, right?
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you can have a conversation, an intelligent conversation talking about landmarks.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the biggest one I always tell people is don't use a shadow line as a landmark because by the time you get up there, the sh the landmark has moved now.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not a great way of I'm gonna go follow that sun shadow line.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: It looked great when I was on my way up.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, now it's just moved, so don't do that.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, just identify like, hey, um, I always like to say, like, hey, we're gonna go down here, and uh, you know, if anything was gonna happen badly, your safety's right.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: So your exit strategy is this, and always give people the exit strategy and then go ski first.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna ski cut or not ski cut or slough it out.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, slough management is its own thing that people are learning how to manage because when you mix fall lines, snow accumulates on the surface and then it'll hit you.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if something runs into a choke or it's a chute or constriction, all the snow is constantly gonna go down to the choke point, and then it'll ruin the ski quality.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then as the spring evolves, you get more sloughing, which creates more fluting, but then the bottoms of those flutes are like drainage ditches where they're just frozen, terrible ice.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: So the tops are soft and fluffy, the ditches are rock hard ice gullies.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, like if you're trying to like traverse, it's not as easy as you think because you're basically traversing into a drainage ditch and then trying to climb up onto a powder spine, and when you're on 50, 60 degrees, and then all of a sudden it's breakable ice and rock and k litter, and you're trying to crawl up or down through that.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: You don't do that.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't think you're gonna see me in uh Hellaskiing anytime soon.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: There's some really good stuff here.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure there is, but it's probably been 30 years since I've been on a set of skis.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: It might might not be the best opportunity for me right now.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so here we are in uh in Haynes for 2026 and the freeride tours back.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: How long has it been since the freeride tours have been here?
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Seven, eight years, hasn't it?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: Around that?
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the last time they were here, SIBA was hosting them and helping with the logistics of uh uh moving everything in and out of the field, which was a huge effort.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I remember there was multiple pilots slinging long loads or slinging uh loads in and out to the event site, and their guides that were coming into town for the free ride world tour that were it was kind of a contentious situation, I would say a little bit in the past, but those guys hadn't been here all And had a big opinion.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there was definitely some avalanche danger that guys were trying to keep everybody safe, and I think there was some arguments, but hopefully they come in with a little more respect to the local mountain range and it can be a smooth event and everybody stay happy and healthy.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: Very much so.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm uh I would love to go right up to kicking horse right now, to be honest.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: When's your uh when's your first client showing up?
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um in the next few days.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean we have people in Juno that are en route right now and that are here to open up and do whatever, and a lot of people are excited to uh to get out, and it sounds like we've got a bunch of good clients that are gonna be here this year, and I'm excited for it.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I uh drove up for the first time uh since COVID.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the time since before that was to Cordova in '98.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, it was I brought my dog with me and drove up and had a had a smooth drive.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was cold, but uh things ran ran well.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was thankful to sneak through the interior without freezing.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy how cold it is.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: It was we had a lot colder weather than we normally have this year.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the thing, I'm wondering because it's we're getting the soft, fluffy snow now, but what we get here and what you get on top of the mountain are two different things.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_02: Having having that big snowfall that we had beginning of January and then it warms up and then it freezes.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: Are you guys have you had anybody up in the mountains yet?
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: Is it good conditions?
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: Is it uh it looks like there's a ton of snow up there, but you know, until somebody gets on them, you don't really know what the condition is, do you?
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um we can we can speculate.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um we've had people from 26 that are out riding snow machines and you know out the road riding and looking at you know old faithful and everything else.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you can get a pretty good feel for what you think is gonna be out there.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um generally in Teleglacier, like there's usually about a pretty consistent amount of snow.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: With the rain on snow events, you'll basically on some of the valleys that are closer to the canal, they'll have more of a distinct rain crust before you get a second or third valley back.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: And once you get in a little bit further, um it it makes it less it makes it a lot happier snow.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of a silly way of putting it, but I mean really like the years when it's really windy and there's a big cold wind out of the north, it becomes really tough because you could have an early big storm like we had, but then the wind will blow it all away.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then like there was years in the early 2000s where we were skiing in early February, and um you quickly learn that you're just trying to maximize the small, small window of sun that's available in this valley in this angle of the sun, and like normally where later in the year you'd be skiing variations of north and uh you know, early when it's cold, like you can ski due south and have just perfect snow as you would on north later in the year and protected cold, you know.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: And um it's neat because you have a whole different playbook of what you can ski.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, like years where it's really good all the way to the river, like we always joke around, those are years when you could ride your snow machine to the fog cutter, you know, like when when it's deep in town, like this place is crazy when it's deep in town.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: I remember back in the old days when we used to have a snow cat up on Old Faithful, and it just seemed like there was a lot of snow and riding a sled or snow cats or whatever.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's this place is I mean, yeah, there's so many aspects of this place.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: So pivoting out of Haynes for a little bit.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you were talking earlier that when you're doing your downhill ski racing, your slalom, the giant slalom, you're doing downhill mountain bike races.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: How did how did that come about?
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: Was that just you wanted to go down a mountain fast all season or um the mountain bike uh the mountain bike stuff was just I think it was more probably the timing of of uh everything that was happening in Vermont at that time and um and New York as well, and there was kind of the beginning of downhill mountain bike racing.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: And there was like a national series, downhill series, and then there was a World Cup series as well, and I just wanted to be a multi-sport athlete and always wanted to be able to do more than just one thing, and I thought for a while that I could pull it off racing bikes all summer and skiing, but I just quickly became tired of it and um decided to just focus on uh decided to focus on skiing and uh started doing tree work right about that time as well.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that was like when I decided I was like, okay, I have to make some real money to be able to make better decisions and um yeah, started doing residential tree work full time at about about that same exact time and uh That's fallen trees, taking damaged trees out.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so basically started doing residential tree work in North Lake Tahoe and climbing.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, back then there was still a lot of decent sized trees that hadn't really been affected by the bark beetle yet, and from 97 some earlier drought years in North Lake Tahoe.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um still a decent amount of like 200 foot trees, 220 foot trees, some some big, big second growth, a little bit of old growth left over, but not much.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um not like the past few years past past the cowdor fire with the last really big bark beetle infestation.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, everything from doing crane work over lakefront houses to uh uh a few years ago.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: I decided I wanted to be involved in the in the fires for the FEMA work and uh basically started doing um hazard tree removal for PG ⁇ E and for Liberty Energy for uh the Dixie fire and uh started working for some friends of mine that owned a big utility tree service and uh started doing union level hazard tree work over 220 kV power lines and uh was doing a lot of uh burnt trees that were over PG ⁇ E assets, hydro lines, uh water tanks, pill stocks, and then got to explore some area in Northern California I really have never seen Feather River Canyon and uh all that stuff along the 70, and got into some pretty big timber there, like some some big big Dug fur, and uh yeah, so some almost the stuff around the power lines.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: You're climbing these trees and topping them, or are you you just cutting them and depends on it?
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: Depends.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, like depending on access.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, like some of this, some of this stuff we had to hike for, so it was um stuff that we were taking down so they could put lines back up.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: Other ones were main uh routine stuff that so you were taking down stuff while the hot lines were hot, and then some of the stuff was uh variations of, and um, a lot of them were burned out, like say that you had a six-foot-wide um Ponderosa or Jeffrey Pine that the base burned out and was all cat-faced, and you could stand two people inside of it, but it was still a green tree, but it was burnt 60%, and they deem it as a hazard over the work over the road, which is an access point to get to this hydro, whatever, and basically take down trees like that, and a lot of it in in North Lake too.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: So um, fast forward a little bit.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: I got to work on the Sacramento side of um some of the reservoirs in there, and uh basically between there and uh then the Cowdwar fire happened.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's some few other fires that happened in Northern California.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean the Dixie fire was almost a million acres, it was huge, and uh ran up into Susanville, into the lava fields near Shasta and Um and then started doing some more uh some more of that in North Lake from Emerald Bay all the way back to to Truckee down the 89 Corridor and uh and then uh basically decided to start my own tree service and uh start my own tree service and just keeping it small and doing hard technical stuff and still climbing and topping some trees and trying to do stuff uh that's in my in my wheelhouse and uh I'm also still doing uh hazardous tree work for a lot of the ski areas and do uh the they basically deem what they consider lift killer trees and then they kind of make some decisions and uh yeah, went and got my licensed timber operator uh class done, so got that done as well, and yeah, things are uh things are good.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_02: So is that pretty when you're not skiing is the rest of the year you're pretty much doing the timber stuff?
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, doing doing tree work uh most of the year and then come up here for two and then uh yeah, race uh race a little bit of King of the Hammers as well.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: This was like my I don't know if it was my 19th or I think it was maybe my 18th or 19th time racing King of the Hammers.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_02: So um King of the Hammers, yeah.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_02: For people that don't know like myself, yeah, what is King of the Hammers?
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: King of the Hammers is a off-road uh race that happens in uh January into the first week of February every winter.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's basically like rock crawlers that have figured out how to be able to go fast in the desert.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's also a desert race with multiple classes and everything from side by sides to so are you doing the rock crawling and the desert in the same deal, or is it separate?
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it's basically um like a 200-something mile-long race and uh extreme rock crawling as well as go fast desert, and our cars are really fast now.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like uh they're amazing how good they work.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: What do you what's what's the starting point for yours?
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of chassis, or is it uh it's a full custom two uh Cromoly 4130 TIG-welded chassis with a uh rear engine that's mid-engine rear engine by me and uh it's an IFS uh front end on it, and so it's got an ARM front end on it and a straight axle rear.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's got a 450 cubic inch full roller race motor that makes almost 900 horse, and it does 140 on dirt.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_02: Did you it was this did you custom build this yourself?
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_02: Or was this a lot of it?
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've been involved with the process the whole time.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, there's been different people that have initially built it versus upgraded it and continued to change it and evolve it.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, there's uh you know over probably a hundred thousand people down in the desert for this race, and it's it's just something that uh I kind of fell into a little bit, and I'm I'm fast at it and I'm great at memorizing terrain.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um I love racing it.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to it every year, and uh yeah, had a pretty good race going this year till I till I didn't.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_02: But what happened what happened uh derail it?
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um I ended up upside down.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's usually not good.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was upside down for about 40 minutes, and that was kind of the end of uh the the the having having a good race.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I had rolled once earlier, got it back over, no big deal, and then the second time I was upside down on this trail I'd never seen before at night, and uh yeah, it was hard.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, only two people finished this year out of like 90 guys in my class.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: Two out of ninety?
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a shortened race too.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, normally there's a lot more finishers.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's that's pretty harsh uh statistic there.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: But it's fun though, because the harder it is the better I do.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I just I don't even I don't even get jammed up anymore.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like if they're gonna be like, what do you think about the course like this year?
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, make it the harder the better.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be great.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's like, Really?
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even care?
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you got you haven't even seen the trails yet?
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, nope.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_02: So you got it you're upside down.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_02: You said you were able to get it up right now.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_02: We finally got it flipped back over, yeah.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_02: How how do you do that?
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: Just um no, no, no.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: We we we had uh an 8274 warm winch on the front.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then do like a redirect through the cage and then to like uh another anchor, and then we ended up having to roll it uphill because it was there was a really bad hole downhill and that would have been worse.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: Managed to rig it through the one door tube and rolled the thing like a barrel roll uphill, and then I was sitting there teetering, trying to get it to yeah.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: So until then it was good.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I was uh I was running in like second place, into third, fourth, up to second.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's a corrected time going as well, so when you leave the starting line, you have the corrected time of when everybody else left the starting line ahead of you.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: So there's some strategy with that.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty neat.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's uh it's a really hard race.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's fun to do, and uh yeah, I look forward to it.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's things I look forward to in the year being in Haynes and racing hammers, those are the two highlights for sure.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_02: So you are you sponsored for the racing part?
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, King Shocks and uh BF Gutterish tires and FK Rodends and uh Schofield Performance, he's one of my uh great friends.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: He also builds my motors and uh yeah, there's uh there's people.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't sound like a cheap truck.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not at all.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's super expensive, and I don't have kids and I'm not married, so like I've made some concessions in life to be able to do certain things, and I don't know, it'd be hard to do something like that.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean just the price of race fuel is ridiculous, but you know, my I had two co-drivers that share the driving co-driving responsibilities, and you know, like one co-driver helped with race fuel this year.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: He had some friends that would wanted to help out.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, it's kind of a it's kind of a team effort to make it happen.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all my guys are volunteers and uh we're only racing once a year, and it's fun because a bunch of everybody all knows what they're good at and they know how to fuel and they know how to be safe in the pit.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we just like once a year there's like 12 or 14 guys that like all show up in Johnson Valley Desert and we go racing and knock on the door with all the big teams, and I think this year we really proved everybody that like wow raise Waze is really one of the fast guys, and holy cow, everybody might be in denial that I'm a contender, and then all of a sudden I'm in the mix again, and they're like he's in the mix again, you know.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's neat, it's it's fun to be able to try to to win that thing.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta win it.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I I I finished first once, but I had so many mistakes because it was my first year racing in a single seater.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: I missed some turns, I got some penalties, I got some time penalties, and uh so I didn't technically win.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_00: I had an hour.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_00: I had an hour and eight minutes in penalties.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_02: An hour and eight minutes.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I throwing it up like fourth, I think.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so but you've learned since then.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: I got a two-seater.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's much better having a co-driver than being by yourself and trying to pull this thing off.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: Does that help for navigation?
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: And talk about your strategy or your tempo, or are you pushing too hard?
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you get a flat tire, help you change it.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you get stuck, set up an anchor and hook the winch up.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like everything's better with two people in that race.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh a lot of winching, a lot of winching.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_02: So you said it's 274 miles?
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_02: 200 and something.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_02: 200 something?
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_02: So how long how long does that take you?
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: Usually it's like seven hours is like winning time-ish.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: This year we were at like hour twelve and no one had finished yet.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: Whoa.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: And like no one was even close to finishing.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, and I'm upside down in the dark at like 9.15 at night, and the they they were gonna close the race course at 10.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: They were like, we're just gonna call it at 10.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_02: So now you've done the mountain bike racing, yeah, done the king of hammers.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: The other thing I want to talk about, guns.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_02: You like to shoot.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: I do like to shoot, yeah.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that the event, we talked about this before we started recording, but I think one of the coolest things I've had to do with Hellskiing was several years ago you guys came and asked me if I could get you into the range because you had some.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_02: I called you on a Sunday.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_02: You're plowing your mom's.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, plow my mom's.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, can you get us into the range?
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_02: We got some guys here that need some trigger time.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I meet you guys out at the range.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_02: Just happen to have a box of 308 there that was left over from the time before.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we get out there.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_02: I have no idea who these guys are.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_02: You introduced me by their names.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember their names, don't know who they were, out there shooting.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_02: And the thing that sticks in my mind, there's there's two things.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_02: One of the guys was shooting one of my ARs, and I didn't have the scope dialed in.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, We can fix that.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_02: He goes, No, don't worry about it.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_02: And he just starts shooting.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to figure out he's not anywhere close because you guys put fog cutter bar coins out there.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_02: Whoever hit the coin got free drinks.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_02: And he's shooting, he's not anywhere close to this.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then he goes, Okay, I think I got it.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_02: And he was shooting at a rock, figured out where it was shooting, and then he just made the windage adjustment and hit it almost dead center at that coin.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, damn, this guy, this guy is good.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then shortly after that, you had your Glock 20.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, was it your 20 or your 40, 10 millimeter?
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_02: Glock 20, yeah.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_02: Glock 20.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_02: And we had to let about an eight-inch gong at 100 yards.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Neil hit that thing.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_02: And he just like first shot, yeah, bang, puts it down, like, okay, I'm done.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_02: A hundred yards with that.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_02: And these guys just you could tell they had that kind of this quiet confidence.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was like, these guys, these guys are something, I don't know what they are.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_02: And like a week and a half later, you came into the store and uh we were talking about that, and you're like, you know who they were, right?
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, I have no idea who they were, and you're telling me they're a Delta force team.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, they were definitely uh and they came here skiing.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so basically those guys had there was a few different years where uh a bunch of guys had been here, active, active uh unit guys, and uh also some Air Force guys, and then they were all here through uh uh Big Sky Bravery, and they were basically coming post-deployment and coming over here and um doing a little shooting, hanging out, and enjoying something different and getting to go skiing a little bit, and everybody had a blast.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Michael T.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: Ward had his paintball stuff back then.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we basically played paintball with the local kids and like it was ridiculously hilarious.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like we we laughed so much and we all had so much fun.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, we got to do some shooting with those guys, and uh yeah, I think they've made an effort to uh there's a bunch of those guys that keep rotating through coming here and hanging out, and uh I think it's neat that those guys can see how amazing Haynes is and to be able to come here and I think it definitely makes Haynes a safer place.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well when they're here, yeah.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_02: But just just watching them and when when you know that they're the best of the best.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's elite of the world right there.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_02: And just watching their manners, how's it go about anytime they pick up a firearm, just the way that they would touch it, look at it, kind of figure it out, and then okay, and then pretty soon they're just drilling holes with anything that they picked up out there was extremely impressive for me.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_02: That was that was very high on my life experiences just spending the day at the range with those guys.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_02: And the other question I have for you we're getting towards the end of this, so we need we need to hear the bear story.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_02: I was telling my nephew in the office about this earlier today, and they're like, say what?
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: You you need to go into more detail than I did.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because when you first told me this a few years ago, the summer after and happen or that you're back the next year and tell me the story like, yeah, when I got home last year, what the hell?
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so uh so I think it was June.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like May or June.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was June.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, had the front door of my house wide open and uh in Tahoe?
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: In Tahoe, yeah, North Lake Tahoe in Tahoe City.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I was out in the garage working on my working on my car, and a friend came over and he was giving me a hand and he was gonna take off and leave for uh barbecue when he w he was gonna go see some other friends.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he's like, Hey uh where's your hand soap?
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_00: You got you know stuff to wash your hands inside, and I was like, heck let's go inside.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we're walking up the stairs to the front door, and I was still married at the time, and she she had left to go see her brother, and I'd left two bags of kettle chips on the coffee table.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember walking in the front door and I see the bags are shredded, and there's like a huge puddle of piss on the floor.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then I look and I see this huge diarrhea shit right in the middle of the hardwood floor.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we just had gotten done a kitchen remodel which turned into black mold in the ceiling and pulling the lid down, and then like just the standard kitchen remodel that's trying to kill you.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember like I spent like twenty-something thousand dollars on these really nice custom cabinets with the shh soft clothes and all new appliances, and I was like, all right, this is gonna be great.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm walking in, I see the piss, I see the crap, I see the kettle chips, and then my buddy's behind me, and him and his girlfriend, and he goes, Holy shit, that's not a dog.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then I go, shunk, and I was like, Oh, there's a bear in my house, that's not good.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I go running.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I go running in my office, and uh this is the part I told you.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: I had a 500 Smith and Wesson and an XD-45, and they were all in their pistol cases unloaded with the barrel locks wrapped around the handles from flying home from Haynes from being on the airplane and TSA.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, oh, this isn't good.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I go running in my office, and I was carrying a SOG fusion that I think I bought from you.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a SOG tomahawk, and uh I grabbed that thing and I was like, Oh, I'm not going down.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's the guy looking for his pistol keys getting mauled.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's I don't want to go be that guy forever.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'll never hear the end of it.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so I grabbed this tomahawk and I I come out the door and there's uh the guest room, the bathroom, and my office, and then I came out and I was standing between the the TV, uh, whatever the whatever you call the wooden thing, you put a TV in.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the bear in the meantime had run into the bedroom and left like a huge diarrhea shit on the back window, and then came running out of the bedroom, jumped off the corner of the couch, off the coffee table, and I was just waiting.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Well, he's coming right at me.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_00: So where's your did your friend already bail?
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, he went shrieking out the front door and slammed the door shut behind him, and he wouldn't then I hear him.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, you want me to open the door?
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Yeah, so he opens the door, so now I'm thinking, you know, the bear's gonna run out the front door.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_02: Not only did he leave, but he got the door on the bear.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_02: So he definitely talked to the guy.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_00: He definitely hooked me up.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: So then so then uh standing in the doorway, the bear charged me, and the sog's only like 12 inches long, right?
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I waited until he was 12 inches from me, and then I hit him in the head with a blade strike and chased him like a crazy person out the front door.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, yeah, that was uh my black bear in the house story.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_02: So you don't you don't need a handgun, you just need a tomahawk.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I uh yeah.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Did he do any damage to the house?
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he left some chew marks on uh some of the new cabinets and uh the pantry and he got in the freezer.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't do any damage to the fridge or freezer.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's a few scratch marks.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_00: That wasn't a few.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Did you leave them or did you have them fixed?
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh I think Lel kept them for I think they're still there.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Still there?
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_02: Because see, that'd be kind of the memorable thing when people come over.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_02: What was that?
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh, that's when we had the bear in the house.
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's so many bears in the house in Tahoe, it's not really even that cool of a story.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like my friend Mike lives on.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's that many bears in Tahoe?
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's insane.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's there's my one buddy's street.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's screen windows on the first floor on the whole street are gone.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like he used to sleep in his A-frame with like paving rock paving bricks and bricks in his bedroom.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So when the bear would open up the slider, he'd crown him in the head with bricks.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because he Oh yeah, he would the the sheriff would show up and give him riot shotgun rounds.
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_00: So finally, like, they're they don't do that anymore, but in the old days they used to.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_00: They'd be like, here's some non-lethals, and they'd shoot rubber riot slugs at the bears.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, they're insane.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_02: That sounds like we had all the brown bears in town and they're opening people's car door bad.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Taking uh so what they did in North Lake Tahoe is they made metal trash bins for the bears, right?
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_00: So they put all the trash in the metal bins.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what's that mean for the bears?
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's easier to break in the house now.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So they just moved to the house.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So they just go up and they just rip open a screen door, they rip open whatever.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So just like with this bear for me, he even though the front door was wide open, he went around and ripped open a screen window and climbed through a bedroom window.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's all pain-ass two-year-old.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then I interrupted his ass, you know, and they're terrible down there.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're like raccoons, they're like giant raccoons.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: I never would have thought that about Tahoe.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: I never knew they had that many bears around there.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants to hunt them, no one's gonna do anything with them.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_00: They want to pet him and protect him and watch him.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is it legal to hunt them?
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm sure maybe you could somewhere, but like there's so many people that would uh crucify you and put your public record up, and like there's definitely it's not no.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, this place is no slouch with bears.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you get a mauling over here, backcountry skier, you got the professor on Emmerich that got chewed and swatted off that hill.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the heard the story of the black bear in the outhouse at Chilcat Lake.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_00: That sounded terrifying.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's the stuff you would never sleep right again.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I've had it Yeah, no, no, that's that's uh I tell people that story.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_02: They're like, yeah, I don't like that story.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't like that story.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, even in 2020 and in Vincent, you know, they're just pushing in garage doors.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_02: Or a friend of mine, he opened up this has happened in numerous cars.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_02: They get into the car, they'll open the door handle, get into the car, the door shuts behind them.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they don't have a way to get out, and they just trash the whole thing.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I had one of them, he's like, okay, trying to figure out a way to get the bear.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, why don't you just shoot it when it was in the car?
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, Well, it would have made a mess.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like, seriously?
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think the inside was toast already.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it got so bad in Tahoe at one point, like people would park with their with their hoods downhill.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_00: So when the bear opens the door, the doors stay open.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, geez.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's that bad.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's that bad.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_00: So never imagined that in Tahoe.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So mountain lions and there's wolves in the Sierra Valley now.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, there's wolves here, but they're definitely like up the river.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're not like in the middle of they're not lifting Fido off the back porch.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_02: So it's your off season we talked about earlier, you're skiing for two months.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_02: Rest of it's pretty much the trees and the racing.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Would do you ski at Tahoe at all to get ready for the season here?
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_00: You doing that pretty skiing at uh skiing at Palisades and trying to get my days in there and yeah, had a had a nice uh had a nice start to the winter.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was pretty fun skiing.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was cold.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it there wasn't a lot of snow, but the advantage of when it's like that at home, you can get a bunch of laps in and um because if the snow's not that good, not a lot of people are up there, so you got it yourself.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean there's a little bit of that around Christmas and after Christmas.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I still love skiing.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's such a pleasure to go skiing and it's fun and I feel thankful for it and thankful what skiing's gave me and to be able to to go skiing here and to like show people how rad this place is and show people all these different valleys and even just to pass it on to guides that are coming up and to pass the history off.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this is called this, and this is why it's called this.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And this is who skied at first, and this is you know this and this is that.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_00: To pass on that, you know, institutional knowledge is like it's crucial because mentorship is everything.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's you can go get taught by different people, but it's still like it lacks the ground truth in like what is actually real and you know, data's history, and if you can keep passing it on, you know, that's gonna be uh it's gonna be huge because you know, gotta keep everybody safe out there and get some good safe skiing.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_02: And how what percentage of your clients come back like on a pretty regular basis, would you say?
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know an accurate actual accurate number, but for me, like I've skied with a lot of the same people forever now.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And like it's it's like a lot of people.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of different people that have skied with me over 30 days in a season here.
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_02: Thirty days in one season?
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_02: They'll come up for a month?
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_02: Or they'll go and leave and come and go and leave and come back up?
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_00: A lot.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_02: There's more than two.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_02: More than two.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_02: So is that something that if they they fly home and you're like, hey, the skiing got really good, you need to get back up here?
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_00: If they want to play meteorologists, they have to do it, they have to do it for themselves.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't encourage anybody to leave.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's just easier for you got to be present to win.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And t to actually take advantage of every opportunity to go skiing is more important than me worrying about if you're gonna make your seaplanes flight, I'm ready to go back out.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'd rather be like, let's go right now up to kicking horse.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's not that many days where I couldn't make something work in the kicking horse.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like almost there's a lot of times where I can scratch out a few runs easy.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where it's neat to just go underneath the Trinities, go in the front side right there, go up to kicking horse, go left, go up to kicking horse, go right, grab the bottom americ, go into what we call moraine bowl, and you know, that's the difference of like pass on this knowledge is it's too important.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's we're it's gonna be neat this year working with some different people at SIBA and to be able to help learn up some of the younger younger guys just on how to uh ski a circuit and to have a pod and to be a pod leader and um stoked to work with Lucas and um I think uh I think we're gonna have a great season and to be able to show people terrain and and and ski some stuff and uh you gotta get creative and ski oddball stuff sometimes.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you know there's years where it rained here and like we get here and it was a rain year, and like those years were brutal.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to I mean this is this is awesome.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_00: It hasn't had I don't think there's been this much snow since 2010.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_02: So I for somebody that hasn't come hell skiing, do you when somebody's booking that do you like book a week?
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Do you book two weeks?
• 1:18:28
  SPEAKER_02: Is it it's kind of like it all depends.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_00: It all depends.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like if you uh come for a week, you could come for a week.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's like basically the way it usually works is you'll have like a private you'll have like a public ship and then you'll share the helicopter with other groups, and you may have like three groups running out of that helicopter.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um you could uh pay some more money and have a private, and then you basically aren't sharing um your aircraft or your guides with anybody else, and then you're just going anywhere that I mean you're obviously talking about a run list and and and having a uh a bunch of different places that you're putting on your list of places you want to go.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you're making decisions and then backing it up with data.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, hey, we're gonna go here, here, here, and here.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not just throwing a dart at the dartboard.
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where it becomes tough.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you have a bunch of different operators close to each other, you'll fly into an area and be like, hey, I was gonna go here, and then you get there and there's somebody there.
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're like, oh well, where am I gonna go now?
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And people there's a lot of pressure to perform and pressure to do a good job.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes it challenging.
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it it makes it hard because if you have more operators, it becomes uh busier.
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then at a certain point, like you can only if you don't know where you're going, you don't know where you're going.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And whether or not the person's qualified that you're training or not qualified, it's not the right word.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_00: If they don't have experience in the area, then you're choosing who you're investing time into training.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_02: What's what's something I should be asking you about Ellis Keen and Haynes that I have it?
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was trying to decide like how to how much to I don't know, it's so challenging in this town because it's either you're pro-mine or you're not pro mine.
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's no like middle ground, and that's a really hard place because I don't want to be hypocritical.
• 1:20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it's a challenging place to be here because there's so many people that are actively trying to ruin my livelihood and my profession and everything I worked for for the last thirty years, and they don't care about anything but the GOAT studies and what they think is truthful history.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And there's avenu not avenues, there's flight paths that are designated that are already used that you could make a change here and there to make it smoother and safer, and to be in this place on rain years where there's no snow above or below four thousand to years where there's snow to town.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_00: This place is tremendously different, and it's really complicated with a borough that's managing terrain, they want data on flight following, and there's local people that want to sue that also are demanding access to data that's rightfully not theirs, and uh they shouldn't even feel entitled to be able to ask for it.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think it's a challenging place because there has been mistakes and accidents and things that have happened in the past, and there's no way to start It's tough because you have uh it's happening everywhere right now.
• 1:22:19
  SPEAKER_00: In in North Lake Tahoe, they just had a huge avalanche accident, which was one of the most terrible events that's happened in a really long time.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the differentiation between backcountry touring and guiding versus mechanized assisted guiding, I mean it all really comes down to multi-use recreation on public lands.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's so complicated to manage it while you're doing it, it's distracting and makes it not as safe if you're constantly having to do a bunch of different things.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like every time we land in the BLM, we have to do a drop pin at the top and at the bottom with the active date and time and everything, and then we have to record that and then send that in and keep track of it all, which is fine, and we can do a good job of managing that, but it just becomes one more thing that you're trying to avoid doing, and there's different spots that shouldn't be a problem, but I don't know, I'm not really being super clear right now, but it's it's I I would just say it's challenging.
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to see the town.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe maybe it's not fair to say this, but it would be nice to see the town embrace the operators they have and support them instead of just supporting the free ride tour when it comes once every ten years.
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_00: How's that sound?
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Does that sound fair?
• 1:23:50
  SPEAKER_02: I was I was wondering about that because it's kind of interesting that you've got a group that comes in with all the they're putting this on the internet or TV, whatever, and they got a bunch of money from the borough and businesses and stuff to help them out.
• 1:24:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_02: That has to have a a little bit of a knife in the side or whatever feeling that's well.
• 1:24:14
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like honestly, I I don't know.
• 1:24:17
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta look at the good of the good, look at the good and look at the bad.
• 1:24:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think right now we've got the first time I've I've I've heard I I mean I weighed in a few different times on a few different meetings.
• 1:24:25
  SPEAKER_00: I used to be more active when I still had property here, but um I I decided to sell that.
• 1:24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um so maybe I'm not as involved as I used to be.
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_00: I remember I used to go into all the borough assembly meetings and trying to.
• 1:24:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I wanted to live here at least half the year, and and I and I and I never could manage to make it work because I felt like it was just such an uphill battle on so many different issues, and to feel like someone was constantly trying to fight against you just it seems ridiculous and um yeah.
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think I don't know what else.
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I it's tough.
• 1:25:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're talking about running that event with less aircraft than they've ever when they did it here last time.
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_00: The last time when when when when we were hosting it, we had a bunch of different aircraft from Tempsco, and there was a bunch of different really good pilots that were flying things in and out.
• 1:25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I heard in the one meeting that they were like, well, you know, if if if if you need to be able to assist these guys, and that's not realistic to be able to.
• 1:25:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, your first responsibility as an operator is to all the guests you have in the field to get them out safely before you go assist with with them having a problem.
• 1:25:53
  SPEAKER_02: So they were asking you guys to be able to assist them?
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:26:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, yep, yep.
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_02: So for 10 days, you guys have to have is that an agreement that you guys are supposed to be online with that, or did you say no?
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure.
• 1:26:11
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't I'm not uh that's not my lane.
• 1:26:16
  SPEAKER_02: Not your lane.
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_02: So what what are you looking forward to this this season?
• 1:26:24
  SPEAKER_02: Oh is there a run that they really hoping's got the snow to hit it again?
• 1:26:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't know if I have something that's jumping out at me to ski.
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to ski Mount Krauss again.
• 1:26:36
  SPEAKER_00: That would be fun.
• 1:26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Last time I skied Krauss, it was amazing.
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love Mount Krauss.
• 1:26:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's so big, I'm proud, it's huge.
• 1:26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Krauss would do Krauss would be perfect.
• 1:26:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to ski dick pit dicks picks, I'd love to ski some stuff in rainbow.
• 1:26:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many that's the fun part, is like it's it's fun to be able to have like a bunch of the stuff that's just good fun skiing, and that's that's what this place can really be.
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't need to be film crew or the you know super gnar.
• 1:27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't need to be.
• 1:27:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of fun skiing here, and there's a lot of super unique, pretty stuff here too, that's like nowhere else.
• 1:27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a couple rock chutes that are really narrow that I'd love to ski again.
• 1:27:24
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 1:27:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, unless you can think of something else, I'm I'm out of questions.
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_02: But I appreciate you joining me.
• 1:27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't change your story.
• 1:27:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many uh I'm gonna try to figure it out, but I'm gonna try to figure out how many people have guided skiing here.
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be a fun number.
• 1:27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Which is tough because there's a lot of people.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would love it.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't shot at all.
• 1:27:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've been shot at all.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't shot my tanker yet.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Embarrassingly enough.
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then I bought one of those Beretta 1301s.
• 1:28:04
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't shot that yet either.
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, while you're here, we'll get out to the range.
• 1:28:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:28:12
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 1:28:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:28:13
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Tom.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it.
• 1:28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for watching this episode of Dougad's Questions.
• 1:28:21
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