Latest / Doug Has Questions / Episode 25: Sean Brownell; From Ski Bum To Heli Ski Pioneer In Southeast Alaska

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Episode 25: Sean Brownell; From Ski Bum To Heli Ski Pioneer In Southeast Alaska · Doug Has Questions

• 0:00
  Speaker 2: Welcome to this edition of Doug Has Questions.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: Today my guest is longtime Haynes resident, Helliski OG, the old guard there.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: The Danger D O G Sean Brown Brownell, or more popular known as Sean Dog.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the show, Sean Dog.
• 0:19
  Speaker: Thanks, Doug.
• 0:20
  Speaker: It's an honor to be here, of course.
• 0:22
  Speaker: I've watched one of your shows so far.
• 0:25
  Speaker: And you still showed up.
• 0:27
  Speaker: I still showed up.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, appreciate that.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: You figured I'd probably improve by after that one.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: I gave you a few episodes to get ready for me.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Well, we have been trying to get you on here since January, but our schedule and then Marty was out of town, and then you got busy with Hellski season.
• 0:46
  Speaker: Yeah, we're all busy people.
• 0:48
  Speaker: Um which is awesome because we finished our season yesterday, and uh it's nice to to um be switching gears and start thinking about summertime and all the other things that we do because heliski is just uh two two or two and a half months out of the year.
• 1:05
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:06
  Speaker: Um it takes an entire year to make it happen, but uh we actually do it for two and a half months, so it's nice to be was it a good season for you?
• 1:14
  Speaker: Yeah, this season was actually amazing.
• 1:16
  Speaker: We started uh Feb 13, and uh we had more fly days this season than we've ever had.
• 1:22
  Speaker: We had 45 fly days out of however many that was.
• 1:26
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:27
  Speaker: I didn't do the we did the math though.
• 1:29
  Speaker: We had like a 74% fly rate, which is better than ever.
• 1:34
  Speaker: It was a really good thing.
• 1:35
  Speaker: Snow conditions were good.
• 1:36
  Speaker: Yeah, this year Haynes was blessed.
• 1:39
  Speaker: Uh one of the only places on earth that was blessed with uh lots of great snow and lots of good skiing.
• 1:45
  Speaker: So uh a lot of visitors, a lot of people down south um came to Haynes, and a lot of people that usually go to Valdees come to Haynes, and um so yeah, Haynes was the spot this winter.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Good.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Well, we'll get it we'll get into more of the helloski here, but we need to back up first and kind of start with with the beginning.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Where where were you where were you raised at?
• 2:06
  Speaker: Little baby Shawn Dog?
• 2:08
  Speaker: Little baby Shawn Dog.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Where was the beginnings of baby Shawn Dog?
• 2:11
  Speaker: Little baby Shawn Dog.
• 2:12
  Speaker: Well, uh I was born in Oregon, actually, and then my parents split up when I was really young, and my mom moved to Sitka, and my dad stayed in Oregon, so I spent equal time between Alaska and uh where my dad lived in a place called Sao So, Oregon.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Where what part of O' I'm not familiar with?
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: It's in the Willamette Valley.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:33
  Speaker: So uh near Salem, but closer to the mountains.
• 2:37
  Speaker: My dad had a um was a was a plane pilot, uh, and we lived on a small airstrip in on the top of a mountain in Oregon, Sao, Oregon.
• 2:49
  Speaker: So that's probably where my fascination for aircraft and and stuff came from.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Being in the mountains.
• 2:56
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 2:56
  Speaker: I was also one of those kids that really loved winter.
• 2:59
  Speaker: I learned how to ski when I was five years old.
• 3:02
  Speaker: My uncles took me skiing up at a um Multipore Ski Bowl, okay, which is on the side of Mount Hood.
• 3:10
  Speaker: So I learned to ski there.
• 3:12
  Speaker: And every time it would snow, when I was a little kid, I'd make snowballs and I'd put them in the freezer and save them for the summer.
• 3:19
  Speaker: So in the summer, when it was hot, I'd go to the freezer and pull out one of my little snowballs I'd had made in the winter.
• 3:26
  Speaker: And so yeah, it was all about the snow, always about the snow.
• 3:30
  Speaker: And that's uh fortunate my mom moved to Alaska because you know, I spent most of my life in Alaska, and I just always loved winter.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: So when you're back and forth between Oregon and Sitka, is that like six months in each place or just a little in Oregon?
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Was it summers in Sitka, winters in Oregon?
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: How did how did that split go?
• 3:54
  Speaker: There was no real schedule.
• 3:55
  Speaker: It was just random.
• 3:56
  Speaker: Uh, you know, no custody battle or anything.
• 4:00
  Speaker: It was just uh wherever I felt like what I wanted to be.
• 4:04
  Speaker: I did some school in Sitka, some school in Oregon.
• 4:06
  Speaker: And I went to college in Oregon, Oregon State University Engineering Department.
• 4:12
  Speaker: Did a little bit of engineering out of college, but um so you got your degree in engineering then?
• 4:18
  Speaker: Well, almost.
• 4:19
  Speaker: Almost I had five years in engineering, and I uh came up to Juneau where my dad had actually uh was living in Juneau at the time, and he was an electoral contractor and he lived in the Merchant's Wharf building in Juneau, so I came up there and met some of the ski bums at Eagle Crest that summer.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: When was that?
• 4:46
  Speaker: Gosh, that must have been 83, 84.
• 4:48
  Speaker: Okay.
• 4:48
  Speaker: 84, I think.
• 4:49
  Speaker: No, no.
• 4:50
  Speaker: It was 1985.
• 4:53
  Speaker: 85.
• 4:53
  Speaker: I moved I came up to Juneau and I met uh Bruce Griggs, who's a Juno local, big time ski bum.
• 5:00
  Speaker: And uh they talked me into staying for a winter instead of going back to college.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Skiing, college, skiing, college.
• 5:12
  Speaker: And I was always a yes guy.
• 5:13
  Speaker: Like uh my grandmother told me that I couldn't always say yes to everything.
• 5:17
  Speaker: Everything and I probably would not get through life on my personality.
• 5:21
  Speaker: She she dared to say that.
• 5:22
  Speaker: She dared to say that?
• 5:24
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Is she still with us?
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Have you proven it shown that you can prove her wrong?
• 5:28
  Speaker: That was my whole goal, I think, in life was to prove that, yeah, you you could maybe get through life on personality, but add some hard work.
• 5:37
  Speaker: Hard work.
• 5:38
  Speaker: I did definitely had to work.
• 5:39
  Speaker: So um, I spent that first winter at Eagle Crest, had a season's pass.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Were you just skiing, or were you doing lessons, helping with lessons, doing ski patrol?
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Or was it just not I want to go up there and ski every day?
• 5:52
  Speaker: Just a total ski bump, had a pass, skied hundred days or whatever.
• 5:56
  Speaker: And um, but Eagle Crest was closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
• 6:00
  Speaker: Uh Tuesdays and Wednesdays, yeah, I think it was Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
• 6:03
  Speaker: And uh, and often on those Tuesdays or Wednesdays it was sunny, and we would just rent a helicopter as basically as teenagers and go heli skiing in Juneau.
• 6:16
  Speaker: How many of you?
• 6:18
  Speaker: Well, there's like five to ten of us would were avid heliskiers, so on these sunny days, um, when the Eagle Crest was closed, we'd go down to Temptsco helicopters and we'd get a bump on on to Mount McGuinness or Stroller White or some mountain there, and it was 25 bucks.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: 20 seriously, just you'd get a ride up, yeah, and then you guys would just ski down and that'd be your day, or would you would they give you a few rides?
• 6:44
  Speaker: Often we just got a drop-off on Mount McGuinness.
• 6:46
  Speaker: Yeah, for 25 bucks.
• 6:47
  Speaker: Yeah, 25 bucks.
• 6:49
  Speaker: And we would um, you know, safety gear, you know, we had backpacks, and our safety gear was usually like a case of reineer and a bottle of schnapps.
• 6:57
  Speaker: So this was long before uh airbags and airbags and I mean a couple of us had transceivers, maybe one guy had a shovel, but most of us had just had beer in our packs, so it was a different beast in the beginning.
• 7:12
  Speaker: But we learned a lot over those early days, and uh, I don't know, we spent about eight years just heli skiing for fun in Juno and uh maybe a little more in 1992.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Bruce So you're so you're hella skiing in the winter, yeah.
• 7:32
  Speaker: And skiing in the winter.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: So you just after that first year, you're like, I'm sticking around.
• 7:36
  Speaker: Yeah, I never I You never left after that.
• 7:38
  Speaker: I never went back to college after that.
• 7:40
  Speaker: After the season I went back to I went to college at Sheldon Jackson in Sitka after that.
• 7:44
  Speaker: Okay, and so I ended up getting through college Sheldon Jackson.
• 7:50
  Speaker: And I I got straight A's one semester at Sheldon Jackson.
• 7:53
  Speaker: I was like, I did it.
• 7:54
  Speaker: I got straight A's in college, I'm done.
• 7:56
  Speaker: Check that one off the list.
• 7:58
  Speaker: Check that box.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: So So what do you at this time what are you doing in the summertime?
• 8:04
  Speaker: Fishing.
• 8:04
  Speaker: Commercial fishing?
• 8:05
  Speaker: Yeah, commercial.
• 8:06
  Speaker: I was working on a sander.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 8:09
  Speaker: Uh Mo Johnson Sr.
• 8:11
  Speaker: in Sitka was my uh sane captain, and he was a he was a native guy there, really great fisherman, and the whole family fished on the boat.
• 8:21
  Speaker: It was Mo Junior, Karen, and Clarice, the sisters, me, and another crewman.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: And uh is this somebody you had met when you were living in Sitka with your mom growing up?
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: So you had uh you knew him pretty well?
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Um actually did you get connected with him?
• 8:37
  Speaker: I got the job through uh the other crew member, uh Tim Merriman.
• 8:42
  Speaker: He was the other crew on the boat.
• 8:44
  Speaker: And actually Karen went to college at Sheldon Jackson too.
• 8:48
  Speaker: So we all kind of knew each other.
• 8:49
  Speaker: And I got a job on their boat, and that very first summer we had uh been fishing around White Rock, or no, Mars Point Marston, which is where you know Chatham, Icy Straits, and Lind Canal come together.
• 9:07
  Speaker: There's Point Marston, and it's a really nice place to fish.
• 9:11
  Speaker: You get a nice mixed bag, cohose, saw eye, everything's in there.
• 9:15
  Speaker: And uh we had, I don't know, 50,000 pounds in a boat that would hold 70.
• 9:22
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 9:22
  Speaker: And there was an issue with the refrigeration system, and that one opener we iced the boat instead of used the s the salt brine.
• 9:33
  Speaker: And I'm not exactly sure what happened, but it got really rough on us, and uh, and that whatever was going on down there, the boat became imbalanced, and it was listing really hard one way, really hard one way, and then one of those lists the thing just flipped over, and the boat's on its side in Chatham.
• 9:54
  Speaker: It's blowing 60, and we're just like oh we're going down.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Dad do this.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: What what time of year was that?
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: This was August 18th.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: August 18th.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: I remember.
• 10:07
  Speaker: I'm sure you do, yeah.
• 10:08
  Speaker: August 18th, and uh, and um I was down with two of Mo Jr.
• 10:14
  Speaker: and Tim.
• 10:15
  Speaker: We were uh down in the engine room up in the forecastle, and so we had to come, we were, you know, we're ways to get out of the boat, yeah.
• 10:22
  Speaker: And the boat's on its side.
• 10:24
  Speaker: And so I remember crawling through the engine room and crawling up onto the you know, out of the engine room up onto the the house there.
• 10:33
  Speaker: And and I was just water coming in then?
• 10:37
  Speaker: Uh yeah.
• 10:38
  Speaker: I was just in a pair of shorts, and luckily, right when I was walking up the stairs, I felt and uh I grabbed a hold of something, and it was my halibut jacket, you know, those halibut jackets.
• 10:49
  Speaker: So I had a pair of shorts, halibut jacket, and I'm climbing out, and um, and and the boats on the on its side, and luckily the side door is up, right?
• 11:04
  Speaker: So that door was not facing the bottom of the ocean, it was facing up.
• 11:09
  Speaker: You could see the sky and the stars or the clouds, and so the only way out was up.
• 11:13
  Speaker: So I and you had to like scale the wall, so like this.
• 11:18
  Speaker: And I remember climbing up, and uh and right when I got to the top, the the survival raft was like right there, luckily, and I grabbed the survival raft, got it out onto the deck, standing on the side of the Saner.
• 11:32
  Speaker: And I'm about to uh go back.
• 11:36
  Speaker: I didn't have my survival suit on.
• 11:38
  Speaker: Um Tim, oh I remember Tim Merriman had put my survival suit on.
• 11:43
  Speaker: So I'm I had no survival suit, one of the other crew members was wearing it, and so I'm like, shit, gotta deploy the life raft, and so I don't even know how the thing works.
• 11:54
  Speaker: And I look through the little porthole window, and in the galley was this captain's wife.
• 12:01
  Speaker: We're face to face.
• 12:02
  Speaker: I guess she's still in the boat.
• 12:05
  Speaker: We're face to face, and I see her in there, I'm like, oh and she's probably 60, 64 years old.
• 12:12
  Speaker: She's kind of buggered up a bit, so I'm like, oh my god.
• 12:15
  Speaker: So I go back in the boat and I go to uh Amy was her name, and I'm Amy, give me your hand, give me your hand, and I grab her by the hand and I start pulling on her.
• 12:26
  Speaker: She's like, No, not that hand.
• 12:28
  Speaker: Oh, she's like, I'm going down with the ship, save yourself.
• 12:31
  Speaker: And I'm like, I came in to get you.
• 12:34
  Speaker: So I grab her, but it was the wrong hand, something was wrong with that shoulder.
• 12:37
  Speaker: So I grab her other hand, and then I have to do the same thing.
• 12:42
  Speaker: Just get out of the door.
• 12:44
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 12:45
  Speaker: And so I got a hold of her, and I'm like, You're trying to and I got her out.
• 12:50
  Speaker: I somehow got this woman out of the boat.
• 12:53
  Speaker: And um, and luckily, because she knows how to use the survival raft, uh-huh, and so she's like, Oh, here's what you do.
• 13:00
  Speaker: And so I throw the raft over, it inflates, and then a big gust of wind catches it and goes upside down.
• 13:07
  Speaker: The survival rafts upside down in the water.
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: I'm like, no.
• 13:11
  Speaker: So I'm yanking on this rope, and the gust of wind catches it, and it flips back over.
• 13:16
  Speaker: That's good, and it's got this really long tether on it, so I pull the tether line in, and um just to be safe, I like looped it over the rail of the boat, and I was gonna slide down because it's got a triangular hole.
• 13:30
  Speaker: I was gonna slide down the side of the boat into the raft.
• 13:34
  Speaker: Okay, and I'm gonna hold on to the other end of the line and hope it's long enough.
• 13:38
  Speaker: Yeah, so I'm I told Tim what I was gonna do, and I said, Whatever you do, do not let go of this rope.
• 13:43
  Speaker: I'm gonna try to see if I can slide down sh and then I can so sure enough, I slide down, I shot right in the hole of the survival raft.
• 13:51
  Speaker: I didn't go in the ocean, which is amazing.
• 13:54
  Speaker: And um, so I'm in there, and sure enough, the rope's long enough when I pull it up and get the raft up close, and then Amy, the mom, she slides down the hole of the boat.
• 14:03
  Speaker: It's like a slide, yeah.
• 14:05
  Speaker: And she shoots right in the hole, thank God.
• 14:08
  Speaker: And then dad, who was driving the boat, which he did an amazing job, because as soon as the boat flipped, he just put it into a he throttled it, put it into a big turn, and he just kept this boat going around in circles.
• 14:21
  Speaker: He was trying to ride it, but he kept it up for like two, two, three minutes, which got us gave us all this time.
• 14:27
  Speaker: So then he slides down, he goes in the he goes in the ocean.
• 14:32
  Speaker: So I grab a hold of him, pull him in, and then the three kids, Amy or um Karen, Clarice, and Mo, they slide down and they we're all in the raft at this point.
• 14:44
  Speaker: The boat's going down, and uh, I grab this tether and I start to pull the tether in, but sure enough the thing goes and it ties itself to the rail.
• 14:56
  Speaker: It's like, no, and so we're like, yeah, can I yank it on?
• 15:02
  Speaker: We're like, there's gotta be a knife in this boat somewhere, and everybody's looking for a knife, and I just chew my chew through this line.
• 15:07
  Speaker: I was like, chewed through it and got us loose from the boat, and then we just sort of drift off, and um, yeah.
• 15:16
  Speaker: We got rescued by another boat.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: But how long was how long were you guys in the raft till another boat came along?
• 15:22
  Speaker: 45 minutes.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 15:23
  Speaker: So we're just sort of drifting around.
• 15:25
  Speaker: And we could I was it daylight or was it it was dark, it was dark, so you're you're at nighttime when this is happening.
• 15:30
  Speaker: It was night, yeah.
• 15:31
  Speaker: And I just remember um hearing the Saner engines quit when the engine soaked up the water.
• 15:39
  Speaker: I also remember Amy saying to her husband, she called him pal.
• 15:44
  Speaker: She's like, No, pal, no, pal.
• 15:47
  Speaker: I just remember all these crazy little moments of that.
• 15:49
  Speaker: And um but the one thing that really stood out was just standing on the side of that boat with the wind blowing, just saying to myself, this is it.
• 16:01
  Speaker: This is it.
• 16:02
  Speaker: And you're how old at that time?
• 16:04
  Speaker: 23.
• 16:05
  Speaker: 23 years old.
• 16:06
  Speaker: 23.
• 16:06
  Speaker: I'm like, this is it.
• 16:07
  Speaker: Going down with the ship.
• 16:09
  Speaker: This is how it's gonna go.
• 16:10
  Speaker: And I never I didn't feel panicked, I didn't feel afraid.
• 16:14
  Speaker: I was very calm, and I did all the did all the moves I had to do to to to save myself and and save everyone else.
• 16:21
  Speaker: And and I learned a lot about myself that day, and that I don't panic.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: I'm usually just did that do you think that gave you kind of a sense of freedom too going forward that I I could have died.
• 16:37
  Speaker: Oh yeah.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: I didn't.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Now I'm just gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna live life to the fullest.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be scared of what could happen.
• 16:44
  Speaker: I'm sure that had a lot to do with the world.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: Or were you that or were you that way to begin with?
• 16:48
  Speaker: I might have already been that way.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: And this might have maybe reinforced it?
• 16:52
  Speaker: Probably.
• 16:52
  Speaker: I mean, like I said, I was always I said yes to everything always, and just always went for it.
• 16:58
  Speaker: So it was just one of those life experiences that just sort of you know let me know who I was, what kind of person I was.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Did you go back commercial fishing the next year?
• 17:09
  Speaker: I went back to fish, okay.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Or did you or did you get onto a boat tour to finish that season?
• 17:14
  Speaker: So on the way home, uh we got rescued by a big crab or the northern star, no polar star.
• 17:21
  Speaker: They they rescued us, and uh, and then we switched boats to the new Archangel, which was a Sitka boat, which is one of our coding partners.
• 17:29
  Speaker: So we're on the New Archangel on our charging our way to Sitka, coming through Surge's Narrows, and we almost hit another rock in the New Archangel.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: I don't want to go on a boat with you.
• 17:41
  Speaker: We weren't even driving, we were just up in the wheelhouse, and the deckheads are all like driving the boat, and the two captains are chatting about the event.
• 17:47
  Speaker: Uh-huh.
• 17:48
  Speaker: And I remember everybody just holds their breath as we go over the rock, right on the other side of Surge's Narrow.
• 17:53
  Speaker: So we're all like, we watched the fathom, the fathometer go to one fathom.
• 17:57
  Speaker: And then it's starting to drop it again.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: You're like, we made it.
• 18:02
  Speaker: We made it.
• 18:02
  Speaker: We made it.
• 18:02
  Speaker: Oh my god.
• 18:03
  Speaker: And then we got to the to Sitka, and Tim and I, straight to the P-Bar.
• 18:09
  Speaker: We're like, we're lucky to be alive.
• 18:12
  Speaker: We want the worst whiskey you have.
• 18:14
  Speaker: The worst, the interesting whiskey you have, because it's going to be the best thing ever to us, right?
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: This is going to be the only time in our life that the worst whiskey is going to taste good.
• 18:24
  Speaker: So it was Imperial whiskey.
• 18:25
  Speaker: I remember it was Imperial whiskey.
• 18:27
  Speaker: It was horrible.
• 18:28
  Speaker: And we drank ourselves silly, and I met a guy in the bar, his name is Pee-Wee.
• 18:34
  Speaker: And he's like, I heard you guys sunk your boat and you need a job.
• 18:39
  Speaker: And I'm like, sure.
• 18:42
  Speaker: Why not?
• 18:42
  Speaker: And he's like, be at the boat, six in the morning.
• 18:45
  Speaker: So the very next morning.
• 18:46
  Speaker: Next morning, you're about to go to the room.
• 18:47
  Speaker: Very next morning, I'm on a troller.
• 18:49
  Speaker: I didn't even, I'm still hungover.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Still hung over.
• 18:54
  Speaker: So that's how crazy I am.
• 18:56
  Speaker: And um, so we went out, we anchored up, and we're gonna go trolling the next morning, and and uh and we're anchored up somewhere, I can't remember where, south of Sitka.
• 19:06
  Speaker: And sleeping in this folkshole, and the wind's blowing a little bit, and the anchor chain's going.
• 19:12
  Speaker: And I wake up, it's pitch black, I don't know where the hell I am.
• 19:19
  Speaker: I'm like, and I'm freaking out.
• 19:22
  Speaker: I'm like, I'm just in a don't even know where I'm at.
• 19:26
  Speaker: And I bump the light switch, the lights come on, and I'm like in the foc'shole of this new boat, just going, holy shit.
• 19:32
  Speaker: I'm like, oh okay, okay, I remember.
• 19:36
  Speaker: I remember now.
• 19:36
  Speaker: Yeah, I remember.
• 19:37
  Speaker: And then that was it.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: I didn't have any any just that one flashback kind of thing there.
• 19:42
  Speaker: Moment of panic, and that was it.
• 19:44
  Speaker: And then fished the rest of the summer and been fishing ever since, my whole life.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Mainly saneers and trawlers, or uh trollers.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Definitely not a trawler.
• 19:53
  Speaker: Yeah, no, troller, troller, and saners, trollers, uh, long lining.
• 19:57
  Speaker: You know, I've done done everything, crabbing, shrimping, uh all the fisheries.
• 20:01
  Speaker: I've been to Bering Sea.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Uh what was a Bering Sea like?
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: Were you crabbing out there?
• 20:07
  Speaker: Crabbing out there.
• 20:08
  Speaker: It was the best job in the world when it was flat calm.
• 20:12
  Speaker: Not so great when it was shitty out.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: But uh was that back in the derby days when it was everybody throws mini pots out and try and get them in as fast as you can?
• 20:23
  Speaker: Yeah, it was a crazy fishery, and um I only did that once because I definitely was not into that big gnarly ocean.
• 20:31
  Speaker: Uh but yeah, long lining black cod halibut.
• 20:36
  Speaker: And uh, but I my my uh I ended up being a yakutat set netter for most of my life after after I was a crewman.
• 20:46
  Speaker: And um, you know, I'd always uh skied in the winter and fished in the summer, which led to this the heli skiing.
• 20:57
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: So let's go back to that because about you guys have been helliskiing in Juno for about eight years.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: So now we figured out how you're paying your bills because you're going commercial fishing in the summer, so you can pay for your schnaps and beer to go helix.
• 21:09
  Speaker: Exactly.
• 21:10
  Speaker: And then I guess it would have been like 85 to like 90.
• 21:14
  Speaker: Uh-huh.
• 21:14
  Speaker: We were just heli skiing for fun.
• 21:16
  Speaker: And then I don't know if you know Resha, she owns the hangar.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: I know the hangar, but I don't know Risha.
• 21:24
  Speaker: She told us that there was some uh world extreme skiing championships in Valdez.
• 21:29
  Speaker: She's like, Oh, you guys should go enter these the ski contests.
• 21:33
  Speaker: And so we're like, Yeah, let's enter the ski contest.
• 21:36
  Speaker: So we made a little video and we sent it, and we were definitely shoe-ins because we're from Alaska, and it was the very first con uh extreme skiing contest ever.
• 21:45
  Speaker: So we thought, um, hey, let's go up there two weeks early.
• 21:49
  Speaker: Let's go to Valdez two weeks early.
• 21:51
  Speaker: Let's ski all the runs and maybe, you know, what we maybe learn the run and we might win.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: So hang on a second here.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: I got a nineteen ninety.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: How are you taking this?
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: video because now everybody's got GoPros are mounting on their helmets or their chests and everything.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: What kind of equipment were you like the Sony handicam kind of deal with?
• 22:07
  Speaker: Super 8, you know Super 8.
• 22:09
  Speaker: We also had the Sony, you know, high eight, the little cassette thingies.
• 22:12
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 22:13
  Speaker: And and we had a Roleflex film camera.
• 22:15
  Speaker: Okay.
• 22:16
  Speaker: So we were doing film and developing the film and you know that which is a crazy game.
• 22:21
  Speaker: Yep.
• 22:21
  Speaker: Because you know, unless you nail it, you're spending you spend a lot of money on getting film developed.
• 22:27
  Speaker: Uh-huh.
• 22:28
  Speaker: And so but we had one and we filmed with it and made movies with it.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Was this kind of a group project?
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Was everybody taking a chan uh a hand at the camera or was it you or somebody else that was kind of in charge of the pht still photography?
• 22:40
  Speaker: Somebody else Bruce and I were the primary filmers uh but everybody had a shot hand at it because you know we were also in the movie in the movies so people had to film us too so we just all kind of made these together and and um are those KTO still available for anybody to go back and see.
• 22:57
  Speaker: Oh yeah Alaskan Extremes was uh one of the movies we made and it's kind of almost like a cult classic film and it's it's on YouTube and you can you can look it up Alaskan Extremes.
• 23:08
  Speaker: Okay.
• 23:09
  Speaker: Um it's I think there's uh one of the pages on our website has a has a link to it.
• 23:14
  Speaker: Yeah I don't know it's on our website but it's kind of hidden in the in the website but um yeah it's a great movie really com a lot of comedy okay a lot of skinny skis catching huge air uh um but uh anyway so 91 the first world extreme skiing championships so we headed up to Valdez two weeks early like I said and we were the only ones there really nobody nobody else showed up well we were two weeks early oh you're two weeks early yeah okay we thought there was a big hubbub up there so we're like let's get up there nobody and so we're the first ones on scene in Valdez which is cool because uh we got to be the first ones down all these mountains up there yeah not all of them but all the ones that were nearby and easy to get to and uh there was a pilot Chet Simmons um landed at the it was a pullout that was plowed out and we just pulled in in there and this helicopter comes and lands and he looks at us he's like hey you guys here to heli ski we're like yeah we're here to heli ski he's like did you pay the club fees so we all look at each other we're like yep yeah sure we did sure we did and uh so we he's like get in and he and uh so he takes us up to Odyssey was the name of the name of the run and we like skied it it was cool and then he we get in the heli takes us back up there again and we ski it again and then we get in the helicopter he's taking us back up to the top again we're like well do you guys ski anywhere else just the one run you have is this it he's like oh yeah this is where we're we've been heli skiing and we're like well what about that one he's like oh nobody's ever skied that one we're like well that's where we want to go drop us off drop us off and so we spent the next two weeks doing that just like let's get there let's get there and then we named all these runs that are right that people ski today yeah and um so it was cool so that's like a little bit of bragging rights to be the first ones on scene in Valdez um a lot of people say they were but we know yeah who was and there were two other guys there with us Richie Fowler and Juan Gomez Juan Gomez owned a snowboard shop in Anchorage and Richie he was just like his buddy I think he was a weak dope dealer and he had all the good weed.
• 25:33
  Speaker: He had all the good weed so um yeah anyway it was a crazy time back then but no guides.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: So you guys you guys are just going up there skiing whatever looks good and having the helicopter drop you off for two weeks.
• 25:45
  Speaker: Yeah and then the extreme championship happens yeah and is that just on Odyssey or it was on Odyssey uh the fur the they had two mountains they had Odyssey and Loveland and then uh 27 mile they had three peaks that they were going to hold the contest on and how many people showed up 40 40 people 40 contestants okay and uh did odyssey did 27 mile and uh we were supposed to do Loveland but it the the clouds rolled in and it was absolutely bulletproof on Loveland and everybody was petrified of it and and the clouds rolled in and never let us on it anyway.
• 26:20
  Speaker: Yeah but but uh yeah so is this based on speed down the mountain was this based on the route you took the how many jumps you took how how are they judging this extreme ski contest it's probably much like how they do the free ride okay you get your except you got a lot more runs they can think they gave you two runs on each peak so we had six runs six runs in the kitty not just one yeah yeah that's hard I can't believe they do it with one run.
• 26:48
  Speaker: One run you gotta nail it you gotta nail it but they look these guys they're kids too and they just show up like never seen seen the mountain before so we had we got a chance to perform and uh I don't know what the categories were probably time uh style biggest air all this kind of stuff and uh how'd you do I got 14 out of 40 14 out of 40 nice which is seems pretty good but I did have the fastest time okay and the biggest air biggest air yeah nice are you uh I um I was the best skier but I was the best worst skier like I was strong uh but I had one one of my legs kind of pronated a little bit because when I was 21 years old I broke the ball off my femur in Sitka deer hunting with my mom and uh what it do you fall while you're deer hunting or no but okay how do you break the ball off your femur a big boulder rolled down the mountain and tagged me.
• 27:53
  Speaker: I got hit out I got hit by a boulder dang I know and I had a 308 uh and I had a clip an extra clip in my in my I was wearing car hearts you know they got the side pocket so I had a 308 clip in there the boulder tagged me and um and it bent all the bullets in that clip they were all like so I got I got hit hard I got hit hard and it was a it was a weird there's a cliff face on it and then right below the cliff face is a talus slope and right where that cliff meets the slope there's like that little ledge you know that little flat spot where you can kind of walk along the base of a cliff and that there was one spot where there was a bit of a ravine where this boulder was lodged and and I had to I there was no longer this sidewalk so I had to like get up in that ravine and like do a little bit of scaling to get around that spot and I barely brushed that boulder with my shoulder just barely barely touched it and just rolled right over me and I fell backwards into the ravine and it just went and so somewhere in there it hit me.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: So not only was the boulder hitting you you're tumbling down the sort I just sort of fell backwards.
• 29:08
  Speaker: Okay and it went over me and yeah I just got really lucky and um so uh a Coast Guard helicopter came in to try to pick me up off the side it's Harbor Mountain said to try to pick me up pick me off harbor and the rotor blade system was too big because I was on a that slope and um so they left and uh and then a little he a little Hughes 500 came in a Tempsco bird and then they just hovered over me and I crawled into it under my own power and then uh my mom also got in there and they flew us to the the hospital you know search clinic there or uh on Japansky island what's at the search hospital and they took x-rays and they're like oh here's some crutches uh stay off you know stay off of it for three weeks and then you you know then you can start to weight bear and they didn't see that it the ball was broken off my femur.
• 30:13
  Speaker: Yeah it was just snapped off but it you know when they did the x-rays it all looked yeah so I basically walked off a broken femur and uh and but but then my leg was always pronated a little bit so that's why I was the best worst skier.
• 30:29
  Speaker: Yeah because the one leg is I had a little crazy leg.
• 30:33
  Speaker: So and then I did did my whole ski career like that you know 17 years I did all the crazy stuff that I've ever done skied the menhole towers you know did all this gnarly stuff and uh and then eventually because everything was misaligned now it wore out that hip joint so at 38 years old I had to get a new hip replacement.
• 30:59
  Speaker: Yep so I got a hip at 38 and um and now you're back skiing.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Well yeah I mean I never stopped yeah but uh I skied straighter and better after that makes sense yeah I skied better after I got the got it fixed yeah it's funny well if your feet are going in the right direction it makes it easier to go skiing yeah yeah so it's uh tangent so 91 you're in the first extreme ski contest in Valdez first descent on a lot of mountains with you and your buddies coming off of that you go back fish that summer and then you're back skiing did it was this an annual event were you back yeah yeah we went I went 910 years were you up there 91 92 93 I went to Valdez and skied up there and um there's still that during all that time there were no guide service it was just nothing a free for all people just a couple different helys taking people wherever they're pointing and um it didn't feel safe it actually felt kind of crazy and I remember uh being on a mountain called uh Billy Mitchell and we're skiing down and this slough just comes ripping past me out of nowhere and I look uphill and there's some there's some guy wearing this uh flight fleece hat that looks like a Rastafarian hat right it's all fleece but it's got looks Rasta and this kook snowboarder coming down and it looks like they're learning how to snowboard on this steep ass mountain and right behind you.
• 32:37
  Speaker: Yeah just dropping down on top of us in our top yeah it's just like oh my god this is nuts and uh it the guy came up and it was a guy named Doug Coombs who had won the the skiing the extreme skiing contest okay he just wanted to learn how to snowboard now he so it's just like we were like this place is too nuts it's too dangerous and so we just went back to Juno and we're like we need to start a guide service because nobody's guiding and so we um we decided to start a guide school we're like we need to we need to learn some stuff and so um we hired uh Ed La Chappelle I don't know if you've heard that name I haven't no uh he was a really uh incredible snow scientist back in the day um he based out of Juneau yeah well he was from down south somewhere but his son lived in Juneau and he was up visiting his son and so we hired him to teach us our first Abbey class.
• 33:38
  Speaker: Okay so this legendary Avalanche guy taught us our our first Avi class and then um Dick Rice I'm sure you know Dick Rice.
• 33:45
  Speaker: Yeah legend we hired him to teach us ropes okay and so he taught our ropes course and so now we had some tools in our tool bag to be guides and so uh when we we we were up in Valdez we'd met um all these pro athletes and they you know we were really good at skiing in the big mountains because we'd had eight years experience we were the only ones with heli skiing experience there so they called us the Juno boys with disease with disease and uh and so we talked them these film crews into coming to Juno to ski our home range like standard films and all these all these big heavy hitters in the film world and that's how our business started was guiding these film crews that we met and so I guess that was 95 we were uh at the start of Alaska Helloscheme yeah it was called Out of Bounds Adventures at the time okay and so that was when we started a guide sir guide service because before that we were a production company making films.
• 34:48
  Speaker: So now with the guide service are you mainly guiding film crews or are you just doing people that want to learn want to do hell skiing as well well we guided film crews first because it's free advertising free advertising for yeah yeah absolutely and and so that was how it started and so the movies came out and then we had the website we didn't have a website then we had word of mouth pretty much yellow pages.
• 35:11
  Speaker: I think it was yellow pages.
• 35:12
  Speaker: Yellow pages and uh the word got out and it just started to develop and I remember it was just me and Bruce my original partner there and uh I remember we we got to the point where we had us two in four groups so we had to do guide two groups a day.
• 35:33
  Speaker: Yeah so we'd go out in the morning with the first group and then come in and swap and with the second group and I got my record my record number of runs I did that in Juno by guiding two different groups throughout the day and I think 18 runs night each group got nine runs 18 runs for the day which is a lot that's a lot of yeah the runs are big uh three to four thousand feet you know so that's a lot a lot of vert it's like almost 500 it's over 5000 vert in a day holy cow yeah it's too much yeah it's too much so we were like we need more guides so uh we advertised the guide school and we got our buddies all our ski bum buddies to train up with us and and so um yeah we sort of pulled from our local pool of friends and got some more guides on board and then our the company just developed but we realized uh after guiding in Juneau for however many years that was 95, 969 seven eight nine for like four or five years there the weather just sucks the weather sucks.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: People get bummed because they come to heli ski and they get shut down and um was there a lot of was there a lot of regulation in Juno when you guys first started on that after you guys started ramping up and they're seeing a lot of hell skis where people in Juneau going we need to put some boundaries on this or was it just you guys ski where you guys have permission from BLM or state or whoever owns the property.
• 37:02
  Speaker: That's the thing uh the different landowners had their had um permitting struct a permitting structure right and so they're professionals at administering recreation permits and so they had a system that works really well and and they take everything into consideration they they do their EIS you know environmental impact statements and then they issue you a permit and they just made sure to set aside some goat habitat and and but you know mostly just opened it up you know it wasn't a convoluted map it was like open this is open and this is closed so it was really easy to follow the rules yeah so it's not it wasn't complicated and so um yeah Juno five years people get burnt don't ski so we took the show to Skagway okay in 99 2000 a Tom Burt pro snowboarder who was also really good friend and had done the guide course with us he and I went to Skagway and uh skied out of there for two seasons which it was amazing super fun and we we'd get there in April you know late March into April and that's when all of the um summertime workers start showing up so there's all super fun lots of action and all these kids have been working at ski resorts and so they had money and they wanted to ski so we just put these fun groups of people together and just go ski fun terrain it wasn't like taking professional athletes it was just taking normal fun people skiing and it was great super great and um and then the next year uh some film crews showed up and skiing around Skagway it was pretty good it's kind of spread apart it's a lot like Juno with you know lots of lots of mellow glacier terrain and some really gnarly stuff right and so uh a guy named uh noah salosnik he's not with us anymore but he hopped in a a ski plane with some of the other athletes and they flew around the zone and spotted a run that we call tomahawk now and that's it's about as far away from Skagway as you can get right so uh that next morning we woke up in Skagway to three feet of fresh pow it's April 11th April 11th three feet in Skagway in Skagway in Skagway downtown this is gonna be the day of our lives yeah and um we hop in the chopper we fly all the way from Skagway over to Tomahawk and we land on the shoulder and get out of the helicopter and it was like 52 degrees it was the worst upside down snow I've ever seen.
• 40:04
  Speaker: Yeah so bad.
• 40:06
  Speaker: Deep deep pow with this manky soaking wet crust on top almost impossible to ski and I'm with Tom Burt who's like one of the best snowboarders on earth on earth yeah and I'm like I remember skiing down first and we could see this giant cottonwood tree down there that we're trying to get to it's like 3,000 feet plus and I I can't even make a turn I'm just like walking like this making these step turns like this fighting my way down and I turn around to watch the best snowboarder in the world go flap flap I was like oh my god this sucks and we get down there and we're like we're screwed it's horrible and so we get back in the helicopter and we fly back towards Skagway we knew this spot uh the high point over there 8,200 feet high we're like if anywhere's got pow it's got to be there.
• 40:59
  Speaker: So we fly all the way back over to the high point and as we're flying back to Skagway we literally are watching the entire mountain range fall apart like that giant powder cloud coming out of that valley giant powder cloud coming out of this valley from all the avalanches coming down and so we're just like it's done fly back to town 65 degrees in Skagway it's like it's just it's a summer day.
• 41:25
  Speaker: And uh that was the first time we ever saw Haynes.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: So even all this time that you've been in June you'd never come up to Haynes I come up for the fair.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: You come up to the fair but never were thinking wow these mountains look like this would be some fun skiing.
• 41:39
  Speaker: Well we knew very well in our minds that everybody in Haynes hated helicopters because that's the word on the street.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 41:47
  Speaker: Haynes is anti-helicopter and and uh but it didn't deter us for long because we did come over and we came in the back door to 33 mile because we knew that there was uh mining activity up there and helicopters came in and out of 33 mile and so we got a hold of Kathy and Jerry and said hey we want to come over there can you can we pick up 10 sack lunches we're like let's buy some lunches over there get our way in and so we show up straight after they got our lunches and and started make making a relationship with Jerry and Kathy and they are awesome and just loved us to death and made it really easy for us to fly out of their place in the winter.
• 42:24
  Speaker: And that was pretty cool.
• 42:28
  Speaker: Pretty cool uh so we felt like we had a place we could operate from so then we just uh guy named uh Dan Hollenkamp worked at BLM and we got permits for over here the state land was just a registration thing still is um you just register and you can have up to uh just general use area out there and so it was just the BLM was the tricky part and uh but the BL I the maps have changed a lot since then the BLM conveyed land to the state and I don't know it it it the the land ownership changed so everything okay you know as the years go by people make more and more rules and everything gets a little more sticky and tricky and pretty soon you know it's just like oh my god it's nothing like it used to be it used to be so it used to be so easy and so free and so fun and now it's it's not as fun.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: I mean it's amazing but it's not as fun not as free frustrating at times trying to so those first couple years did you get a permit from the borough at all or were you guys just No it was managed by the state.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: Managed by the state so how many years in before the borough started saying hey we need to start managing this gosh it seems like it was around 2006.
• 43:42
  Speaker: 2006 fun loving out there.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: And it was and it was just at that time it was just Alaska Hell did you had you named it Alaska Helliskiing by then or was it out of bounds adventures Alaska Helisching.
• 43:54
  Speaker: Okay.
• 43:54
  Speaker: So in Alaskahelisking dot com because we were there when the internet was invented.
• 43:59
  Speaker: All right.
• 44:00
  Speaker: So we got the good URL.
• 44:02
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 44:02
  Speaker: And you know, I think a lot of our success, other than our personalities, of course.
• 44:06
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 44:06
  Speaker: I think a lot of our success comes back to starting with the letter A.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Nothing.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: My dad always Alaska Sports Shop.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: It's right at the right at the st right at the top.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:17
  Speaker: Yep.
• 44:18
  Speaker: So it works.
• 44:19
  Speaker: That works.
• 44:19
  Speaker: It does.
• 44:20
  Speaker: It worked for us.
• 44:22
  Speaker: It worked for us.
• 44:23
  Speaker: So I don't know.
• 44:24
  Speaker: Like grandfathered in a little bit.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: But so for that first, how how long was it before you had anybody else saying, hey, we think we should start a hell of ski guiding company?
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 44:35
  Speaker: Well, that would have been SIBA.
• 44:37
  Speaker: And and um actually Scott Sunberg owned 15% of Out of Bounds.
• 44:45
  Speaker: Because my partner Bruce Griggs wanted to, I don't know, he talked him, he talked him out of some money and got him to invest.
• 44:54
  Speaker: And so we had Sonny was a part owner.
• 44:57
  Speaker: And um and I guess how long he how long had he been a part owner?
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Just a couple years.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: Couple years.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: Couple years.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: And was he skiing and guiding with you guys at that time too?
• 45:07
  Speaker: He was.
• 45:08
  Speaker: Okay.
• 45:08
  Speaker: He was.
• 45:09
  Speaker: And uh and the plan was uh, you know, Nick and all those guys came up and they had a snow cat, and we had the helicopter, and and you know, when we first started getting to know each other, the the idea was these guys bring the snow cat in, we'd do the heli side of things and we'd come together, right?
• 45:26
  Speaker: And then uh that didn't happen.
• 45:28
  Speaker: They ended up just going for their own permit.
• 45:30
  Speaker: So I was a little butthurt.
• 45:32
  Speaker: Like, what happened to the plan?
• 45:33
  Speaker: And um and so there was a few years of rivalry there because you know, I felt like I wasn't treated great.
• 45:42
  Speaker: Um, but you know, time heals, wounds.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: And now you've got Powder Mountain.
• 45:52
  Speaker: Powder Mountain, yeah.
• 45:54
  Speaker: Powder Mountain's a funny thing, actually.
• 45:56
  Speaker: I made it for my kids, uh Juniper mostly.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: Um let's let's back up on this.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: You've got your places at 35 mile, right?
• 46:05
  Speaker: 35 mile.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: 35 mile, and so this is is this on your property?
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Is this on state land?
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: So how did this describe it for us?
• 46:14
  Speaker: Okay, so Powder Mountain started on our driveway because we have this 20 a 20-acre parcel out there, and the driveway that goes up to the house is perfect pitch for a kid's ski run, right?
• 46:25
  Speaker: And um I used to, you know, I plowed it, I tried to plow it one winter when I first got it, and I'm like, this is nuts.
• 46:33
  Speaker: Why would you even why?
• 46:35
  Speaker: It's impossible.
• 46:36
  Speaker: Let's just let's just groom it, make it a ski run for Juniper.
• 46:39
  Speaker: So um, yeah, so that was that was the deal at the start, and then uh I'd always wanted to, you know, every every piece of property or every place I ever lived, I made ski trails of some sort, jump, anything.
• 46:54
  Speaker: And uh this was a big enough pallet that I could actually be creative and make something, you know, make a park.
• 47:02
  Speaker: We basically made a really fun jib park out there, and um, and then I started buying timber sales off of the Alaska State Forest through Greg Palmieri, and so that allowed me to build a road up, yeah.
• 47:18
  Speaker: And the road starts on starts on our property and leaves our property and it's and it goes up the mountain to all these various uh timber blocks that I've logged.
• 47:27
  Speaker: And I'm not like logging, logging, I'm you know, making ski trails.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: Ski trails out of it, yeah.
• 47:32
  Speaker: And getting trees, and you know, I a little side hustle sawmill.
• 47:35
  Speaker: I sell a little lumber to Constantine or Raw TV, uh-huh um and milled all the all of our own lumber to build whatever we build.
• 47:44
  Speaker: And um, so it's kind of a hobby, hobby logging, but for a purpose to create recreation.
• 47:51
  Speaker: And um I remember the first time Paul Mary came out to check on my skitter roads, he came out, he's like, hmm, looks like a ski trail.
• 48:04
  Speaker: Like, really?
• 48:05
  Speaker: This kind of looks like a ski trail.
• 48:07
  Speaker: Well, yeah.
• 48:09
  Speaker: He's like, he's like, I think it's cool.
• 48:11
  Speaker: He's like, uh, you know, when you're done with this place, the forest will take it all back.
• 48:16
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 48:16
  Speaker: It's like this this place is amazing, and yeah, it's it's great what you're doing.
• 48:21
  Speaker: You you'd logging to create recreation for yourself.
• 48:24
  Speaker: And and so as my kids grew older, um, and all their friends wanted to come and hang out and ski and do all this stuff.
• 48:33
  Speaker: It just sort of it's like a it's an organic thing.
• 48:36
  Speaker: Powder Mountain is very organic, and it just got its legs and support for it by the people that use it.
• 48:43
  Speaker: And at this point, I'll bet you we've taught 150 kids to ski up there over the years, and just this today, there was six or seven people that came up and skied.
• 48:55
  Speaker: And it's like that almost every day now.
• 48:58
  Speaker: Like a handful of people show up.
• 49:00
  Speaker: Some weekends we see a hundred people out there.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: So now do you take it out?
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Do you take them to the top?
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: You have like a rope tow, or do you take them up with a snow machine and a sled, or how do you get or people skinning up to the top?
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: You got a groomer?
• 49:11
  Speaker: I have a groomer that I can tow behind my track A TV, yeah, and it turns the place into perfect corduroy, like a ski resort.
• 49:18
  Speaker: Uh-huh.
• 49:18
  Speaker: And it's a self-serve ski hill.
• 49:21
  Speaker: So I just keep it groomed, and families show up with their own machines, okay, and just follow the rules and and tow their own kids up there.
• 49:31
  Speaker: And um, and we do have some equipment there that we let people take.
• 49:35
  Speaker: Uh you know, we got a couple more tractor machines and a couple snow machines and tow ropes and everything that we let people borrow.
• 49:43
  Speaker: And it's all for free.
• 49:45
  Speaker: How much elevation drop do you have?
• 49:47
  Speaker: Uh, we're up to 750 vertical.
• 49:49
  Speaker: 750, nice.
• 49:50
  Speaker: It's pretty big, yeah.
• 49:51
  Speaker: And it's fun.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: I've been seeing what I've been seeing some of the videos off of that.
• 49:55
  Speaker: Oh man, it's a real it's real skiing.
• 49:57
  Speaker: I mean it's steep, it's trees, and um, you know, when it's good, it's good.
• 50:06
  Speaker: And this was a good winner.
• 50:07
  Speaker: This is a good winner for it.
• 50:08
  Speaker: Good winner at Powder Mountain.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: And going off of that, I've heard there's a group in town that's starting a ski, a youth ski club or a ski club.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: Powder Mountain Ski Club.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: Powder Mountain Ski Club.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:18
  Speaker: So nonprofit.
• 50:20
  Speaker: We just started it.
• 50:20
  Speaker: I mean, all some of the families got together and we're like, we need to um kind of be a little more organized so we can get insurance and all these things.
• 50:29
  Speaker: Uh, because it's you know, skiing is it can be dangerous.
• 50:34
  Speaker: I mean you can hurt yourself.
• 50:35
  Speaker: Yeah, I mean, people get hurt.
• 50:36
  Speaker: I I broke my ribs up there.
• 50:38
  Speaker: I mean uh and I thought I was gonna be the I thought, you know, for the longest time I'm the only person that broke a bone there.
• 50:45
  Speaker: But uh our granddaughter broke her leg this year.
• 50:49
  Speaker: Oh no, yeah, and she's yeah, but you know, it's it's I think it just goes with skiing.
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: Any kind of athletic event, there's always a potential for getting an injury.
• 51:01
  Speaker: Yeah, you if you're going skiing, I mean everybody knows you could break a leg, right?
• 51:05
  Speaker: Yes, yes, who doesn't know that?
• 51:07
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: That's pretty common.
• 51:10
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: So what's uh so is this the ski club?
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: It's for the insurance and just teaching kids fundamentals, getting them outdoors.
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: What's the main purpose behind it?
• 51:20
  Speaker: The big drive behind it was just to be organized and to be able to fundraise and and maybe go for grants, because you know at this point it's just kind of run running off of love and our hard work.
• 51:34
  Speaker: And um honestly, I probably put eighty to a hundred thousand dollars into this thing and equipment and time and and just the amount of energy it takes.
• 51:43
  Speaker: I mean, I've already gone through many snow machines, a couple tracked ATVs.
• 51:48
  Speaker: I just blew up my one, my my Honda 520 rancher or uh Rubicon.
• 51:54
  Speaker: So I just had to get another one in the middle of the season to keep the groomer going.
• 51:58
  Speaker: So I'm like, oh, I gotta spend 13,000 bucks on another ATV.
• 52:02
  Speaker: Um, but we're just keeping it going, and um, it's really rewarding actually.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: And is there do you have plans for more additional trails or runs?
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: Or are you gonna be doing some logging the summer?
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: I guess is what I'm gonna continue to keep logging.
• 52:18
  Speaker: Once you start something cool, it's hard to stop.
• 52:20
  Speaker: It's like it's like uh yeah.
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: So the the thing I think is cool about this is like you were talking about when SIBA was first started and they came with the snow cat and they were gonna do old faithful, right?
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: And they're gonna take people up and have skiing, and that really didn't go anywhere.
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: But I thought that was a I thought that was a really good idea of having for the people that want there's a lot of people that love to ski here.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: A lot of people go to June to Eagle Crest, they go to Mount Sima and Whitehorse, and to get to that and have a place where you can go ski without leaving the community, without renting a helicopter.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: The snow cat idea I thought was a great idea, but now listening to Powder Mountain, I think that's equally as awesome just to have a place that's easily accessible so you can teach kids or those of us that are older have an opportunity to just enjoy the activity.
• 53:10
  Speaker: Yeah, it's a perfect place to learn, or and it's actually a great place to ski if you're a great skier.
• 53:15
  Speaker: I mean, all the pro athletes and stuff, they they like put a little extra work into the jumps that we built.
• 53:21
  Speaker: Okay.
• 53:22
  Speaker: And uh, and I mean what they are doing on my property is absolutely nuts.
• 53:27
  Speaker: Double backflips and all this crazy stuff that they're pulling off.
• 53:31
  Speaker: It's uh it's incredible.
• 53:32
  Speaker: And uh I just I I I've been logging and I have sawmills and stuff, so I just have all this sawdust, right?
• 53:39
  Speaker: Yeah, back host.
• 53:41
  Speaker: So I just stack up sawdust piles all over the property in the summer and those turn into jumps in the winter.
• 53:46
  Speaker: Okay.
• 53:47
  Speaker: So it's uh my whole thing is rides on itself.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: And and and I and I love it because one of the things that I when the State Forester was here when I was mayor, I was asking him about something very similar to this.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: It's like instead of doing these clear cuts, which we know aren't very effective around here because there's very limited prime timber in a lot of these areas, it's a small percentage of it.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: And so to do the value to get the prime timber out, but be creating whether it's ski trails, ski hills, um, mountain bike trails, camping areas, that as you're doing this, how can we turn that into something that's recreational for our community and also uh asset that's bringing other people into the community to have those recreational opportunities?
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: And using using the timber, maybe you use some of that, make another Haynes Hut cabin up somewhere at the top of the ski run, and people can stay there, but use that resource in a way to pay for the development of more recreational activity for us.
• 54:53
  Speaker: That's what I'm doing.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: I know you're doing it 100%.
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: You just proved that it can be done.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: It's happening.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: And the forester is like, yeah, that's a great idea.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: We just need to just need to get Sean Brownell as the state forester here.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: Charge you, you and Greg Paul Mary start mapping some more areas out here.
• 55:09
  Speaker: Yeah, I mean, that's that's what I saw.
• 55:11
  Speaker: How am I gonna do this?
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: And it's like I either gotta get a gold claim so I can build build a trail to my gold claim, or I gotta go logging, and I'm like, I think logging's the deal, because then I got the timber and the lumber and yeah, you can you can either sell the timber for firewood if it doesn't meet if you it's not anything you can cut for dimensional lumber or so yeah, it's a symbiotic thing.
• 55:32
  Speaker: Genius.
• 55:33
  Speaker: Genius.
• 55:35
  Speaker: I love it.
• 55:37
  Speaker: Yeah, we all love it.
• 55:38
  Speaker: It's such a fun scene out there.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: So on a normal year, like this year it was cold in December, we're and we didn't get a ton of snow until the end of December.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: Are you basically January, February, March, April for Powder Mountain?
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: Or sometimes can you start skiing there in November?
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: When's what's your season?
• 55:57
  Speaker: Oh well, we started in October because well, especially on the lower slopes and on the logging roads that we built, they only need this much snow.
• 56:06
  Speaker: Okay.
• 56:06
  Speaker: One snow slope.
• 56:07
  Speaker: Yeah, you just need once, yeah.
• 56:08
  Speaker: One good dump and it's good to go.
• 56:10
  Speaker: At least you know you can ski.
• 56:12
  Speaker: And then the more snow you get, which which what you really need is enough s heavy snow early season to lay the alders down.
• 56:19
  Speaker: Gotcha.
• 56:20
  Speaker: And so you see that, you'll see, you know, they get that big ball of frost on the branches, and you see it.
• 56:27
  Speaker: Oh man, if it would just snow now before that frost melts off, and that's usually what lays them down when they get that big frosty round look, and then it snows.
• 56:36
  Speaker: And um, you know, the Claheheny Valley in Haynes gets more snow than anywhere.
• 56:44
  Speaker: You know, as soon as you get to 33 mile, the snow banks go boom, boom up.
• 56:49
  Speaker: Yep.
• 56:50
  Speaker: And I was noticing that I hardly ever come to town, and I came in yesterday for some reason, I can't remember what.
• 56:58
  Speaker: But I'm driving back out the road, and sure enough, right behind our house, that mountain, all the alders are still down.
• 57:06
  Speaker: It's the only one in the whole Haynes Valley that the alders are laid down still.
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 57:12
  Speaker: And they, you know, look like uh Tok Chinook, the alders are all poking up, Mosquito Lake Zone alders are poking up, but as soon as you get past that choke of the Kahini Valley, there's two ridges that come together like that, and it blocks that warm air from coming up there.
• 57:28
  Speaker: That's like the cold pocket that gets the most snow.
• 57:30
  Speaker: So um, I was always very attracted to that mountain in particular, and I was just so happy when I was able to buy that place from Sonny Jones back in 2006, I think, is when I got it.
• 57:45
  Speaker: Okay.
• 57:45
  Speaker: Sonny Jones.
• 57:47
  Speaker: Remember that guy?
• 57:48
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 57:50
  Speaker: And uh yeah, so happy to get it.
• 57:54
  Speaker: I feel so blessed and lucky to end be the one that ended up at that spot because to me that's like the best place in the valley.
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 58:04
  Speaker: Sunny, south facing.
• 58:07
  Speaker: Our homestead that we have going on up there does amazingly well.
• 58:12
  Speaker: Um we've been raising our own food and and feed our skiers mostly what we raise.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: You got a garden in the summertime?
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: Huge gardens.
• 58:23
  Speaker: Uh we probably got three acres of garden beds.
• 58:25
  Speaker: Three acres?
• 58:26
  Speaker: Yeah, we've got like 8,000 garlic in the ground.
• 58:29
  Speaker: Dang.
• 58:30
  Speaker: We grew up over a pickup truck full of potatoes.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:35
  Speaker: Uh yeah.
• 58:35
  Speaker: A lot of food comes off that.
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: So then uh do you have a pretty good root cellar then that you guys put that in for to keep it for your Hellski clients?
• 58:43
  Speaker: We framed in a cold room into the back of our building and have uh a wood stove used to go there, but we took the wood stove out and the that hole that goes through the wall to the outside.
• 58:53
  Speaker: We put a fan in there with the thermostat and it blows outdoor air in.
• 58:57
  Speaker: Okay.
• 58:58
  Speaker: So we could keep it around 40, 38 to 40 degrees in there.
• 59:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 59:01
  Speaker: So it's just like a root cellar.
• 59:03
  Speaker: Just like a root cellar.
• 59:03
  Speaker: But it's kind of controlled, and it's in the kitchen.
• 59:07
  Speaker: Okay.
• 59:08
  Speaker: You just open the door.
• 59:09
  Speaker: It's a big walk-in refrigerator, but it uses uh outside cold.
• 59:15
  Speaker: Nice, it works really well.
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 59:19
  Speaker: Um, we were just pulling the last of our potatoes out of there because we saved enough for the garden and they are still like brand new.
• 59:25
  Speaker: They don't have any eyes, nothing growing out of them.
• 59:27
  Speaker: Nothing growing on them.
• 59:28
  Speaker: They're perfect still since last since September.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: So perfect system.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: It worked, got it dialed.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: It worked.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: So then, so as you went from you had mentioned your last one was set netting in Yakutat.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: How how many years were you did you have a setnet permit that you were fishing?
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: You I think you still have it, right?
• 59:51
  Speaker: Yeah, I started set netting in Yakutat in 99, 98.
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: Is that a little do you feel that was safer than being out on the boat and rolling over?
• 1:00:02
  Speaker: Maybe not all the time.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker: Not if you consider the airplane flights that have there.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker: I've been more scared than ever flying in those small planes in and out of my fish camps than ever in a helicopter.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: So with your so now with you're not right next to Yakutat.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: You're gonna fly into Yakutat from your camp.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: So it's probably uh what, a beaver or supercut?
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: How do you get into your fish camp?
• 1:00:27
  Speaker: Um well, I I mean over the years I've flown with many different pilots, but uh it's I was often um Paul from here, the beaver.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker: And then he had that bush hawk.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker: I've flown over there in the bush hawk.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker: And uh flew with Drake a little bit.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker: That never I mean, yeah, flew with Drake and uh and then Hans and Tanya that had Yakitak Coastal Air who who passed away last year in a plane crashed, but um, I flew most of my fish with Hans in his turban otter.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: So he would he would come on floats?
• 1:01:01
  Speaker: Uh no, he just had wheels land on the beach?
• 1:01:03
  Speaker: Yeah, well, uh I fished in Dry Bay.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker: Dry Bay's got airstrips.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker: Got the airstrips?
• 1:01:07
  Speaker: Oh yeah.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker: So you're loading up totes of fish.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker: Garbage cans.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: Garbage cans of fish.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: And putting them in the back of the otter and he flies them into Yakutat?
• 1:01:17
  Speaker: Yep.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker: It's a very laborous uh fishery.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: That's a that's an ex that's an expensive delivery system to get the fish to market.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker: It is, but uh, you know, the the East River there.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker: I've had a few good scores in my life.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker: Uh the East River, which is in Dry Bay, it's the east channel of the Alsac River.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker: Um, and the land is risen, and so that is no longer a channel of the Alsac, but it has its own upwellings, and it's a clear clear water m river now.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker: But anyway, East River has had some phenomenal sawkite runs.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker: And it was kind of a forgotten river.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker: Uh, when I first got out to Dry Bay, it was me and the the Robbins kids, uh were the only ones fishing it.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker: These teenage kids, they basically taught me how to set net.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker: Tell you how to set net?
• 1:02:06
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker: And um we were buddies, right?
• 1:02:10
  Speaker: And uh, and we were there when it went off, and it was just us for like five weeks, and in that five weeks I had 180,000 pounds of sockeye.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: 180,000 pounds?
• 1:02:23
  Speaker: Yeah, before holy cow in a 20-fathom net.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: I'd be like, Yeah, because that's it, those are short nets that they've got.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker: Yeah, the little river.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker: It's about as wide as well, a little wider than your twice as wide as your building.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker: And uh so I had five weeks, 180,000 pounds of sockeye before anybody from Yakutat figured out where all this fish was coming from.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker: Because they could just see a they just saw the plane coming.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker: They just saw a beaver flying over their heads all day.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker: They're like, somebody's killing it, somebody's killing it, somebody's killing it, like that fucking child dog.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker: Oops, sorry about that.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker: Uh and so So you kept the pilots going nonstop.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker: I yeah, I helped them buy an otter.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: I was gonna say, that's a lot of so do you pay to sh to the flight, or does the cannery or whoever's buying the fish from you paying for the flights?
• 1:03:13
  Speaker: The cannery pays, right?
• 1:03:14
  Speaker: Okay.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker: Especially when you're catching like that.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker: And because I mean we flooded the we flooded the place.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker: You know, we had so much fish.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker: Like I had 40,000 pound openers, you know, 50,000 pound openers.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: And it's crazy.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker: Oh it was hard.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: I bet it I bet you worked your ass off.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker: So hard.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker: And and and you use those square garbage cans, right?
• 1:03:37
  Speaker: Uh-huh.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker: And the fish go in head head down, so the tails are sticking out.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker: And uh one of those garbage cans will hold 220 pounds, you know, 210, 220.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker: And so you're lifting these 200 pound garbage cans all day long, and you're handling the fish like four or five times, right?
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker: Because you pick them, they go in the boat, you pull the boat over to the beach, you throw them into the tote that's on the back of your four-wheeler.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker: And then you drive the four-wheeler to the airstrip, and then you from there you pitch them into the garbage cans, and then you lift the garbage cans into the plane.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker: So you're handling how many times was that?
• 1:04:14
  Speaker: Like four.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker: Are you counting, Marty?
• 1:04:16
  Speaker: No.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker: No.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker: Do you know how to count?
• 1:04:18
  Speaker: No.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker: I count four.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker: Four, four, you handle the fish four times.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: That's a lot.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: It's a lot.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: It's like you move 720,000 pounds.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker: Felt like it.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: And you're the you were by yourself.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker: No, I had my nephew as well with me.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: You had your nephew with you.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker: And I always had a deck hand because I had two permits.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker: So I had to put a permit in somebody's name.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, so that's the that's peak.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: What's like what was like your worst year that you fished over?
• 1:04:52
  Speaker: Uh worst year maybe 50,000.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker: 50,000?
• 1:04:58
  Speaker: Okay.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: That's still a lot of fish.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker: Oh yeah, it's always worth it.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker: And uh and um which which is really kind of cool is Nicole Zeiser, who's fishing game here now, she was fishing game in Yakutat at the time.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker: So we have this great history.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker: Uh Nicole and I, on all these different rivers I fish.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker: I mean, she knows my fish fishing history.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker: She knows what I did out there.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: Uh-huh.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker: And um, so I see her in town and we always slapstick humor about all the good old days.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: Good old days in Yakutat.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker: Good old days in Yakatat.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: So you wouldn't fish.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: That wasn't like your spot, and you're fishing that every time.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: Each year, you kind of like, okay, I want to get here first.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: And is it a first cur come first serve?
• 1:05:37
  Speaker: That's high high competition there.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker: I mean, I had a cabin on the river, the East River, in my little zone, but I mean somebody could come in there and try to cork you off or do whatever.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker: And uh, but but we kind of owned our you don't own 'em, but it's people are respectful of that.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: That's like the Sean Dog area, that's his cabin, kind of respect it.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker: Kinda.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker: We got in some some wrestling.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: Matches on the occasionally well, I think any kind of fishery you're gonna have that.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: Even sport fishermen will be bitching at each other about throwing a hook over their line or something.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker: Well, speaking of sport fishermen, uh I don't know if you've ever heard of the Sayu River.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker: Oh, yeah.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker: That's right.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker: Yeah to fish coho.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker: So I'd pick up camp, uh, leave Dry Bay after the saw eye season and go out to Sayu.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker: Okay.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker: And set net there.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker: And that's also an equally crazy amount of fish hit that river.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker: That might be the most productive coho river in the world.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: You got a ton of sport fishermen there too.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker: Tons of them.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: So are they pissed that you're catching these in the net?
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: Do you get any words with them?
• 1:06:40
  Speaker: They're like, how many fish can two guys eat?
• 1:06:43
  Speaker: I think you're gonna eat.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker: That's just that it's the fault of the sport fishing lodge people.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker: Like uh the one the very first time I ever fished the Say U, I was on a medical transfer permit from Greg Derrick, who owns the Sayu River Lodge, right?
• 1:07:00
  Speaker: And he's a set netter.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker: Set netting built his sport fishing lodge.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker: And so he he educated his sport fishermen that these guys are making a living.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker: What they do is cool.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker: Check them out, watch what they do.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker: It's amazing.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker: And so those clients they thought we were cool.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker: They're like, wow, what you guys do is amazing.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker: Look at all these fish you catch.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker: And um, because we it's a day on, day off.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker: You fish a day, off a day, fish a day, off a day.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker: So the sport fishermen have the river to themselves every other day.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker: Nobody there.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker: And so they they thought it was cool.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker: And then um, and then there was another couple lodges there that were made through set netting.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker: And and then this Alaska Wilderness Lodge was the new lodge.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker: They've been there a long time now, but they were the ones that showed up and made a stink.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker: And their clients would always be the ones that you get in scuffles with.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker: They cast their lures at you.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker: I had you know, barbed hooks bouncing off my life jacket.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker: Seriously, yeah, they cast them right at you.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker: And we had zero problems jumping out of the boat and walking right up to them going, you do that again, I'm gonna come back here and whoop your ass.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker: Do not cast lures at me.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: And not only that, it's illegal.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker: They're harassing us, they're harassing you, but it's the people that owned that sport fishing lodge created need to be educating them on the realities of the situation.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker: They were creating the conflict.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker: They they were the ones making the sport fishermen hate us.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker: And so it's just how do you approach the problem?
• 1:08:40
  Speaker: Or is it a problem?
• 1:08:42
  Speaker: Or are you just so selfish that you want it all to yourself?
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: Did you guys ever go down and have conversations with the owners of the lodge or the management of the lodge and say, hey.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker: Not like that.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker: Plenty of conversations.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: Plenty of conversations, but they weren't might not have been.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker: I had this Millow.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker: I had this really big dog.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker: Well, she came from Haynes, her name was Shaka, and she she came from under one of these houses somewhere in Haynes, and she I think she must have been a little bit wolf, but uh she looked like kind of like a wolf, and she was big.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker: Husky lab, but she was big.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker: And the guy that I remember the guy, his name was Dan, but he was the biggest stink maker of the the set netters.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker: And I remember once my dog came over a dune where he was fishing, and it scared him so bad he dropped to his knees.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker: I thought that was the wolf was about to eat him alive or something.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: Eat him alive.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker: But I I did see uh, you know, the there's been a lot of fisheries meetings lately, and they actually tried to take the Sayu River away from the Yakutat set netters this past uh round of meetings, and they you know they didn't.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker: But there I was seeing a lot of um comments from all my set netting friends in Yakutat about well, they didn't get away with it this time, but they might next time.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker: So we need to stand up.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker: We need to get we need to get our butts back out there and and make a showing because um the rivers have all changed out there.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker: Uh the Caliac River and the Sayu River now share a mouth.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker: And so and this fishing zone on the Sayu is much shorter than it used to be.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker: It's just because it took a it's changed.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker: Yep.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker: And so not as many people go out there anymore.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker: So the sporties were thinking they could get some, you know, get an advantage on that.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker: Get an advantage in there, kick them out.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker: But uh so that uh they asked me if I wanted to go back out there and raise some hell.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker: I'm like, yeah, why not?
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: Sign me up.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker: Sign me up.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker: I'll go back out to the Say you be a man, be a real man.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: You're gonna go so you're gonna go out fishing this year?
• 1:10:49
  Speaker: I don't know, maybe.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: Maybe, maybe or you might just go over there and raise hell.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: How long has it been since you've been setting at him?
• 1:10:58
  Speaker: I think it was about eight years, was the last time I went out went for it, you know.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker: It's hard, hard on the bod.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: My shoulders still hurt.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you need to find a young deck can like Marty or something to go out there and you can just wreak havoc with everybody else, keep it nice and peaceful for him.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker: Marty's Marty's too clean cut for that place.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: He can throw all the fish for you.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker: Marty, he might survive.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker: Say you.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker: He's an AK kid.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: He's an Alaska kid, he could survive it.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: So now that so when you're not doing the other thing that I know you've been doing, what or for a while, was you were on the safety crew for old Rock TV.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker: Raw TV.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker: Actually, I was the location manager.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker: Location manager.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker: Which I was also, I kind of did a little bit of everything.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker: I was I how did how did that come about?
• 1:11:48
  Speaker: Uh let's see.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker: Uh Isaac, who was a guide for me.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker: Isaac Doolin.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker: Yep, he was working for Raw TV the year before.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker: And um, I can't remember who was their location manager before, but he quit.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker: And uh Lisa Roberts, actually a good friend of mine from Juno, when she she used to bartend at the hangar.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker: Seriously?
• 1:12:11
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: I didn't know she was from Juno.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker: Oh, yeah, that's why where I know her from.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker: Okay.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker: And so I was basically, I'll do it, Lisa.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker: She's like, You're perfect.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker: And uh I got the um location manager job, which was awesome.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker: Um, I didn't have to so what's a location manager do?
• 1:12:28
  Speaker: You basically do all the logistics for building and running and taking care of the crew.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker: Okay.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker: So build the camp up there.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker: I don't know if you ever saw it.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: The camp I've seen the show, but I didn't see the camp.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker: The camp we built was unreal for the like an adult.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, the one up at uh Nugget.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: Big Nugget?
• 1:12:47
  Speaker: No, McKinley.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: Uh McKinley.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, I did see that.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker: Where the zip line is.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: I did not see that one.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker: Yeah, that thing was a masterpiece.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker: I never went out to the other one.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker: How was that?
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: It's great.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker: It's pretty good.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker: They're both different.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: They're both uh special in their own way.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker: I really like that McKinley camp with the zipline.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker: But um, yeah, that was a fun gig for five years.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: But then uh so you set up the camp, were you one on one setting up the zipline and everything too?
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: Or uh we didn't know.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: Was that already up?
• 1:13:18
  Speaker: It was already up, but we maintained it.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker: Maintained it.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker: And um, yeah, just developed a haul system for that by using a crab hot hauler hydraulic hydropack.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker: Got a pretty skook'em haul system across the zip line going.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker: And I don't know, I just left my mark on that place with my little fish camp tricks, uh honestly.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker: Everything I knew learned at fish camp, I applied to McKinley camp and every it worked.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: The remote to make it comfortable for everybody to stay for the week while they're up there, yeah.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker: Just learn how to live in the woods.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: So that was your deal.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: You'd heliskiing in the wintertime, running the either for commercial fishing, running the camp in the summertime.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker: And so now that logging now and ski trail building.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker: The only thing I haven't I haven't actually done is go gold mining.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker: I don't know if I want to do it, but uh, I worked on a gold show.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker: I think that might be close enough.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker: It's pretty close.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker: Could be in that.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker: Oh, I also did mountain men for Constantine.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker: Building the helipads and drill pads.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: You were one of the guys that they drop off on the side of the mountain, and that was a crazy job.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker: Building stuff on steep slopes.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: I was uh several years ago when they were doing the helicopter tours.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: I went with the helicopter and they went up and they're like right next to the drill pad that whoever it was that was building at the time.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, these guys are freaking nuts.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: All in that stuff, the big those big because it's some big timbers and stuff that they're bringing up there, and it is it's crazy.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: It's vertical.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: It's some crazy places that you guys are building these pads and then running to drill off of it.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker: You kind of feel like uh what do they call that when you're like the duck people shoots at?
• 1:15:03
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker: You know, duck pond or whatever.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker: Was it well you're like you're you're right in the in the I mean you could get hit by rocks up there so easy.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker: Uh-huh.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker: There's rocks falling off the mountain every day, and your rocks are peer, pur.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker: It's just like this is nuts up here.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: And is am I misremembering, but were there also times because I thought they had gear set up, so if the weather came in and they couldn't get you off the mountain, there's times the guys had to stay up on the platforms at night.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker: Is that they have they had weather ports set up on some of those, and I think that at one point they built a they had a plywood shack or something that actually tumbled down the mountain.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker: Ashley Call was in there, but uh Yeah.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: Chevy had to stay up there for multiple days.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: Multiple days up on the side of the mountain.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker: So there's there's a place to stay up there, but I mean uh it's just you don't want to.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker: You don't want to.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker: You wouldn't want to stay up there.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker: Uh yeah.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker: It's just you you just got to be on your toes up on that side of that.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: But you just you're just roped off then the whole time.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker: No, you're not what you just if you're a mountain person, you can you can scramble around on those those mountainsides, it's not that big of a deal.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm just thinking is you're trying to, it's one thing to be scrambling around on a mountain, like if you're goat hunting, you got a pack, you got your rifle on, or whatever.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but trying to get a helicopter coming over the top of you got these big beams that you're trying to set in place, or drill rigs and stuff, that seems to me to a different, it's it's it would be so easy for your balance to twitch by reaching or something like that.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker: Uh totally, but you know that the the crews like that, they have the strong guys, which I was the one of the strong guys, and then you got the little squirrely guys that squirrel around and do all the crazy stuff.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker: So yeah, everybody's got their place.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: Everybody's got their place.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but nobody's worried about falling down the mountain.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker: I think somebody did fall down.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker: I think Nathan Jones fell up there.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker: Fell?
• 1:17:01
  Speaker: I think he did.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker: But uh I mean, yeah, it's it's it's it's I took Emshaw.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker: Hazardous uh risk assessment, hazard assessment, yeah.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker: Um yeah, I mean, you can oh you know, they want you to say it's safe, so yeah, it's safe up there.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker: It's safe up there, yeah.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker: As safe as it can be.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: But I I and I'm and I'm getting I guess the biggest thing is just once once you're doing it, you get comfortable with anything, you get comfortable with it.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I and with your background with skiing with the hell skiing and stuff like that, you had a built-in comfort factor probably before you even started that a lot of people wouldn't have.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker: Totally.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker: Except in the back of my mind, I think about that boulder that rolled me over.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: So, what what's your favorite Helliski run?
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: Is it here in Haynes?
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: Is was it up in Valdez, one of those?
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: Where's like your most epic run?
• 1:18:02
  Speaker: Well, I did the Mennon Hall Towers in Juneau, which was probably one of the crazier, craziest runs.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker: Uh I only, you know, I wouldn't want to ski that every day.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker: Um then I've had a couple really crazy runs in Haynes, but I'd say as far as like a run that I'd love to go ski every day, would probably be a run we called Deflowered, um, which is close to 35 mile in that whole zone.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker: You know, the venue, obviously, where they hold the contest is amazing.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker: Uh anywhere around the Jarvis, all that stuff's great.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker: But Deflowered is probably one of my favorite runs.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker: But my absolute favorite run of all favorite runs is one I've never ski before.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: Why why is it your favorite if you haven't skied it before?
• 1:18:46
  Speaker: Because you're pioneering.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker: You're pioneering, you're exploring.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker: Okay.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker: And that's what got me to Haynes, right?
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: So is that is that one is it off is it off limits?
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: Is that why you haven't skied it yet?
• 1:18:56
  Speaker: Any run that I haven't skied before is my favorite run.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: I got you.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: I gotcha.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker: Till the next one I haven't skipped before.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: Till the next one you haven't skied before.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: Now, are you still actively guiding?
• 1:19:08
  Speaker: Uh no, I am not actively guiding.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker: I prefer not to carry the guide pack, but uh I I do end up finding myself guiding occasionally, uh, get a little too busy or or um or if I'm taking the family out.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker: That's I really love to take my kids out heli skiing and just do all the fun runs.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker: But uh my favorite thing though is to ride as a unruly client.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker: So just go out and do some fun runs and yeah, just go out and I call it guide training.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: Perfect.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker: Go out with the with the guides, maybe a guide I haven't skied with before or or whatever, and just see how they're doing.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker: What is beyond the skiing?
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: I I kind of have an idea what would be my favorite part, but how having a hella ski business.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: Beyond the skiing, what's your what's your favorite part of being in that business?
• 1:20:06
  Speaker: All the friends.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: That's what I was gonna think.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: Just the people coming from different areas around the world.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker: Yeah, totally.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker: Uh and you know, um we're really connected to the ski bums and the the industry type people more than others, I think.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker: It has a lot to do because we're probably the most affordable on purpose, trying not to get into that other crowd, trying to just stay the the core people that really love skiing and snowboarding.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker: It's the number one thing.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker: Yeah, and um a lot of them can't, you know, they they save up and they can only do this trip once in a lifetime, you know.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker: Most most people uh so we try to we try to stay in that realm of clientele as much as we can.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: And you guys were the sponsor or whatever of the local Helliski for how did that work with Freeride?
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: Weren't you guys dialed in with them or not?
• 1:21:04
  Speaker: They yeah, they request they wanted us to do it.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker: To do it, yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker: Have a history with those guys and just get along well with Nicholas and his his crew and um Tom Burt, like I mentioned before, was one of their judges, and uh so just a good connection and and maybe the lack of panic, the lack of you know, kind of even keeledness.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker: I think they needed that in their program.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: What do you what is your take on because there's been a lot of dialogue in the community about the boroughs' investment in bringing free ride here.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker: I mean, I'm I'm for it because I'm gonna get the the contract again, and I'm pretty positive.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker: Uh uh so from a business standpoint, I'm definitely for it.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker: Um as far as you know attracting more heli skiers to Haints, I think we have plenty already attracted.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker: Uh what we really need is more area to accommodate all this if we're gonna try to promote the skiing more.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker: Um But you know, any c any any time you can you can get publicity or notoriety in into the world platform, it's gotta be good for Haynes.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: I think the biggest thing that I've been hearing from people is whether or not it was worth the $75,000.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: And with next year, with them asking $150, is the borough gonna be able to get enough other partners to get that $75,000 lower?
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: Because they're able to get $25,000, I think, in corporate sponsorship this year.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker: I think if they try hard enough, they they'll be able to find some money.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker: Uh you know, you gotta find those players that are looking for some uh for some uh what's the word I'm looking for?
• 1:22:51
  Speaker: Um tip of my tongue.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker: Philanthropy.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker: Need some people that have something to philanthropize.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: Philanthropize, yeah.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: That might be a new word.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I've heard that one before.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: But I like it.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker: Philanthropizing.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker: Yeah, it's how I mean isn't it how wealthy people sort of hide their sins?
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: It's one way.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker: So you know, companies like uh that are tearing up the earth or you know, these big industries, this is where they need to get some money from.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: So those people so should Reba reach out to Shondog to start making some phone calls?
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: Maybe just like, hey, you're doing this bad stuff.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: You I know the best way for you to get on on good graces here is to be coughing up some dough for free ride and haines.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker: Exactly.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker: I mean, that's where it's at for those kind of things.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker: I mean, I think you guys know what I'm talking about.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker: Philanthropy.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker: I invented it for a reason.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker: Forgiveness.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: So you if if free ride doesn't come back, are you still got a full season?
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: Is it pretty easy for you to book out?
• 1:24:07
  Speaker: It seems like like it.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker: I mean, I've already got so many bookings for next year.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker: And uh last year I had a bunch of bookings for this year already, but at this point, so um, you know, Haynes, Haynes is out there, it's been out there for a lot of years.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: Twenty-some years now.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker: When did I get here?
• 1:24:25
  Speaker: 2000, 25 years.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker: 25 years.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker: Helly Skeen and Haynes.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker: Actually, we started Heli Ski and Haynes in 1995.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: You got you guys made a trip in 95?
• 1:24:35
  Speaker: Yes, we did.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker: With rap films who came up and got picketed by uh our friends at the airport you're being picketed, or what really?
• 1:24:46
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: I don't remember that.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker: This was about the same time as the cruise ship thing was going on.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was right before all the cruise ship stuff happened.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker: Yeah, and we showed up.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: So they practiced on you before they took it out on the cruise ships.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker: It might have happened before we might have been right after the cruise ships.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: Because I thought the picketing of the cruise ships was later, it was like 98, 99.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: Maybe.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: Right before they had the um uh before the tour tax came in, was voted in.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker: Yeah, I I but yeah, around the same time.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker: Yeah, we were picketed.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker: Uh it was rap films, and it was Eric Peota and Trevor Peterson were the athletes, and they skied Telemark Ridge.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker: Uh, what we used Kurt Gloyer uh initially and landed it with an airplane.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker: You know who I've talked about, Kurt Gloyer.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker: Uh yeah, landed, he landed up there somehow, and and and we skied that thing.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker: Um, and then came back with helicopters and got picketed.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker: And I I remember going to the the Haynes Fair that next year with Bruce, my original partner, and uh Tom Ealy and Sue Liebenson were there, and they're getting in a he was an instigator, he's like, you know, one of those guys that just says whatever and it just to make people get all and I was just kind of listening to it, chuckling here and there, and I remember Sue Leibenson looked at me and she's like, Well, you seem like a reasonable guy.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker: What do you think?
• 1:26:09
  Speaker: Yeah, I'm one of them.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker: I'm one of them.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: Where do you see the Hellski industry going?
• 1:26:21
  Speaker: Uh-huh.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker: I mean, I would like to just see status quo.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker: Let's just quit messing with it.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker: Just there's been so many changes, and every time they open this thing up, I mean, I don't know if you you must have paid attention to the last map committee.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker: That was just a joke.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker: But we go in asking for nut please, nothing.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker: We don't want anything, leave it alone.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker: And then or Eric Hawley, he kept talking about me saying this or that about some goats somewhere, and then they try to close half of the terrain.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker: It's just like, you guys are making yourselves look silly.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker: You're making yourselves look silly because uh we don't need to keep fighting, we don't need to fight about this for 25 years.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker: We've made enough rules.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: Let's just one of the things that I think would be beneficial is if whoever is on the map committee before they have a map committee meeting, because those are what every five years it's there's they're bring them up again, that they have to take a tour of the valley during heliski season in a helicopter to see where people are skiing and where they aren't skiing.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: A couple of years ago we did that, um, it was offered to the assembly, and I think most of us took it.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: And I was on a flight with Alecka and Gabe and myself, and with Seba, and they were taking us and describing the different areas and showing, and it's it's pretty obvious as somebody that hunts goats, because I like the taste of them, yeah.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: Um, that the areas where you guys are able to ski, goats aren't.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: going to be in the areas where you guys are able to ski when you guys are able to ski there.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker: Yeah, polar aspects is what that's called.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you guys want deep snow, the goats don't want deep snow.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker: No, there's solar aspects where the goats like to be and there's polar aspects, which is the critical skier habitat.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: Critical skier habitat, okay.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: Polar.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker: We want the cold snow.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker: Got the cold snow.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker: Goats don't want to post hole around a cold snow.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker: They want that wind-scoured, sun-crusted, someplace they can get a purchase and not be neck deep.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker: So yeah, and there, you know, the map, I mean it would be great to keep working on the maps, but every time it gets opened up they they just attack so hard and try to take so much away it's like not even worth it.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker: It's not worth losing anymore.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker: So yeah.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker: But you know when they did make the maps they they made mistakes when they follow these contour lines, you know, they'll cut across a ridge or they'll or they'll won't let you quite get to the top or they won't let you quite get to the bottom of the run.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker: So it would take an awful lot of work to fix it all.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker: Like a decades of working on it to try to fix all these spots.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: The little spots where the the boundary is 30 yards down the slope instead of at the ridge.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker: Right.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker: And that all comes down to the fact that the Haynes Borough is not a professional permit administrator.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: Would you rather would it be better for you if they just kept the status quo or do you think it would be a better managed system?
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: I'm not taking it back not better for you.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker: Do you think it would be a better managed system if the borough was told because there's some people say the borough should just get out of it but I've talked to some people that are in the bit industry they're like wait a second no we don't want it just free for all we want some of the borough regulations which where are you at once that's that's the thing it's like you know when in 2006 when the state gave the borough management control of the state lands for helisking I I thought there was a chance that we could do something special and we could make this amazing right the the it's it's there the possibility is there to actually be different than everywhere else and um it's it's it'd be you'd have to unravel so much stuff at this point to to get there.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker: And so but then if you if the borough walked away from it all and gave it to the state then everybody and their little brother would be able to get a permit right so I would say let's just stop.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: So then you could have 30 helicopters out there fighting for the same space.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker: Well I think the borough I think the borough has the borough has a limit but if you took the borough out of it is what I'm saying.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: If so if it's just the state anybody could get a permit yeah and you have no idea how many people are going to be out there running a hell of ski business.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker: Oh it'd be it it could easily be a nightmare.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker: Yeah so yeah it's a tricky sticky slope but I think we should just call it good leave it where it is just leave alone.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker: The only thing that could help would be you know Alaska Heliski's out the road Seeb is in town and Reggie's in the middle and and we used you know the reason 33 mile and 19 mile are even recognized as heli ports is because they grandfathered them in for my company you were the first one in both those places for Hellskin.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker: I I lobbied for those two spots and the airport because I flew everywhere.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker: Right?
• 1:31:30
  Speaker: I had five or six helicopters going you know five and I would get over two thousand user days I was almost at reaching the limit by yourself by myself right and and you know SIBA they were customers and the burrow gave some of that to them and then Reggie he was also a customer and so the Yeah both of them ended up started out as customers of yours.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker: Yes and so basically I I I don't want to feel bitter but they took my company that I had built and gave it away they cut it into pieces and gave it away so you know for me I can never be what we can never be what we were ever again you know we were a big powerful Heliski company and whatever chopped it up and we were achieving more with less so the way that the way it went the way things happened was they created more helicopter activity for less revenue less use more helicopters.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker: So it seems the exact opposite of what they were trying to do to me when I first moved here.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker: That happens often yeah it's like everybody's got a lot of really good bad ideas to to try and make things better and in the end you know and then you have the revolving door at the at the borough assembly you know you get this this person in there that's all fired up to fix everything and come up with a bunch of crazy ideas that go through and it's just like no not another operator why so one of the things that trying to get because I'm I'm trying to get um I've been trying to get Reggie on here as well as uh Nick to kind of get their stories and I don't I don't know how I could manage a Helliski company.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: Your guys' variability all the time on yeah we can be available here but then all of a sudden the weather changes and you guys are gotta be extremely flexible and just ready to pivot at any moment don't you totally yeah you just because no matter what the weather like the next day kind of like fishing.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: Kind of like fishing.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker: Yeah so yeah maybe I was just built for it both of those things.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker: Marty can attest because I would tell him it's like hey we got an interview scheduled and this next morning I'm like yeah that got got canceled weather changed they're going skiing there this is happening this is happening and so during the season you guys are hard to get in touch with oh man yeah well we're up at five and to bed at 10 or later we don't really party too hard out there we try to ski more ski as much as possible and like our parties are usually over by but are are you are you feeding them then because you got you're growing all the stuff to feed the skiers right so yeah so you have dinner and stuff that you prepare breakfast dinner for your clients uh for clients and the guides and the guides and the staff yeah yeah and uh some people you know a lot of our people stay in town in places and uh but the ones that are that are more dirt baggy like to stay out there with us and just be part of the be part of the scene yeah in Powder Mountain so how is is that who's doing the cooking uh I got a couple gals that come up every year okay and uh bring them in and do the do the cooking for everybody yeah and they love to ski all of our people ski as much as they can and put them in empty seats like always got an empty seat or two for the the staff so how much uh person's coming up average day how many how many vertical feet can you get on a good snow bluebird day uh I think you get like twenty twenty to thirty thousand vert vertical feet and that's how many runs that's like six to ten runs something like that okay ten runs is a big day that's a lot yeah eight you know six to eight is pretty normal uh um a lot of these days we'll we'll have weather you know we might only go out and get two or three in a window two or three runs in a little sunny hole um and is the price based on vertical feed or is the price based on you're paying an amount per day and if you go ski and it's the same amount whether you do there's so many ways to sell it.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker: If you look at the internet some people sell it by heli time some people sell it so many different ways and uh we just sell it by the run.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker: Okay.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker: Just like 30 runs in a week this much money and if you get all 30 then you can buy more runs at a lesser rate.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker: Okay.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker: So there's the there's the number you gotta hit to make pay the bills and then um and then if you get there then you you can keep going if you want or call it good.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker: Yeah um most people if it's good they keep going at least get a few more runs.
• 1:36:34
  Speaker: We had one guy this year get 54 runs in a week.
• 1:36:37
  Speaker: Dang.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker: Yeah he was cranking he went for it actually he's 10 days 10 days he was here for 10 days that's still pretty good there's a lot of runs that's a lot of runs on a short period and he's 71 71 what old ski bum what what is is he your oldest client that you've had or have you had anybody older than that so there's been older people but this guy was a fisherman from the east coast he just sold his fleet of boats and he's got himself an Earth Roamer.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker: You know what that is no they're like a these giant RV trucks I think they're like almost a million bucks these things okay 780 exactly with the big tires of the like all-wheel drive going anywhere big forward but all pimped out and like all molded into one unit so it's like did he drive that here?
• 1:37:25
  Speaker: Yeah it was parked at my place for a while I think I saw it in town yeah what you're talking about.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker: Yeah yeah yeah that guy but he was a trawler unfortunately but super great guy and he sold his trawl fleet of I don't know how many boats he had a dozen boats so he's just loaded and just hung out at our place is just like the happiest guy ever cool old ski bum yeah so those are the cool rich guys yes those kind of guys so we need to talk to him yeah that's the guy we need we need him come back can can he sponsor free ride I don't know call him up he probably doesn't even care about free ride he probably doesn't care about free ride but sounds like it's worth a call we'll put you in charge of that yeah I wonder I wonder what will happen with free ride I know they love it here yeah they they love it here and I I think it's great for the community it's just I don't with the current price I don't unless a lot of corporate sponsorships come in I don't see the borough from the feedback that from the public feedback and the breadth of the community that's providing negative feedback on the amount of money that went into it I don't see it I don't see them allocating that kind of money going forward for it.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker: Yeah I have a hard time seeing it unless they can come up with it.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker: Unless unless we got outside interests that are business interests and stuff that are willing to kick in some money into that I mean it's worth it's worth going for it um I know that if you can generate a bunch of sponsors you get a kickback.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah you could get a kickback if you found a big sponsor if I found a big sponsor yeah I'm I'm still looking for a sponsor for this I've had I I I don't need hundreds of thousands of dollars I just need a little a little bit to kind of keep this going.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker: Freeride donated to Powder Mountain.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker: Did they yeah they gave the ski club 2000 bucks nice yeah so they gave back to the community.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah I'm not saying they don't I mean we had them in the store here and they're buying groceries and stuff it was good seeing you tell you saw them around town it's it was I think it was unfortunate this year.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: It was great for them.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah unfortunate for the community that they they got here and it's like boom hey Friday we're going skiing partially my fault way to go because uh I don't think it was because I saw the weather forecast yeah I saw the weather forecast and told them yeah but I wouldn't say it's your fault because it was a good thing they did that because you look at the rest of the weather they wouldn't have had an they wouldn't have had a competition.
• 1:39:48
  Speaker: They wouldn't have had one.
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah and so I would rather them be here for a couple days and have a really good event and have everybody stoked about it and putting all those good vibes and good video out rather than yeah we went to Haynes we were there for 10 days and couldn't ski a single day.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker: Because they canceled the two events before that the two events before that guy three three that got canceled?
• 1:40:07
  Speaker: But they keep they got to keep the money though.
• 1:40:11
  Speaker: They needed it to keep their business alive but I think all those different venues that they went to they still made money on them because they that was part of their contracts.
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah well that same contract with Han said yeah we paid them the money regardless if the event went off or not they yeah they had a contract for me I'm like we're gonna wing it we're gonna wing it we're winging it yeah so what what are we missing in the Sean Dog story here?
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: What a baby did we forget?
• 1:40:46
  Speaker: Well maybe my mom was a total hippie I think that's uh what why my parents split apart because she was just like a flower child and my dad he was more of a came from an electrical contracting family so he was a little bit of a privileged person uh in life and she was just kind of a crazy per you know crazy wild woman and so I don't think you'll take offense at this but it does not that does not surprise me.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: That is not a shock.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: I've not met your mom I don't think but that is not a surprise.
• 1:41:21
  Speaker: That's exactly I mean show everybody your sunglass your glasses you got on the point I was gonna make is my mom is a little bit of a hippie child.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker: Yeah she's a little wild and that gave me that wild hair that got me here and my dad's sensibility probably helped me keep it all together.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: Keep the business going and everything.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker: Yeah it's a good blend.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker: Yeah worked out well it's working out working out let's hope I keep it going.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah that this is my 30th season of running a heliski company I think after 30 years I think you kind of got it figured out and I I I would based on those lessons unless you unless you fall and hit your head and forget everything you did I think you probably learned enough lessons now Sean that you'll keep it going as long as you decide you want to keep it going.
• 1:42:05
  Speaker: It's kind of automated at this point it just keeps happening whether I want it to or not.
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 2: So did do any of the kids want to like keep this going after dad decides to retire or they off on different pursuits?
• 1:42:18
  Speaker: I think Yeah I mean they definitely have a huge interest in what we're doing.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker: I think Juniper my youngest is probably the one that will be most into it she's she's sort of suited for it.
• 1:42:31
  Speaker: And um I never really talked about my wife much but she's she's a heli pilot from the Yukon.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: I didn't know she was a heli pilot.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker: Yeah Rihanna my wife she's been flying helicopters for 15 20 years and um out of did she fly for uh Trans North out of junction or she flew for Discovery helicopters in Atlanta and she also flew for uh Heli Dynamics in Whitehorse.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker: Yeah and um yeah she's got thousands of hours uh you know doing industrial work slinging drill rigs and doing all that sort of thing I did not know that about her I know is that how you met her because she was taking you on a ski trip or something no no no she I met her skiing in Canada yeah the first time uh 20 years ago I was guiding um absinthe films down at out of Prince Rupert cowboy guiding because I was an American guiding guiding in Canada and um met her there and then uh about 10 years later I ran into her at the Pioneer because she had been flying out of Whitehorse and she knew um Darren Schweinfuse and her were friends and he was like oh you gotta meet my friend who's a heli pilot and he called me out of my so I drove all the way downtown and you're like I know her and we started talking I'm like wait a minute I know you I gotta remember you from Prince Ripper she's like yeah you were the guy you were that guy you you had the biggest pair of skis I'd ever seen before so but she's my dream girl I got lucky there too so but uh she doesn't really want to fly heli skiing because she loves skiing so much.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker: Understandable yeah so but she does want to get into flying again uh she hasn't flown a lot lately because we had juniper but now juniper's old enough so she'd probably get back into flying helicopters.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker: It'd be great if we could afford a helicopter I think that might be out of out of reach but maybe someday never know put that put that idea out in the universe sometimes you can figure out a way to make it happen.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker: You'd have to you'd have to figure out a way to make money with it in Haynes and with the way people helping help hely logging up for the extensions on Power Mount and another another way to do that.
• 1:44:53
  Speaker: Heli logging you don't have to do your skid rows you can just just throw I don't I'm not saying that it's it's uh economically feasible but it's an idea for you I kind of like helybiking sounds about righting yeah we got a clear path first you want to have some kind of a path don't you well you know um I lived in Car Cross for two years with Rihanna when she worked for Heli Dynamics and her boss actually gave us a helicopter for two summers and that's all I did was helibike.
• 1:45:22
  Speaker: She just dropped you off and down the mountain you go well we had a kind of a little bit of a business going I was guiding helibiking in Car Cross.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker: Seriously yeah but uh you know Car Cross is a big mountain bike mecca.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker: I did not know that about Car Cross oh there's so much mountain bike trails there and in Whitehorse.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker: I knew there was a bunch in Whitehorse I didn't know there was a bunch in Car Cross oh Car Cross has the best and so there's always a ton of people biking there and and her boss gave us this helicopter and we parked it at um Caribou Crossing that little tourist trap right there and she did flight scene tours out of there with it because we lived right across the street from that place.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker: And and then I would just drum up bikers I'd be like hey you guys want to get in that go up and go helibiking it was easy to talk people into it.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker: I bet it was so I had like 50 days of summer for two summers of doing helibike guiding helibiking so I got like a hundred days of it and then um and then at the end of that one summer there was a uh what were what were you charging to take people heli biking?
• 1:46:26
  Speaker: It was like 175 bucks a run.
• 1:46:28
  Speaker: A run?
• 1:46:28
  Speaker: Okay.
• 1:46:29
  Speaker: So you could do like three or four runs yeah sometimes just one caribou mountain there it was like a 4,000 foot run.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker: Yeah and it was a lot like heli skiing actually because the mountains up there they are there's they have spines on them like they do here.
• 1:46:43
  Speaker: But instead of being like this it's like that.
• 1:46:47
  Speaker: So the stiffness is different but the terrain's the same so you get up on one of these spines and you can ride your bike right down them because most of them have game trails on on them.
• 1:46:58
  Speaker: So you're basically free riding like just like Kelly skiing flying around and pointing at mountains and getting dropped off and doing runs.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker: It's kind of crazy how similar similar it is.
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: Is there any train around here that'd be suitable for that I'm gonna figure it out that's my goal you're pissing people off aren't you maybe I'll make them happy yeah hard to say hard to say you'll probably do both people can make really happy there's some people you can make really bad I know I'll be happy yeah uh no because that that is one of whether it's helicopter or anything like we were talking earlier with you developing your property up there I think there are a lot of ways that we can use the resources we have in the community to create a lot more recruit we call ourselves the adventure capital of Alaska I if we want to lean into that we need to create more infrastructure to make that happen.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker: It's a great phrase that was coined but it but I don't think we live up to it.
• 1:48:01
  Speaker: No Haynes does not live up to that we we we have to do more to make that Juno lives up to that Juno lives up to it.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker: Haynes does not and that I didn't really want to bring that up but uh yes I agree 100% Haynes has a long way to go to become the adventure capital of Alaska and I'm here to help yeah I'm here to help I think there's I think there are a lot of ways that without a ton of impact that we can elevate our adventure abilities here and right just the not even adventure just recreation having more areas for recreation.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker: Yeah we're building mountain bike trails at our place yeah we've been building them and biking them and um we've been doing a lot of fun biking down flower mountain's great we've got that track we got a side by side it's all rigged up to take four people and four bikes up okay so you hang the bikes off the back and four passengers one driver we've been doing mountain bike laps up there.
• 1:49:01
  Speaker: Nice it's pretty good actually we go up there and I'd be more impressed if you're biking up and then riding down Sean screw that I got this heli belly for a reason you don't want to work that off before next hell of skiing could you imagine riding your bike to the top of Flower Mountain suck.
• 1:49:18
  Speaker: No I do not want to imagine that it's all about the downhill that's where the fun is agreed but we would go up there in the summer and ski and bike so you go up to the snow line hike up mahoganies and do do a ski run to the bike and bike back.
• 1:49:33
  Speaker: We were doing that all last summer at least once a month get our ski turns and bike trip in do you think there's because AM is AMG still doing their A T V tour up to the top of Flower Mountain?
• 1:49:46
  Speaker: I'm not sure I s when I was working at Raw T V I'd see them hiking up there.
• 1:49:52
  Speaker: But they did A T Vs up to the top I never saw A T Vs going up there.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 2: Just to the flat I thought they had a I thought they had an A T V tour up there somewhere.
• 1:50:00
  Speaker: Were they maybe going up sunshine?
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: I I thought they were going up Flower Mountain with something.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker: That'd be dangerous.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 2: I think what about doing a tour where you take people up there and bike them back?
• 1:50:13
  Speaker: Maybe.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker: Maybe.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker: Maybe.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker: That's what they did in Car Cross.
• 1:50:18
  Speaker: I mean, that's Yeah.
• 1:50:19
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:50:19
  Speaker: You get a you get a bump up for I can't remember what it was.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker: 20 20 bucks, I think.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker: You get a bump up.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker: Uh-huh.
• 1:50:25
  Speaker: Just yeah.
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 2: Hop on a bike, come barreling down.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:50:30
  Speaker: They have a massive trail system up there, though.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker: So, you know, you get a bump up in Car Cross, you got like 10 different trails to ride down.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker: That's the side bike, you know, that's the road access stuff.
• 1:50:42
  Speaker: And then the helibiking we did around there.
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: Are they still doing is anybody doing helibiking up there still?
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 2: Nobody's no.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker: We started doing that before helibiking was kind of a thing.
• 1:50:52
  Speaker: It was like 13 years ago that we were doing that.
• 1:50:55
  Speaker: And helibiking's taking off in places now.
• 1:50:57
  Speaker: But I think we were just a little ahead of the curve on the idea.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker: But um, you know, they have also have environmentalists and they have a dull sheep population up there, and they're and some of the people were really protective of that, and Car Cross was a First Nations spot, and and um it wasn't a real tour, it was just basically people leave chartering a helicopter and doing what they want, right?
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:51:23
  Speaker: And so they couldn't really stop us, but uh they did if you're running it as a business they'd probably put the kibosh up.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker: Yeah, I don't think you could actually you could try.
• 1:51:32
  Speaker: I'm sure some place you could, but that area right in Car Cross was ideal because you'd get dropped off, ride your bike down, right to town, get a beer, eat ice cream.
• 1:51:42
  Speaker: Just like all right there.
• 1:51:44
  Speaker: Your your bike ride ends in Car Cross, uh-huh.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker: Right?
• 1:51:48
  Speaker: So it was pretty cool.
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't been to Car Cross for a while since Chuck Buchanan sold Caribou Crossing.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:51:56
  Speaker: The world's biggest bear.
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: World's biggest bear.
• 1:51:59
  Speaker: Do you know Greg McHale, the guy that's gonna be?
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: I know Greg, yep.
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: I've I've talked to him several times.
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's a nice guy, too.
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 2: Greg and Denise.
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: I haven't met Denise.
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 2: I've met Greg a few times, but haven't met Denise.
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no uh Buchanan's did a great job building that up from what they had.
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: They I mean Chuck's Chuck was just his he was so imaginative and such a talented artist in so many ways.
• 1:52:24
  Speaker: And his big trophy room was nuts.
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker: That place is crazy.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 2: Well the the musk or the um what was it?
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: The the big huge thing that he had in there, the um The Mastodon.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: Mastodon.
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: The woolly mammoth.
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 2: I think it was where do you get one of those?
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 2: Well, he he made it.
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: It was out, it was all out of musk octides.
• 1:52:47
  Speaker: He was sewing together muscoctides to make these.
• 1:52:49
  Speaker: That's crazy.
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:52:52
  Speaker: World's largest bear.
• 1:52:53
  Speaker: It was a big sign on the road.
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 2: Just the the the time the yeah, it and just the things he would come up with.
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: It was like, dang.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: He was very, very talented individual.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 2: We lost him way too soon.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker: Yeah, I never met him.
• 1:53:05
  Speaker: I just met Greg and Denise.
• 1:53:07
  Speaker: But uh, yeah.
• 1:53:09
  Speaker: That was a cool two summer.
• 1:53:12
  Speaker: I lived there for two straight years, two winters, two summers.
• 1:53:14
  Speaker: Two winners and two summers.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:53:16
  Speaker: And then we got um shipped up to uh Nahani.
• 1:53:20
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:53:21
  Speaker: Uh South Nahani Outfitters, a hunting camp up there.
• 1:53:25
  Speaker: Werner, Oshburger, Werner and Sunny Oshburger.
• 1:53:28
  Speaker: And uh we were only supposed to go up there for two weeks to relieve the pilot.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker: So me, Rihanna, and Juniper was not even one year old.
• 1:53:36
  Speaker: She had her first birthday up there.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 3: Uh-huh.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 3: Her first birthday.
• 1:53:39
  Speaker: I think it was.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker: And I went up just to watch Juniper while Rihanna would fly the hunters around, and I but I did bring my mountain bike and uh the Oshbachers, they had kids, right?
• 1:53:51
  Speaker: And so they'd watch Juniper.
• 1:53:54
  Speaker: Rihanna would leave camp to go pick up hunters, and she'd drop me on one of these peaks near the camp.
• 1:54:01
  Speaker: Uh-huh.
• 1:54:01
  Speaker: And I, you know, like 20-mile rides I'd do, but I'd be up on these crazy mountains by myself, riding down to the river, and then pound my way back to camp and just be like, wow.
• 1:54:14
  Speaker: Totally freaky, but totally awesome, but by myself.
• 1:54:19
  Speaker: So be don't get hurt.
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 2: Did you have an in-reach or something to reach her?
• 1:54:24
  Speaker: Uh no in reach, but I had a radio.
• 1:54:26
  Speaker: Okay.
• 1:54:26
  Speaker: So I could hit somebody up.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker: But she'd fly 150 miles in that direction.
• 1:54:31
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: That's a long way.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: It's a long time until you got help coming back if something happened.
• 1:54:35
  Speaker: No help.
• 1:54:35
  Speaker: No help.
• 1:54:36
  Speaker: Just be just be careful.
• 1:54:37
  Speaker: Just be careful.
• 1:54:38
  Speaker: And don't get eaten by a bear, because those bears up there are crazy up there.
• 1:54:42
  Speaker: And I'd see wolves, and I could ride my bike right next to a caribou, and they wouldn't even care.
• 1:54:48
  Speaker: Just like, oh.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 4: Hi, caribou.
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker: It was pretty drippy.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 2: That would have been a fun experience.
• 1:54:58
  Speaker: But we were only supposed to be there two weeks, and we ended up staying there three months.
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: I'd stay there that long too.
• 1:55:04
  Speaker: I didn't want to leave.
• 1:55:05
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:55:05
  Speaker: It was amazing.
• 1:55:06
  Speaker: Amazing, amazing.
• 1:55:08
  Speaker: Doll sheep every night for dinner.
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: Did you have a chance to go back?
• 1:55:12
  Speaker: I haven't been back since, but I mean I'd love to go back there.
• 1:55:16
  Speaker: It was one of the coolest.
• 1:55:17
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:55:20
  Speaker: It was one of the coolest experiences I've had.
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: But anyway.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 2: What el what else are we missing?
• 1:55:28
  Speaker: I don't know.
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: There's a lot, but that's enough.
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 2: That's enough?
• 1:55:36
  Speaker: We'll have a sequel.
• 1:55:37
  Speaker: A sequel?
• 1:55:37
  Speaker: Sean Dog Part 2.
• 1:55:39
  Speaker: When your show takes off.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker: Or did is how I mean how many viewers have you got?
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 2: I've got um total views on YouTube's uh about 160,000.
• 1:55:49
  Speaker: Oh, that's cool.
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 2: So got about almost 190 subscribers now and slowly building it up.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: Nice.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: But it's it's a slog.
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 2: But now that I've got Shondog on here, they're just gonna just skyrocket.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker: There was a YouTube channel that was here this summer that that filmed us for a couple episodes.
• 1:56:10
  Speaker: I don't know if you saw what I posted the other day, our little heli homestead.
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 2: No, I didn't see that.
• 1:56:15
  Speaker: That's pretty good.
• 1:56:16
  Speaker: Yeah, they did a good job.
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 2: And I'll cough up some footy for you too, so you can Yeah, give us some footage that we can put on here and Marty will edit it in.
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you gotta get action in it so they don't have to look at us all the time.
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:56:31
  Speaker: Well, it'll make it'll make the show really fun.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker: Yeah, that's the idea.
• 1:56:35
  Speaker: Pictures and lots of good video.
• 1:56:37
  Speaker: But maybe get your story what your story looks like, and we can fill in the the blanks with some footy.
• 1:56:44
  Speaker: Because we got tons.
• 1:56:46
  Speaker: Tons of good stuff.
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 2: Alright.
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Sean Dog.
• 1:56:54
  Speaker: Alright, thanks.
• 1:56:54
  Speaker: Appreciate you.
• 1:56:55
  Speaker: That was easy.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: I I didn't want to make it hard.