he manager of the Freeride World Tour told the Haines Chamber of Commerce last week that securing sponsorships to increase contributions to the event and providing a closer helicopter landing zone are important to its future here.
Also, a chair lift ski hill for athletes to use on non-event days would help, Nicholas Hale-Woods said.
“There are some chair lifts, second-hand, that are not that expensive and I would see a chair lift near Mile 26 or closer that would give an option which would help some guys who are looking at Alaska as a heli destination. In Haines, if it is bad weather – because you have a weather pattern where it’s more bad weather than good weather – there is the option of skiing on down days,” Hale-Woods said.
The seven-minute helicopter flight from 33 Mile to the area used for the event is about “the limit we’ve defined,” he said. “One thing that would help a lot (in a decision) to come back (to Haines) would be to have a professional landing zone closer to the border. Our shuttle time would not be seven minutes, it would be four-and-a-half.”
Hale-Woods had hoped to use land near the U.S. Customs station as a landing zone, and expressed hope last week for that option. “I know we tried. I know we couldn’t, but sometimes trying and trying again makes it happen.”
Haines tourism director Leslie Ross this week said siting choppers near the station doesn’t appear to be an option. “We asked about it and it was a pretty quick ‘no’ to have some event like that, because of border security reasons there,” Ross said. “(Freeride) is looking as close to 40 Mile as they can get.”
Helicopter expenses for the event in 2015 topped $100,000, although some of that was due to what Hale-Woods called “two-and-a-half false starts,” when foul weather scratched planned event days. Bad weather grounded the one-day event for 10 days in 2015.
Hale-Woods said seeking state, regional or national corporate sponsors or partnerships would help anchor the event in Haines. A competition site in Verbier, Switzerland provides $750,000 of the $1.5 million budget for the event there, including money that comes from a ski resort, the town, county, and a regional lottery.
The budget for the Haines event is close to $1 million, he said.
(Borough tourism director Ross estimated the local contribution at $23,000, including cash of $2,500 from local businesses and $5,000 from the Haines Borough. In-kind donations from local individuals and businesses – including discounted motel rooms and Internet services – make up the remainder, she said.)
“I’m not saying we need to have a half-million dollars here next year to come back, but it would be interesting to start working on solutions… It would be hard, but in a way it’s normal that a new event is not appealing straight away,” Hale-Woods told the chamber.
“We understand a community like Haines has limited budgets and we decided to come here even though the local financing is quite far from other resorts. The answer is to build a relationship, to possibly have bigger players like the state or companies that have an interest either by marketing means or for social investment that exists in some places,” he said.
Hale-Woods said the first essential is for the event to feel welcome in the community. “We are here for up to two weeks. If it’s a good experience for the staff, riders, media, and sponsors who are here, that’s something that’s essential to the long-term basis. That box is solidly ticked in Haines.”
Hale-Woods said in the coming months he would have time to come back and meet with people here. “We’re also entering into partnerships with sponsorship organizations based in North America. We’ll have a network so that at some stage, part of this budget can come from institutions or national sponsors. That’s one thing we need to work toward together.”
Event officials say they will name the sites for next year’s tour before summer.
Asked why Freeride World Tour chose Haines over other Alaska sites such as Valdez, Girdwood and Cordova, Hale-Woods cited a relatively short flying time to the venue and the participation of Southeast Alaska Backcountry Adventures (SEABA).
“Without a heli operator who is professional, knows what he is doing and is willing to invest their time and resources to be able to shuttle 100 people to the mountain and back on the same day with three or four different helicopters… This needs to be solid,” Hale-Woods said.
Hale-Woods said other sites are vying to be included in the five-stop tour. “We have three resorts in Austria, one in Norway, and one in Japan telling us they want the world tour to come and asking, ‘What do we need to do to have your guys?’”
The tour could expand only to about seven destinations, due to scheduling and the length of winter, he said.
Alaska, he said, is the “ultimate” heli-sking destination. “The world tour without Alaska would be something very important missing.”
Haines is the only location on the tour to use helicopters to fly athletes to the mountain, he said. “Because this site is very good. There are not many good venues in the world. I’ve been traveling 20 years looking for venues in many places. The venue needs different lines, the right elevation drop, and the right viewing spots, and all those factors are not on every corner.”
The options for using helicopters are limited in other places in the world, he said.
“There is heli-skiing in Europe but it’s very limited. Switzerland is the country where you can do the most heli-skiing. We have 40 spots in the Alps where you can land. Not 41. In France there’s zero. In Italy there’s a dozen. In Austria, I think there’s one or two. In Russia there’s options to land everywhere if the pilot’s not drunk. There’s no heli-skiing in Japan. It’s very restricted. There’s great snow but no option for heli-skiing,” Hale-Woods said.
The Freeride uses four helicopters – two for ferrying riders, one standing by with rescue and medical personnel, and a fourth used for filming.
Five judges on site score runs by men and women snowboarders and skiers on the basis of choice of run, fluidity and control, Hale-Woods said.
“They’re penalized if they tumble or if they’re in places that they shouldn’t be. We’re not pushing them to throw themselves and huck themselves down cliffs just for the show. We want them to show the world that they are using the mountain in an intelligent and proper manner. This is a very important part that is often a key trigger for partners who are financing the tour. They want to obviously see that this is a serious sport that is structured and controlled,” he said.
The recent addition of sponsors like Audi show that freeriding, as a sport, is moving into the mainstream, Hale-Woods said. “It shows that this sport – that some people call crazy guys hucking from cliffs – has gently gone to not a mass sport, it will never be a mass media sport – but it is touching a lot of people.”