The Freeride World Tour will not return to Haines this winter, officials said this week.
“For the moment, we do not have the finances to come back to Haines,” said general manager Julien Hess.
The Freeride World Tour, an international skiing and snowboarding competition that has brought about 30 athletes to Haines for the last three years, was the most expensive stop of the tour, Hess said in March. Athletes also competed in Verbier, Switzerland, Fieberbrunn, Austria and Vallnord-Arcalis, Andorra.
Hess said the Haines competition costs Freeride about $700,000. The Freeride staff has been searching for Alaskan sponsors to fund the event with no success, Hess said. “The fact that we did not find enough local sponsors in Haines and Alaska is indeed the main issue.”
Interim tourism director Tammy Piper said businesses saw a boost with extra people spending money in the community over the winter. Depending on weather in the mountains, athletes and staff would stay in Haines for up to 10 days. Possible avalanche conditions in March pushed this year’s competition back to the last day of the Freeriders’ stay.
“I think it was an economy boost in the off-season,” Piper said. “You’re going to see a dip in our revenue, for sure.”
Former tourism director Leslie Ross said the loss of the Freeride competition will be a disappointment to hotels and restaurants.
“It’s several thousand dollars of income coming into Haines that we’ll be missing,” Ross said. “But it’s not a definite thing for ‘never again.’ I hope they can increase sponsorships and come back to Haines again.”
Aspen Suites Hotel and Captain’s Choice Motel housed most of the athletes and staff.
Southeast Alaska Backcountry Adventures owner Scott Sundberg said his company invested about $10,000 the past three years in the Freeride competition and served as a sponsor, but he said the loss of the competition will impact local businesses more than the heliski companies. Alaska Heliskiing was also a cosponsor for the event.
“We kind of had a sense that they weren’t going to make it this year,” Sundberg said. “(SEABA) is always searching for events that can make business better in Haines, and hopefully we can come across something else or invent something else.”
Hess said Freeride will release its official tour schedule in September.
“If by September things evolve we would of course reconsider, but this doesn’t seem very likely,” he said.