Old Doug Coombs Interview

I dug up this Doug Coombs interview from an old issue of Ski Magazine and thought it was mos def worth reading. Doug was the master in AK.

SKIING THE VALDEZ STEEPS

AB: Let's start out with restating the philosophy that you started Valdez Heli-Ski Guides on and some of the things you've talked about, from fat skis to being in an area like this with the steeps that you can actually ski that blows people's minds. Give me that basic philosophy of how you put it all together: safety, skis, that stuff.

DC: I think ski guiding is an educational process. Ski guiding here is teaching people how to move safely through the mountains and while enjoying the atmosphere of skiing steep terrain and having great powder. Because that's what it's all about, skiing great powder. Ninety percent of our runs are powder skiing and we want to keep it that way. We could avoid those powder runs, but the best skiing is on that steep terrain and that's where the best powder is. So we have to educate people how to do that. It's not the follow me type guiding that you get a lot in other places. It's "follow me" guiding through your first day, but generally we try to make it into a team effort; there's only four people skiing with one guide and if you're all working together you can move down the mountain real efficiently and safely and have a good time and the camaraderie that it brings about is real exciting because suddenly people are cheering each other on and they're helping each other and they're watching each other and at the same time they're asking a lot of questions to the guide about "how do you do this," and the guide is seeing things as they need to express to make everything flow and the energy is... it's great when you're with someone for one or two or three days and they don't know much about... they're very good skiers here. And that's what we're attracting right now, is skiers that are very good and very athletic; they ski 30 to 90 days a year and this is their ultimate trip and they have really good technique but they don't have a whole lot of big mountain savvy so we have to bring that big mountain savvy into their curriculum.

THE FIRST TIME IN VALDEZ

AB: Let's back up 11 years to the first time you came to Valdez. You obviously had skied a lot of first descents. You've been on a lot of hairball stuff. But back up 11 years and tell me about the first time you came here... and I think you skied with Jim Conway.

DC: Yeah, there was a group of us from Jackson Hole and Salt Lake City and a few friends from Alaska, Juneau. We all met here: it was the world extreme skiing contest going on. The contest was minor to what we were actually doing here. It was what brought us all here, to do the contest, but we skied before, during and after, all these outrageous peaks - all these first ascents with helicopters and skiplanes and every one was a real exciting experience. When we first went to Python Peak and did Cherry Couloir, we were just so excited about it... it was the ultimate. And now we guide that all the time. It's just getting more comfortable and familiar. Back in the old days, we had a lot of skis, and not so much technology was helping us. Now the technology and instruction and technique have come so far that we're skiing 50 degrees with 50 year olds and they're loving it. That's where it's going and that's where it's still going to go. I don't see it going away.

A TYPICAL VALDEZ CLIENT

AB: Tell me about one or two or three people who represent a spectrum of your clients up here. Give our readers an idea of who can make it. Start on the bottom end. Give me an example of someone who didn't have a lot of experience and came up here and made a breakthrough.

DC: We see major breakthroughs with everybody. With the person only skiing let's say Colorado, Winter Park type skier, maybe Vail, that kind of skier, who skis a lot of low angle powder and now they want to jump to something like this and that' s a big jump. They either don't like it or they love it and I would say 90 percent love it. And the 10 percent that don't realize they have to go home and work on their technique a little bit more before they come back. The low end skier here has miles and miles of untracked in a 60 mile ski area with over 425 ski runs to choose from and they're not all steep I would say 50 percent are 20-35 degrees and the other 50 percent are 35-55 degrees. You've got huge choices. They come out with a group of friends and they have a ball. It's all about terrain progression. You just get a little steeper each day and stay within the comfort range and have a ball.

AB: Tell me about the woman that you just talked to. She came out here from... and she was an advanced skier...

DC: I'd say she was an advanced intermediate, low expert. She had gone to one other heli-ski operation in Canada and her friends convinced her to come up and try this because it was something... she had the spunk or desire to do something a little different, a little more. This is frontier -- frontier town and frontier type skiing and she was very nervous her first day, she wanted to know how dangerous it was and I said there are avalanches, crevasses, cliffs, exposure, all the things that nature and mountains have out there every day. By the end of the first day she came up with a huge smile on her face and said that it was the most amazing experience of her life and all those things I told her in the morning, she didn't even notice those. I think I put a little fear in her and then when she came back she realized that with good guiding and the excellent conditions we're having, that she didn't notice any of those. It's there, and I want everyone to know it's there but I don't want to scare people away either.

VALDEZ SAFETY & PROCEDURES

AB: Doug, can you walk us through some of the things you talked about on Saturday when you took us through the avalanche procedures, through our search practice and going through the checklist. And can you compare that to what some other places do, and give me a philosophy of what you try to do to tell people and to encourage people to speak up if they feel uncomfortable, to ask questions and to always be aware.

DC: I think our philosophy is that we like to ski terrain that most companies won't ski unless the conditions are absolutely hard snow. We don't like hard snow, we like to ski powder snow. I think that's a big difference. So we try to make everyone really aware of all the dangers and we want everyone to be open and honest about their feelings and how they feel that day with their mental and physical energy and how everything is working for them and are they tired from the day before. And also maybe they're just feeling so good that they want to push themselves into more challenging terrain. But you only can ski the terrain to the least ability skier. So you have to work with that person to join up to the other group and the whole group has to realize that that's what's going to happen. We try to have everyone go through a small terrain progression program: we ski short, steep terrain, we ski a lot of long, roly-poly runs with a little challenging aspects to it and that's what people are coming here for. They're coming here for that challenge. I don't see people coming here just to cruise low angle powder runs. Everyone likes to do it: we like to start the day with cruiser runs and end the day with cruiser runs and peak in the middle of the day on some exciting adventure runs. Wouldn't call them all extreme skiing, I'd call them more adventure skiing. And adventure skiing is just travelling down through glaciers and areas like that and real long, 2-3 mile runs.