LEFT Jason Champion leads the charge up Camp Ramp on day one. BELOW After nearly a week on the glacier, everyone was getting a little grizzly, but most of us were still smiling. Clockwise from top left: Jason Champion, Ryan Thomford, Jonathan Cahill, Alex Pashley, Curtis Ciszek, Eric Jackson, Liam Gallagher, Blair Habenicht, Danny Wilkinson, Mary Rand and Austin Smith. BUILDING CHAMP CAMP Champ’s from Tahoe. I first met him in Valdez five years prior at an-other heli op. He guided with an understated approach—no egotistical scare tactics, just the essential info required to safely ride big Chugach ramps. It was great. Since then, Champ’s joined forces with ASG and Dave Geis to create Tour Camp. Though the concept of a predeter-mined week on an alpine glacier seems a gamble given Alaska’s notori-ously fickle weather, Champ’s rolled with the punches and pulled it off successfully three years running. He knew from the start that Tour Camp would be about more than just the snowboarding. “After five or six years of coming up here, I turned the corner to where it wasn’t about attacking the mountains anymore,” Champ told me. “I wanted to slow things down, get away from the hustle and bustle of mechanized guiding, and enjoy all aspects of the Chugach.” Tour Camp was his way to do that. Beginning in 2017, he offered a “glamping” experience beyond Thompson Pass. Logistics are taken care of. There’s a cook, food, heated tents and guided splitboarding. But it’s still raw—you’re camped on a glacier in Alaska far from the trappings of civilization and the human element is exceedingly important. “We’re our own resource out there,” Champ said. “It’s more chal-lenging and there’s more to consider. When that helicopter leaves and the weather comes in, it’s just us—we do a lot of the decision-making as a group, making plans for the day, mitigating hazards, keeping our-selves safe and working together as a team. It can be so rewarding.” 072 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal frequency 17.2: Page 72
