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.

Doug Coombs goes big into "Superbowl."

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.

AB: How much instruction do you incorporate into what you're teaching? Is it sort of what people ask for? When people think of instruction they think of technique but yours goes beyond that. How much do you work on people's technique? How much do you help them?

DC: I like to see people ski relaxed and comfortable. If their pole plants are off or their turns, they're not being dynamic enough or they're working too hard or they're skiing too much. If they're an East Coast skier they tend to do too many turns -- slalom turns -- and if they're a West Coast skier they tend to lean back because they think it's powder skiing and that's what you're supposed to do. And so I'm always -- I'm an instructor by heart so I'm always looking to improve people's skills so they can have a more comfortable experience. And then they can keep the energy up -- if you're leaning back all day, your thighs are going to be killing you and if you're not nailing your pole plants, you're all twisted up and you're technique is failing you and you actually work harder at it all. The whole deal here is there's a smooth, efficient way to ski down these mountains and I try to share that through imagery. I try to have the other skiers in the group show that through imagery and we're always working on that.

VALDEZ AND FAT SKI TECHNOLOGY
AB: How big of a thing are those fat skis? Go back to when you first skied Python in 1990 when you were probably on a 63 mm wide ski. How much better can people expect to be and do you have equipment here for them? Do you have 80 and 90 mm waists here demo equipment? Most of our readers have never been on that equipment.

DC: Yeah, we have the full fleet of wide skis, but they're high performance wide skis here. And those wide skis are nice in torsional stiffness and they're a little soft flexing and they're real friendly in the tip so the turn initiation is real easy and it makes skiers having a little trouble into heroes. When people first get on them, they're just loving life. It takes one run to get used to them and suddenly you've just improved your ability level a whole notch. When I first came here I was on K2 TNCs, these GS, sidecut, old race kind of skis, really skinny and every run was a million turns. It was quite exhausting. And if you got any funny snow, any crust, windblown, suncrust, whatever, it was a lot of effort and strength, it was real tough. And now you can just cruise through that stuff. These new skis are like the snowbusters, like ghostbusters, they can bust down anything. Everything feels good, feels easy. If you want to go fast, they're like Cadillacs, if you want to go slow, they plow through anything -- like a Jeep four-wheel drive.

Andy Bigford drops into "Berlin Wall."

DC: I think the biggest danger is the natural things like cornice drops, crevasse holes... sure avalanches are prominent. We try to work around those problems. We don't get a lot of avalanches up here --our record has been real strong (knock on wood) and not just our company, but every company up here has had a really amazing record for the thousands of skiers that come here, and what kind of skiers they are. I think it has something to do with the snow pack here, it just sticks to everything. And the amount of time it takes to glue on here is a lot quicker than, let's say, Colorado and those places. The other dangers are other people -- when people are not being safe in the mountains, it endangers other people. I think everybody comes here with a good healthy respect for the mountains that they're in. That keeps everybody happy and not endangering each other. And when fear creeps in, that's a danger in itself. We always have to control the fear factor. Some people's fear -- I don't know where it comes from --they're imagined a lot of times and sometimes you can get rid of that imagined fear pretty quickly if you can catch on to it as a guide.

VALDEZ GUIDES
AB: What do you think the most important aspect of your operation is?

DC: Hiring the best guides I can find in the United States. The guide qualifications are tough because you have to be a super expert skier -- top, top expert .You've got to be a top level avalanche specialist, you've got to have all the certifications, you've got to have the high first aid and you've got to know the mountains and you've got to be a guide for a long time, you've got to know how to work with people in the mountains. Heli skiing is all about getting down the run as fast as you can, it's not like ski touring, where you do one run a day; we're doing 6-10 runs a day on pretty intricate, adventuresome runs. That kind of person is rare to find -- he has to have all those qualities. Most of them are guides who work all year round. Then they have to have the attitude -- the attitude that this is exciting, this is fun and I can teach people to follow me down these runs and everyone comes down with a smile.

ON STARTING VHSG IN 1994
AB: You started Valdez Heli Ski Guides in 1994?

DC: 1994. I did a little under... poaching, whatever you want to call it. I didn't have any business set up. I would take people in 1993, out skiing to show them, unguiding here, there's no guiding going on. I'd say, "Have you ever gone here?" And they say, "No" and I'd go, "Where are you going?" And they'd say, "I don't know, the pilot is going to show us." And I'd say, "Well I can show you if you pay for my seat." So I had these people pay for my seat and we would get out and we'd get to learn a lot of ski runs and terrain just by skiing for free with someone paying for us and the next year we said, "Ok, they need a guide service here." And I jumped on it because I was into heli ski guiding in Jackson Hole in the late 80s and early 90s so I had a concept of how that worked. The whole heli ski business. We just started right from there with three guides. I think we did 200 customers the first year, the second year it went to 500, the third year it went to 700, the fourth year it went to 900 and now it's been hovering around 1000-1200 for the rest of the years.

AB: And now you've decided to get out of the ownership business and leave that to Scott Raynor, who's a former avalanche forecaster for another group and a longtime guide. How is that working out and where do you see Scott taking this with your help?

DC: What I like about Scott is he's younger, he's got a lot of energy, new energy... sometimes you can get tired in this kind of business -- it's a people business and a weather business and when you're working with people and weather all the time and things don't go right -- it's tough. I had all these other things going on in my life and I'd rather spread out a little bit more than concentrate just on heli skiing because heli skiing actually takes up 12 months of the year. Then you get a guy like Scott Raynor who's got expertise, he's been a guide, he's worked as an avalanche forecaster, you know, he's a perfect candidate. He comes in with all this energy and excitement and then he has some more futuristic plans to expand with client care. Now we're going to have the lodge open next year and it's going to be a little heli village with a beautiful base like the way it was. I think his idea of upgrading everything, trimming up... I was more bare bones, he's going to make it more comfortable for the whole picture. The best thing is the skiing and the guiding are not changing.

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE SHIPS
AB: There are a couple of different ways to go at Valdez Heli-Ski guides -- you can go in what's called Public Ship, where you basically pay to play, you're there, you pay your money and you get your ride. You can also get a private ship where you have to commit your money up front, there's a chance you might not get your mileage but if you get good weather, you're going to get a better deal arguably. Give me some of the pros and cons of public versus private.

DC: I think they both have their pros and cons. The public ship, you have a 50 percent refund policy which is real comfortable so if you come for seven days and only ski for 3 1/2, you're going to get your money back. No one's ever skied under 50 percent. We have an amazing ratio -- the worst year is 75 percent of skiing days and our best years are right around 90 percent of skiing days. That's really high --we're in a nice, blue hole. We have a lot of good sun and a lot of sun breaks. The private... you get to do a lot of exploring, you get to go to unique areas, you get to go at your own pace, you get this helicopter waiting for you everywhere you go. You get a lot of short little runs or a lot of long, big ones. And it's just freedom -- you can wake up late and go at noon. On the public ship you're leaving at 9 and coming back at 5 or 6. The public ship is exciting too, because you ski almost the same terrain, it's just that you're with a bunch of people you don't know and usually with the private you're with your friends and it's a great thing for large groups -- to be on their own program.

AB: How about paper work you keep, and you keep every run you've been on, vertical, when you land, all of that.

DC: Every day, every run , every person. How much heli time, where we go, all that. It goes into the storage bank. We still have our records from '93. It has historical use.

AB: Explain heli time to our readers who may not know how you calculate that.

DC: In the private helicopter, you buy two hours a day and two hours a day really reflects how much traveling you do to go find your ski runs. You usually get 6 to 8 runs per helicopter hour and helicopter hour is how much time is floating in the air. It's not how much it's sitting on the ground -- you can have a helicopter for 12 hours and only get one hour of heli time. If you have a good pilot and a good guide who picks out good landings and the nice ski runs -- you can be real efficient.

AB: It's only when it's taking the skiers or landing that you get charged.

DC: Up in the air and coming back and landing.

COOMBS STEEP CAMPS
AB: Let's talk about some of the other things that you're involved with with your wife, Emily. First of all, what role does Emily play in the Coombs duo? She's the tailgunner, organizer, an unbelievable skier. How do you two work together, how do you work your magic together?

DC: It's neat because our relationship when it comes to business is ying and yang because she is so organized and so well thought out on the business aspect of it and I'm a spacially challenged in that aspect. But I do real well in the mountains, I don't have any problems. I've guided about 1,200 ski days, thousands of skiers. I haven't had too many unsatisfied customers... so I'm doing something right. I love it, I love people's reactions to a great day with me. Then when Emily comes along and she fills in the gaps -- where I'm missing things, she's really good with instructions, she's really good at keeping people aware at what's going on in the mountains, she's a tailguide and we can ski bigger and longer and better runs when you have two of us with a group and she loves being out there skiing with me and I love skiing with her. That's a good way to share that experience -- instead of having someone sitting at home -- she won't sit at home and bake cookies. When we started the company, I started figuring things out on napkins and now we're in the computer age and she put it all into the big picture of how you can make the business work. No way would this be here without her expertise on that end.

AB: Tell us about your Europe operations, what they're all about and who would be interested in participating.

DC: We're doing these steep skiing weeks, and they're fun for people who are just learning about off-piste skiing and learning what powder, chutes, couloirs are all about -- long European ski runs -- these runs over there are 4,000-9,000 vertical. We hire full-certified guides. These guides go through three years of training before they can even guide anyone. Their local knowledge and expertise is unbelievable. The whole week is an educational progression -- we start off with small, easy skiing and by the end of the week you've learned how to move through the mountains and ski powder and steeps and learn about things you'd probably never know to ask. Then you can go to a heli-ski company like ours afterwards. Basically what we're doing is lift service backcountry skiing in Europe -- in Verbier, La Grave and Chamonix. It's a six day week -- people are all worn out by the end of the week but they've had a great week.

AB: Why do you do those in Europe?

DC: We do those in Europe because of the freedom there and the size and expanse of the mountains. The freedom there -- you can do anything you want -- there are no closed signs and stuff like that that the US is battling, it's all about liability and all that. In Europe, it's more free to make your own decisions -- the mountains are all about making your own decisions. If you're in the mountains and you don't have a sign or a rope and you're used to that, you stay within those boundaries. We're trying to teach people that with proper education and knowledge, you can go out of those boundaries.

THE STATE OF SKIING
AB: Let's talk in more general terms about skiing. When you started out there was racing and freestyle. Today we've got twin tips, terrain parks, freeriding, this whole gamut of things. What's your take on that -- the state of skiing.

DC: I think the 90s was the decade of extreme skiing: the Warren Miller movies, the Greg Stump movies -- Scott Schmidt and Glen Plake and all those guys going for it in the steep terrain and then they started bringing fat skis into the picture. Some of these skiers are doing ski area tricks and half pipe tricks out in the mountains and that's where they're going now. For kids who are just learning, getting into a terrain park with a pair of twin tips is just a gas. I know that if I was a kid I'd be doing that because there's so much to do -- you don't just go down the hill and wiggle your turns. You're going to do anything -- backwards, forwards, upside down -- and that opens up new experiences.

THE EARLY YEARS
AB: Tell us about how you got involved in skiing and what you did to get where you are now.

DC: I had a good family background. We got dragged all around New England; we were skiing Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. We had a little cabin near Sugarloaf, Maine. My brothers and sisters lived up by Stowe, Vt. I lived and worked up in Stowe and Smuggler's Notch and skied the tight, tight trees with all the icy bumps at the hard core areas like Mad River Glen. That was a good training ground. Then I started ski racing in high school and ski raced all during college. I had a small scholarship to Montana State University. Then I started applying ski racing techniques to steep skiing at Bridger Bowl where the chutes are narrow and technical and you'd just try to flash them non-stop. I built from there -- went to Jackson Hole, then went to Europe -- and spent some years in Chamonix and decided you could really kill yourself if you weren't careful. I saw a lot of bad things happen to people and I didn't want to be one of them so I started educating myself through avalanche courses and guide courses. I started working for Guide Services. Then coming here -- I figured it was my program -- I love this kind of terrain. I feel most comfortable here because it is always new and different. I just can not ski the same line over and over I just get really bored. I'm kind of a fidgety, itching guy and I've got to have something new all the time. That's what keeps skiing alive for me -- skiing things that are new.

AB: How would you describe your style?

DC: I try to be efficient.

AB: Is it vision? Just knowing where you're going through all those obstacles? Is it just a comfort level from skiing that all the time? Is that just the knowledge base built through the years that makes you able to overcome any challenges that come your way?

DC: It's all about the level of your comfort. Some people get so comfortable that they become numb and that's when they get hurt. I hate seeing my friends -- they push, push, push and think that they're almost superior to whatever is thrown in front of them and they get hurt. I like my comfort level -- I don't like going too far over that, I'm too old for that, I've paid the price, a few injuries, crashes, wrecks and all that. That doesn't happen that much anymore. My comfort level is a lot higher than others because of the time I put into it -- I'm skiing 150-200 days a year. I don't get warmed up until day 50 -- that's when I'm warmed up.

AB: What's your scariest moment on skis?

DC: I've had a few -- the scariest moment is when I'm thinking I'm having a good run and it ends up being icy and really steep and I'm stuck -- I've still got my edge into the snow but I realize that I'd better pull out my iceaxe -- I'd better be able to figure out how I'm going to get out of this mess. I've had a few of those in Europe -- not so much in Alaska, but mainly Europe and other places in the Tetons. The scariest thing of course is watching an avalanche. If skiing didn't have avalanches, it'd be the greatest sport in the world but then it wouldn't be what it is.

AB: You had a group of skiers for an unnamed film company and you had an interesting experience. You were with some really great skiers, but how did they do in the Chugach and what was their respect for the mountains like and what did you see looking at that compared to the first time you came here?

DC: When you're with those hot shot film crews, these guys are coming off smaller mountains and they still think that they can charge as hard as they can even though they're in the big mountain environment where the falls are not 500 feet, they're 2,000 feet. The sluffs here with a small point release you create from your ski turns can take people down if they're not careful. These guys are charging so hard -- they can take a beating, some of the jumps they take -- everything here is double, they don't know that, the perception, I have to reel them in.

AB: Are you interested in doing more film work? Is it kind of a passing fancy? Or is it something you'd still be interested in doing more?

DC: I like going out with the film guys, I think it's fun. You're with two or three people and they pick their lines and I always have the leftovers of what people don't do and that's my favorite thing is picking a line that no one really looked at -- and I'm still doing that which means I must be doing something right. That stuff is really enjoyable.

ADVICE FOR YOUNG, ASPIRING SKIERS
AB: You're talking to some kids who are 10 or 12 years old who want to be great skiers --what do you recommend that they do? A race program, freestyle, pipe?

DC: All of the above -- I like skiers who do bumps, race, pipes, jumps, even telemark, snowboard, cross-country ski. Might as well do all the things that slide on snow. I used to do that -- everything is about sliding and gravity. I tell 10 and 12 year olds, "you just keep doing it -- do as much as you can and you're going to get really good." Those kinds of ages are real impressionable whereas adults are all ingrained in their own ways. My advice for kids is to do a lot of things and don't get stuck on one thing -- do it all.

AB: Do you have an opinion who the best skier in the world is and/or who is the best skier of all time?

DC: Well I had heroes back when I was younger -- I had a racing hero and that was Ingemar Stenmark and the Mahre brothers. That shows my age. And then another hero for me over in Europe was Patrick Vallencant. He wore purple, flamboyant, laying down 60 degree lines all over Chamonix. People thought he was crazy but he was calculated and he was one of the best skiers of all time. He brought it out in front of the public eye -- made it fun. It just brought the level up. I think the level is still increasing in what can be skied and done. Current heroes -- five or six of them: Jeremy Nobis, I love the way Seth Morrison turns and skis, I love the way Glen Plake rams down the moguls and laughs all day about it -- McConkey just going nuts -- so many fun guys right now. That's what keeps the industry going.

AB: With all that going on, does it surprise you that skiing hasn't really seen a growth spurt in the 20 years that you've been a big skier and a named skier?

DC: I think that everyone wants to ski but it's coming out of people's pocketbooks. I like the way the European ski areas are making lifts cheap -- that's what brings the people there. A $25 lift ticket -- people will come. A $60 lift ticket -- that's really tough for families to come. The US has to figure out how can we get the people skiing for cheaper. Then when they really love the sport, that's when they buy the expensive skis and equipment. That's how to get them into skiing more.

AB: What do you do in the summer?

DC: Summertime is the fun time for us; we like to rock climb and travel to different rock climbing areas all over the west. Climbing is a great family sport. We love to windsurf down the Hood river and test skis and ski Mount Hood and maybe climb Mount Rainier or Mount Adams. I like to ski through mid-July. Then in October it starts all over again. That's the best thing about skiing -- it's about an eight-month sport. I love to mountain bike.

AB: What do you hope to be doing in 10 years?

DC: Almost the same things -- I can see myself doing more ski guiding in Europe, in the US and I'm working on certifications on international guiding which means you can guide anywhere in the world. It's like becoming a doctor, but this is a doctor of skiing -- a ski doctor. My niche is steep skiing, and I don't want to be ski guiding flat rocks, I will never do that.