Get Revelstoked to Tailgate

Originally Published: September 27, 2011

Jeff HaweThe popularity of Tailgate Alaska has grown and will share the love in BC in 2012.

Four years after he founded Tailgate Alaska, a backcountry freeriding festival on Thompson Pass outside Valdez, Mark Sullivan is expanding the concept to British Columbia this winter in the mountains outside Revelstoke.

"It's going to be remarkable," Sullivan said in an interview from his home in Idaho. "We have the heli pad right at the Tailgate location, the best sled trailhead is directly across the street, and there are no down days because you have a 5,000-vertical-foot resort 15 minutes away."

Tailgate B.C. is set for March 8-12, a few weeks before the fifth edition of Tailgate Alaska (which has grown from 15 attendees its first year to 450 this past spring) returns to Thompson Pass. Sullivan's expansion of the Tailgate idea coincided with his agreeing to terms with a title sponsor -- Flow Snowboarding -- for the first time. Flow will sponsor both events, Sullivan said, and has enabled him to offer a large cash purse in Alaska for the big-mountain competition: $10,000 to the victor and potentially as much as $30,000 overall, depending upon other sponsor commitments. Last year, the winner received heli time.

Sullivan isn't sure whether he'll organize a big-mountain contest for the B.C. festival, though he's talking with the event's heli outfitter, Eagle Pass, to explore the possibility. "The first Tailgate B.C. is going to be kind of a pilot program," Sullivan said. "I'm going to limit the attendance pretty severely compared to how many people could come, because I really want it to be completely world class for all the people who do make it. And that way I can build on that. So I'm thinking I'll max out at 200 people. My goal is 150 people."

The fee for Tailgate B.C. will be slightly less than Tailgate Alaska, Sullivan said, pegging it unofficially at $199 per person compared to $299 for Tailgate AK. The event is open to skiers as well as snowboarders and will include the standard Tailgate amenities: snow-science classes and daily avalanche reports, discounted lodging, airfare, food and heli rates, RV parking in the base area, a daily beer garden, as well as snowmobile riding clinics.

"The goal for Tailgate B.C.," Sullivan said, "is to get people into the backcountry, give them a great value and just hopefully show them the ultimate hospitality." As for the Tailgate idea overall, he said: "Eventually it's going to be a world tour. Flow's goal is to take this idea to Japan and Europe."