“MY WHOLE LIFE WAS SHAPED BY KNOWING THAT YOU COULD ACTUALLY CREATE A BUSINESS OUT OF HELPING PEOPLE BE IN NATURE AND HAVE FUN—THAT THERE WAS VALUE TO THAT.” —GWYN HOWAT “The terrain and snow we get really lends itself to snow-boarding,” Howat says. “If you look at the amount of days we get fresh snow, plus the type of terrain we have—you’re not traversing all over the mountain necessarily—all those things make it so [snowboarding] is a really fun thing to do.” Howat endured the early ridicule of his peers and ulti-mately created a mecca for snowboarding. Craig Kelly and the Mt. Baker Hard Core called Mt. Baker home and the mountain’s Legendary Banked Slalom (established in part by Sims’ competitive attitude and fervent passion for speed), snowboarding’s most venerable race, and is now in its 35th year. Even Howat’s daughters have benefitted from the snowboard experiment, launching careers of their own in the snowboard world before coming back to work at Mt. Baker. The fact that Gwyn (who has taken over as Mt. Baker’s CEO) and Amy now run Mt. Baker was never planned, but they grew up spending every winter weekend at a cabin tucked away near the slopes, running wild and free on the mountain every day. They’d make the drive from Bellingham in the dark on Friday evenings, Gwyn learning to shift the family’s old Ford 150 through the highway’s hairpin turns as Duncan drove and Amy sat on Gail’s lap, all four of them on the front bench seat. Their groceries would get buried by snow in the open truck bed. “My whole life was shaped by knowing that you could actu-ally create a business out of helping people be in nature and have fun—that there was value to that,” Gywn says. Howat knows his daughters have chosen demanding and challenging careers, but also enjoys that he gets to work with them, learn from them, and see the different viewpoints they bring to the table. At 77, Howat admits he’s stayed on at Mt. Baker longer than he thought he would, but attributes that to the good company he’s kept. Amy’s husband, Mike Trowbridge, is the ski area’s current general manager, and a handful of long-standing employees have grown with the company, creating an atmosphere that is as much a family as it is a business. “Duncan was very good about wanting input. He wanted input, he wanted people to speak up, that’s the nature of his personality,” says Angelo “Zop” Zopolos, Mt. Baker’s lift supervi-sor for nearly 40 years. Still, family or not, Howat has never shied away from making hard decisions—and in the ski business there are plenty of them. When it comes to any mountain environ-ment, the reward can be great, but so is the risk. “In our career together, that’s what we did, we talked about risk,” Gwyn says. “We have learned to be comfortable with risk and the edges of risk, both business wise and in very real ways with considering people’s lives as it relates to making policy around risk.” From backcountry policy to inbounds rules, Gwyn says the homegrown management is always weighing its options. “Where is that line of risk or freedom?” she asks. Howat’s experiences with risk have given him a unique perspective on the matter. Looking back on being buried while doing avalanche control work in the ’70s, he once told Gwyn, “No powder turn was ever as much fun as the rest of my life has been.” Duncan Howat 069
The Ski Journal Volume 15, Issue 4: Page 69
