LEFT TO RIGHT • If you’re going to do a good job, you need the right tools. Accessing goods on Double Edge in the White Room, a classic zone outside of Valdez, AK. Photo: John Fullbright After years of being a “zero,” Dean went on a rip for the 1991 US Ski Team mogul season, earning the number one spot in the US and number two in North America. That spring he returned to his roots for the Lunar Cup, a loose competition on July 4 at Telluride, CO. Photo: John Fullbright A young Dean poses in a huge ponderosa pine along New Mexico’s Rio Chama River, during a rafting trip with climbing partner Chuck Cummings (no relation) in the late 1980s. Photo: Cummings Family Archives The Cummings family photo, circa 1980—minus Carol, Dean’s mom, who had been called into work as an X-ray technician. Back row: An eighth-grade Dean, Carie and Christy; Front row: Drew, CeCe and father Boyd. Photo: Cummings Family Archives I wanted to focus more on big mountains and making it last. I didn’t want to bank my whole career on one run at the Olympics. That was a hard decision. I flew home and rested for a week, then skied my home mountain for about a month. Then I went to Europe with RAP Films and stayed to film with Matchstick. I was in Europe for two months. Then I came up here [to Valdez] and filmed for Warren Miller and Matchstick. I was doing like five films a year, taking way too much risk, doing sketchy first descents. But the whole Valdez thing was real. I was serious about it, and I was document-ing everything in my guidebook—flight times and regions and storm cycles and how the snow would flow into the microclimates. You were already laying the groundwork. I had a huge file by the time ’94 rolled around. I decided to start a guide service. It was going to be more about mountain-eering and touring, which seemed more realistic. Then two guys approached me. One owned snowcats and the other guy owned a fuel company. “We want to be your partners,” they said. I’m like, “Well, that’s all the incentive I need.” I went back to Santa Fe and drew up a business plan and an operating plan and a safety plan and a brochure and everything. These guys couldn’t even send me the specs on their equipment or insurance. They didn’t do any work at all, so I threw my hands up and said, “This isn’t realistic. I need help from somebody else to pull this off.” Then I went to South America to compete in the first-ever South American extreme contest in Las Leñas [Argentina]. My first day, I climbed the whole resort solo. It gave me time to think. Halfway up, it hit me: “What do you mean you can’t do it? You’ve already done it. You already have people that want to book trips with you.” I already had guides asking to work with me, had a helicopter lined up. Once I got home, I went after it. Coombs and I were pretty classic. We started our companies 1 in the same parking lot, sharing the same helicopter, and it was a pretty good gig. It was a gentleman’s program. 1 Coombs’ company was called Valdez Heli-Ski Guides. Dean Cummings 063
The Ski Journal Volume Eleven, Issue Three: Page 63
