MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Fall Winter 2019

54 MOUNTAIN LIFER BRYCE PHILLIPS On mountain culture, community, and the intrinsic value of used gear words :: Feet Banks There were no smartphones in the spring of 1998. No internet apps with up-to-the-minute snow conditions or live updates from the Pontiac Freeskiing Challenge being held on Chainsaw Ridge—a steep, jagged, sphincter- puckering patch of terrain high on Blackcomb Mountain. The were no drones filming, and not a singe POV camera affixed to the helmets of the competitors—which included pretty much every single one of Whistler’s best young skiers, as well as some big names from south of the border. There was, however, $10,000 cash up for grabs and a chance to prove your stuff. In those days that was more than enough to guarantee a good show, you just had to show up. Only 20 years old at the time, Oregon-born Bryce Phillips was not one of the big US ski stars. He was an unknown kid who’d lucked into a volunteer job on Blackcomb and was living a ski bum lifestyle financed by money he’d made selling discontinued ski jackets procured from K2 while interning in ski marketing. “I bought hundreds of jackets and backpacks,” Phillips remembers. “Full retail on the jacket was something like $200, wholesale it would be $100. I got them for 12 bucks each—I could sell them in consignment stores and make $50 or $60, or sell them myself for $100. That paid for my first year in Whistler.” Which, in turn, led Phillips into the Pontiac Open, his first freeskiing comp, and against future local ski icons like Hugo Harrison, Dan Treadway, Joe Lammers, Sylvain “Slinky” Girard, Damian Cromwell and Robin Courcelles. “Next to those guys I didn’t know how to ski,” Phillips admits. “I just flung myself off cliffs and held on. I ended up skiing a line that was deemed out of the contest boundary, scraped off a sketchy bit of snow, hit an air and made it to the bottom. I ended up winning the equivalent of a “Sick Bird” award and the team manager from K2 told me he’d give me a free pair of skis which led to shooting photos, filming and eventually travelling as a pro. But the best part was I started skiing with all those guys from the comp… that line started everything.” Peter Smart, Whistler legend and organizer of the Pontiac Challenge, remembers Phillips’ line choice that day. “I remember it specifically. He went skier’s right of the couloir, way beyond the boundaries of the comp. There was a little notch and a drainage in the cliffs you could land in. We ended up including it in the competition the next year, but in that moment he was sketching us out—he made it though. To look back and judge how he skied that day, it’s the same way he is with business. He was confident, aggressive—and regardless of his ability, he was gonna go for it.” That tendency to “go for it” helped Phillips build himself a pretty decent pro ski career, but his greatest impact on the sport has come from the lines he’s chosen in the world of business. Bryce Phillips is the founder and CEO of evo, an online retailer of outdoor gear with flagship stores in Seattle, Denver, Portland and, new this season, Whistler. Last year, evo sold more skis and snowboards than anyone else in North America. And, like Phillips’ life on skis, the business has deep Whistler roots. “My uncle Jack introduced me to skiing back in Oregon when I was ten,” Phillips says. “And in eighth or ninth grade I got my first pair of skis—used Atomic Arcs with Tyrolia bindings for 80 bucks. I was so stoked, my very own skis. I didn’t care that they were used, that was what allowed me to afford them.” That purchase, and the feelings of freedom those skis opened up, left an impression on Phillips and ignited an entrepreneurial spark. Throughout his teens he continued to hunt out deals on gear he could sell for a profit. “Garage sales, classified ads… I was constantly buying and selling stuff so I could afford lift tickets or soccer cleats or whatever I was into. My folks have always been amazingly supportive, but we didn’t have the financial resources so I had to figure out how to make it happen.” As a sophomore in high school, Phillips found a store going out of business and purchased 12 pairs of ski boots for 90 per cent off, then sold them to kids at school. Bargains like that kept him in lift tickets for the rest of high school and eventually lead the way to that infamous K2 ski jacket deal. After two years in college in Seattle, “My folks have always been amazingly supportive, but we didn’t have the financial resources so I had to figure out how to make it happen.”