MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Winter Spring 2019

The way Tippie tells it, at that exact moment a couple asked him for an autograph—fans still remembered the Kranked star even if the industry had passed him over. “I was confused but they were stoked,” he says. “I told them, ‘I have to meet that girl. I don’t know how but I have to.’ And they said, ‘Go do it! you’re Brett Tippie, you’re not scared of anything.’ And then she was talking to Wade Simmons so it was perfect. I walked over and said, ‘Hey Wade, how’s it going? And who’s this?’” Of course, Sarah Fenton had no idea who Tippie was. A Deep Cove local and mountain biker since the 80s, she’d been working in the film industry in Europe for a decade and totally missed the freeride revolution. “I saw this huge cranium coming over,” Sarah recalls. “It blocked out the light, like an eclipse. He asked, ‘And who’s this?’ and I said ‘Who are you?’” The fuse was lit. The two spent the next few hours joking and flirting. “I was amazed,” Tippie says. “She was whip smart. It was like a tennis game of wordplay, back and forth. We hit it off, there were sparks.” Then Tippie went back to Kamloops and relapsed for three weeks, until his parents and brother Jake eventually found him. He sobered up and relocated to Squamish to work and live with Greg Salmon, a former teammate from the Canadian National Team who wanted to help his old friend. Another friend, Peter Creighton, hooked Tippie up with a bike from the Sun Peaks rental fleet—a real, contemporary mountain bike. “That bike saved your life,” Sarah says. Tippie nods, “And I had something to ride for our first date.” That first date was a rip through the Whistler Mountain Bike Park. Tippie’s years off had taken a toll. He fell on the first feature, a sort-of-a-tiny-bit-wet wall ride. “I slid out,” Tippie laughs. “And hit the ground and scratched the shit out of my knee. She hit the wall, aired off the end, then hit the next one and was gone. I greased off the next feature and nutted myself. I finally caught up to her at the rest stop, sweating and bloody. She looked at me and said, ‘I thought you said you were a biker.’ I said, ‘I used to be Brett Tippie!’” “We fell in love,” Sarah says. “Right away. I was warned not to go there. Friends toldme he was messed up, but he seemed fine tome. I only saw himonce in a while and I’d just come back from a decade in England, where life was debaucherous. I didn’t fully understand the depths of his addiction until he borrowed my car to go a wedding in Kamloops and never came back.” When she finally got a bus to Kamloops to find him, Tippie showed so much remorse that Sarah gave him another chance. Three months later she was pregnant. “I told him, ‘This is your last stop. You are not gonna do better than this and I am not having it around our kid so get your shit together,’” Sarah says. “I understood addiction is a disease but when you become a mother, that is the priority.” Tippie stayed sober for three months, then five, then seven. Sarah would drop him off and pick him up from his construction jobsite, knowing that having his own vehicle would be one more temptation to score. Once the baby was born, a girl, Tippie would carry her picture with him and look at it whenever times got tough. He’s now been sober for just over 10 years. “My father passed away before our first daughter was born, and that was hard as we were very close,” Tippie says. “It was like one terrible thing and one beautiful thing, but it made me realize I came from a great family and I want to look after my kids. If I have to scrub toilets I will do it, whatever it takes to be a stand-up dad.” Sarah continued to bike the North Shore and dragged Tippie along. His riding came back and he began shooting again, nabbing the contents page of an Australian bike mag with up-and-coming photographer Margus Riga. With some faith and help from Julian Coffey, the rehab clothing hook-up, Tippie began to claw his way back into the freeride scene. “I saw this huge cranium coming over,” Sarah recalls. “It blocked out the light, like an eclipse.” Cypress pow laps, 2018. ANDREW LAWRENCE With daughter Alix, 2018. TIPPIE FAMILY Crankworx Dirt Diaries LAURENCE CROSSMAN-EMMS