I caught up with Tucker Patton, the owner of Triple Point Expeditions in Palmer, Alaska during the 2024 heli-season. We first met 15 years ago at the Points North Heli operation in Cordova when he was assigned to my group as our guide for a trip I was doing at the time with Aussie Olympians Jono Brauer and Craig Branch for Chillfactor and have been fortunate to work with him many times since then. He’s a smart operator and great company and this was my first time seeing him at the helm of his own heli-operation.
Day in, day out there’s a myriad of questions the clients pepper Tucker and his team with; “What’s the weather doing, what’s the snow doing, what are we going to get to ski on?” And eventually everyone asks (probably as they reconsider their life choices and the desk job they are about to head back to…) “so, how did you get into this business?”
Tucker laughs heartily and says, “My answer is probably the same one you’d get if you asked any guide. We just want to ski!”
“It started with an early introduction to travel, experiences and a love of surfing, skiing and being outside as a child. I studied business at college, achieved a degree and during that process I picked up an entrepreneurship. They said, “What are you excited about?” and my answer was “I have this idea of starting an adventure travel company.” I didn’t have any money, I didn’t have any clients and I didn’t know how to do it but that was the idea that stuck in my mind.”
“I wrote a business plan with these contingencies and I had to go and figure it all out. I found myself in New Zealand, South America, Japan and Antarctica – doing all the things I loved to do – surfing, fishing and skiing. The original idea for my own business probably started as a concept when I was 18, and maybe even earlier, but it hadn’t manifested itself into a clear vision at that point. And then once I got into it, I thought, ‘this is crazy… I can’t believe this could actually be possible. To travel and do all the things that I’ve been dreaming about – and make it my life.”
“Alaska has been the one constant in my life for the last 20 years. It was one of those places that I just knew I was always going to go back to. No question. I realised I was going to base my season around this place and work everything else in my life around it. Once I got to the point where I was ready to really try to make my business dream happen, I said to myself “I’m going to focus on one thing and I’m going to put everything into it I can.” It was 15 years of work to get to the point where I was even ready to step off and say, “I don’t know everything, but I know enough that I want to try”.
“I was also just newly married. [My wife] Molly was supportive and said, “you need to go and do it”. So, it got real and I started. I approached it by putting myself in the guest’s shoes in every aspect and thinking about how I could do it best, how I could create something unique and drawing on all those pieces of my experiences from over the years.”
“Running a heli ski operation is all about challenges. It’s continually figuring out problems. It’s running through walls. I don’t think I could do it without starting at the bottom where I washed dishes and learned to refuel helicopters, progressed into following and guiding and literally did every role. It was important to me as I worked up the original feasibility and business plan that I had a clear grasp on each role and how it’s done. I took it to the level that I would work construction in summers to understand building concepts and kept taking classes and courses to fill gaps in my knowledge about snow science and weather. It was a commitment to the process so that if the opportunity presented itself to build this operation I’d been dreaming about – I would be ready. It was a commitment to working continually towards that goal.”
“There’s a tonne of moving parts in a heli-ski operation. Everything has to be dynamic, just like skiing itself. You have to continually make clear and detailed plans and be ready to shift and change them up when weather or logistics or any number of factors can throw it all up in the air.”
“What we get to take our clients out to ski is based around two key things – what the mountains will give you and what the snow-pack is doing. We’re always watching the weather, we’re always watching the snow. There’s no one size fits all, but we’re going to make it as perfect as we can for the guests on every run with what we have.”
“When booking a heli ski trip, my advice is that the ideal scenario (and this isn’t marketing) is to pull together eight people and buy it outright – then it’s just you and your buddies in a private ship. The next best would be a group of four and then you have a guide and it’s essentially you roll as a semi-private. If you come up as an individual, we’ll work to fit you with the right group, so you have a great time. What’s really important to us is that we want the right people coming on the right weeks with the right expectations and the right group dynamic.”
And Tucker’s closing thoughts, “To me, Alaska is the pinnacle of skiing, and I would take one day in Alaska over a week anywhere else. There’s no place in the world to ski like here, the feeling simply can’t be replicated anywhere else. In my opinion it’s the ultimate ski destination on the planet”. Which is probably why he’s built his life around it. If you’re curious, maybe you should think about joining him sometime.
