Alpenglow Mountain Festival: a community gathers to celebrate the backcountry

Alpenglow Sports of Tahoe City, Calif., is looking forward to hosting the upcoming Alpenglow Mountain Festival for its third consecutive year this February. Festival organizer and owner of Alpenglow Sports, Brendan Madigan, is excited for another opportunity to bring together the outdoor community of the greater Tahoe area to celebrate backcountry travel.

The bi-annual festival, running from February 20 to 28, hosts a wide variety of events ranging from avalanche awareness classes and guided backcountry tours to film viewing and yoga instruction. He hopes that the number and range of events will draw families from Reno to Sacramento who want to explore outdoor culture.

We talked with Madigan to get the scoop on why Alpenglow Sports began hosting this festival and how he hopes it will positively impact the communities in the surrounding area.

Backcountry Magazine: What was the inspiration for the Alpenglow Mountain Festival?

Brendan Madigan: We have a very community-centric business model in general at Alpenglow Sports and have for 37 years. We do a lot of community events, whether it’s our big winter film series out at Squaw, or trail shoe demos, community runs, demo days etc. We feel an obligation to give back to our community that has supported us for so long as a specialty retailer—we want to be relevant. We feel it is the right thing to do, because we have had multiple generations of people from Tahoe, The Bay, Sacramento and Reno support Alpenglow for so long that it is a good way for us to say thank you.

That was the baseline inspiration, but we feel the need to provide an opportunity for people who maybe feel intimidated, or who may not be able to afford to get into these sports. It [the festival] provides them a free and welcoming environment to come and try them [backcountry sports] out for the first time. We are a shop that wants to share our passion with any and everyone.

BCM: You are in your third year now. How has the event change?

BM: We started with a summer iteration and I realized right away that the event resonated with people, so it has changed in the sense that it has grown quickly. This year we will have over 2,000 participants in winter alone. So, we have tried to build it out to keep individual event offerings open to everyone. For instance, a family from Marin could come on vacation and spend their whole time here. There is yoga everyday and there are films at night, like the 5 Point [film festival] and Jeremy Collins [artist, climber and world traveler who has a film in the festival]—Something for the whole family for a destination event.

BCM: Where do you see it going in the future?

BM: I see it being fine-tuned. We have a lot of help from the community, local guys, local instructors who lend their time for the greater good. I see it being refined in that way, with more and better events. For instance, this winter we added the 5 Point film festival, which for most places would be an event in its own right, but it’s one of over 50 in our nine-day event. Like I said, Jeremy Collins coming is a big thing, because what he does is really powerful. We will screen his film at night and he will do a live art installation while the film is being screened. He will also go to the local high school the afternoon of his film showing at the festival and present it to local high school kids to inspire them. We want to add marquee events like that but still maintain the foundational pieces like guided tours, nordic instruction and natural history related events.

BCM: What draws people to the event?

BM: The main draw is that it’s free, at least the majority of it. It is also safe and designed for that beginner/intermediate group of outdoor enthusiast. That can be very powerful for people, especially with the growth in backcountry and Nordic skiing. A lot of people are scared to go backcountry skiing because they don’t know the right people, or they don’t have the avalanche skill set. We want to open up that world to them so that they can see how attainable the backcountry can be.

BCM: Will the Tahoe Backcountry Alliance have a role in the event?

BM: Rich Meyer is the driving force behind the Tahoe Backcountry Alliance and he is our avalanche instructor for our free AIARE 1 course. The Tahoe Backcountry Alliance will have a presence at the event, we just haven’t determined how as of yet, because they are so fledgling in their mission and their direction as of yet.

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Space is limited, so people are encouraged to register online in advance. Registration opens February 1. To find out more about the event, visit alpenglowsports.com.