BRITISH COLUMBIA HAS BEEN A SPECIAL PLACE F O R Y V O N C H O U I N A R D S I N C E H E S TA R T E D C L I M B I N G H E R E OVER 50 YEARS AGO. DANIELLE EGGE FINDS OUT MORE.
Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, never beats around the bush. The first time I met him, I was interviewing for a job at his son’s surf shop, which is a pretty crusty place. As he shuffled by, he looked at me, raised his eyebrows, and said, “Uh, I’m not really sure you want to work here.” Now that I sit at a desk all day, he still gives me a hard time: “Good thing you actually got a real job.”
YC, as friends, family and Patagonia employees call him, will call you out all day long. He doesn’t mince words, which I think is one of the reasons he can get things done— like build one of the most respected brands in the outdoor industry. Because he doesn’t have an email address or a cell phone, I left a note with Mike Dunn, his right-hand man, to set up a conversation. Two weeks later, I’m sitting across from the 76-year-old at Patagonia HQ in Ventura, California. I update him on the new store in Vancouver—he looks pleased— and ask him about his own experiences in British Columbia.
18-year-old kid, it’s paradise. I couldn’t get enough of it.” It was at that age that YC started traveling north each summer to climb in the Bugaboos and the Selkirks. It wasn’t until later, he explains, that he got into steelhead fishing. He asks if I know B.C. has the best steelhead fishing in the world. Well, they did, he claims, even 40 years ago, and they still do today.
He shrugs his shoulders and says, “Well, I don’t know, I pretty much just fish up there and that’s all.” Since I know that’s not all, I wait. Besides, I have an hour with him, not just one measly minute. He shifts a couple of times in his seat, looks everywhere but at me, sighs, and begins.
“It blows my mind,” he says with wonder. “Most importantly, there are still really wild places up there. There’s no wilderness left in the Lower 48 anymore,” he laments. Disgust creeps into his tone as he continues: “Down here, wild is a word that’s been watered down to mean nothing. I realized a while back that the wildest place is on the Upper Snake River, and it’s only 21 miles from the road.” He shakes his head: “You can walk 21 miles in a day!”
On Paradise and Wilderness “Gee whiz, British Columbia has everything. Absolutely everything that I love, anyway. It has dry areas, rivers, mountains and a coastline like nowhere else in the world except for maybe New Zealand. For an
I ask him about surfing in Canada and he lets out a classic YC harrumph. “Have you felt the water up there? It’s absolutely freezing!” We quickly abandon the topic because, as he says, those waves are really quite good and actually kind of secret.
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