“You Better Dive, Because These Glaciers Are Melting”

Summer boarding is on, and after closing out his return to High Cascade as an adult camp coach, Patrick McCarthy, better known as Sarge, is feeling the withdrawals. Summer camp is an ethereal experience with a magnetic force that keeps people coming back, and for those who’ve had the chance to get some sunny glacier laps in, you know what I’m talking about. 686 team manager and Mount Baker Hard Core, McCarthy is doing it for the people. Session one camper Mel Maningat said, “My perspective of Hood and my future plans have changed just from being in that session with Patrick, he actually inspired me to look into coaching.” Sarge is making sure snowboarding is for everybody, and after a week of building connections and battling it out in a game of SNOW, he’s counting down the days to his return. - Ally Watson

How was camp at HCSC last week? Looks like it was a good time up there.
Session one, it was so sick. Day one on hill was like 29 degrees and it snowed like three inches and they wanted to take everybody to the zoo and do all these other activities. I ended up convincing them to let some of the adult campers and coaches go up on hill. We hiked up in the snow and fog, got to the jumps and had a little session—just kind of got the legs going. That’s the thing in the Pacific Northwest, we haven’t had any spring warm-ups or high heat, so the snowpack at Mt Hood is money right now. You can ride Palmer to Magic Mile top-to-bottom, no rocks, giant open runs all the way to the lift line—it’s crazy.

Initially when I went to sign up for this camp, that was the whole reason why I wanted to go, because I was just noticing what was going on with the snowpack and I knew session one was going to be very unique where you could just board and freeride with the group. It’s way more productive, in my opinion, then when you’re just stuck on one feature and you gotta walk across the dusty volcanic rock to go do something.

Totally, you said you signed up to coach, did someone hit you up or did you reach out to come coach this year?
Basically, it was a very organic approach. I was at the Zumiez 100k in Colorado and I ran into Kevin English and Bobby Meeks—they’re the head of the show over there—and we were joking around and they were like, “Yo, you should come back and coach.” I’ve done some guest pro stuff and different things and I was like, “Well, if I come back, I just wanna be a coach. Like I want lunchline, I want to have a crew, I wanna do the coaching and inspire people.”

I coached there for about ten years in the late 90s and early 00s. I was a camper that transitioned to coach, and Icoached at Windells for a few years and then eight or ten years at High Cascade. I coached at Borderline Camp in Alaska, Camp of Champions in Whistler, Woodward Tahoe, Woodward Copper—kind of hit all the camps. It was definitely time to get back to my roots with High Cascade.

Sick, that’s awesome.
That’s sort of how it came about. Big shout outs to Bobby Meeks and Kevin English for kind of planting the seed.

Did you have one specific group for adult camp or did you rotate?
I had a specific group, like right when I showed up, I knew my roommate was going to be Blaise Rosenthal and he does a longer term at camp. When they were like, “Hey, what group do you want?” I was like well Blaise is going to be here for a couple sessions and he really likes to have the absolute most progressive group of adults and I was like, I’m not going to break that. So I had the upper intermediate. You know, they were slaying the rails, they could ride pipe, they had a lot of foundational skills. It ended up being just right, just what I wanted out of it, and I really developed some fun friendships and some really cool experiences with those guys this last week.

On summer solstice we did the Illumination Rock hike. We all did the hike together and the ride out. That was a really inspiring thing. You know, I always tell everybody that you never regret the hike. It was amazing, the jumps were amazing, the scenery was incredible—it was a slog of a hike. Coming from Baker, we do a little hike then a little traverse and then some hiking; this one was just straight up in a giant open snowfield. It just kept going and going. But it wasn’t too bad. The run down was really memorable, too. The sun was just in that alpenglow state, the run was clean, and the groomer had just laid down some fresh corduroy for the crew. So it was perfect.

Sick. What a dream.
It was really cool just to share the experience in the mountains and just really watch the campers take some of the things that I was teaching them and the progression and like really implementing them and getting better. What was really cool and one of the fun memorable moments was that Shaun White met us at the top of the public pipe.

Yeah, I saw he was up there for the session.
Yeah dude, Shaun White rolled over and met up with all the campers and let them take photos and stuff. We hung out and did a lap through the pipe and down through the public park. It was rad to see him there and super cool that he’s connecting with the people. In my opinion, he’s doing all the right things; he’s giving back to the sport, he’s paying his respects. After such a long time of just dominating in halfpipe and doing his own thing, he’s finding ways to plug back into the sport and giving back and doing things that are important.

I heard you and Blaise had a game of SNOW one day.
He’s mad competitive and a super good snowboarder. He was challenging me to a game of SNOW on the final day and it was funny because I had been watching him ride all week and I knew his getting-upside-down and flip tricks were probably his arch nemesis. I made sure to get a few of those in the bag and I got him some good letters at the beginning. I think he narrowly beat me, it was SNOW to SNO. I took an early lead and relinquished my role as the first person, then he took me out with some tricks. Big shout out to Blaise Rosenthal, we had a lot of good times and evening chats. I grew up respecting Blaise a lot and I love his Midlife Crisis movement. What he’s doing is dope, so it was fun to battle it out. I didn’t know he was going to be so competitive. So next year I’ll come in ready to go. I’ll have my gloves on when I get there and I’ll train up so that I can put it on. I got nothing but respect for Blaise and what he’s doing with Chad Otterstrom. Big shout outs to Kevin Pearce who filmed, too, he does Snowboard Pro Camp.

What went down off snow? Did the crew get some kickball in?
Yeah, there was some kickball, one day we did Timothy Lake and went swimming, and we did Frog Lake. We went down to skate at Seek and it’s just phenomenal down there. High Cascade hosted this cool dinner in the trees, too. Other than that, there were a few other activities, but we’re all pretty torched at night after boarding a bunch—it’s like Groundhog Day, you just get in that mode.

I’m definitely having that Mt. Hood/High Cascade come down. Being at home this week, the come down is real. I made the decision to come back before I even left, ha. I met up with Kevin and Bobby and some of the guys and was like, “You can expect Sarge back next year. I wanna come back and beat Blaise in the game of SNOW.”

Haha, Sarge is coming back.
I can lament on that throughout the summer and fall, and next winter and be ready to go. But also, I think a lot of those campers look forward to hopefully coming back and connecting with me again and I want to keep giving back and paying it forward. I always feel like snowboarding has given me a lot with all my time as a professional snowboarder, then all my time now as a team manager. Anytime I can find a cool way to pay it forward, give back a little, and give some of my knowledge of what I’ve learned from my years of snowboarding, and just snowboard with everyone that’s what’s important. Not just team riders, not at cool events, not at Baldface, like, go snowboarding with everybody.

Mount Hood is so dope, they’re doing a fantastic job down there. Windells and High Cascade, the two camps kind of combined efforts and are going for it, it’s all time.

Yeah, and summer camps are slowly disappearing and getting tougher to run.
Exactly, it’s really important that pro snowboarders should be leaning in. I feel like almost every pro snowboarder should drop what they’re doing in summer and dedicate some time at the camp and show some love and coach, or go dig, or just do something because you know, you get what you give into these camps. The more people showing love and showing up, making it special, you’re going to be able to bring it to the next level. I think it’s snowboarders’ duty to take some time and go do these things. If you wanna be a part of these camps, you better dive because these glaciers are melting.

What's your summer set up? What are you running on the glacier?
I had two different boards. I have the Arbor Candle Rain 159 and the Arbor Candle Metal Machine Mike Liddle 156. Union Team bindings, Vans Versa Blake Paul pro model boot. I wore the 686 Dojo collection, and then you’re usually rocking the hoodies and long sleeves. I got a bunch of stuff from Autumn and a bunch of Dragons. I tried to give away a lot of stuff to campers and stoke them out. I think that’s pretty much what the fit’s were looking like. I had a nice Megadeath longsleeve tee I was running for the steeze factor. It got hot, like pretty dang hot some days.

Yeah, you’re just melting through your clothes.
You're melting on the glacier. But it was awesome, I loved every single minute with everybody up there and I was really psyched on connecting with all my campers. Big shout outs to Mel, Lindsay, Eric, and Marco, and Mel again and Soph and Lex.

Alright, what was the best part and the worst part of the session.
Well, the way that the session started was by far the worst. From the minute that I showed up through the whole first arrival day and the first day on hill, not one time did it stop pouring rain. It poured rain while I was moving in, it poured rain while I did airport runs, when I arrived with people in the camp—it was pouring rain. The first day it looked like the rain was going to subside. We went up on hill, walked in the sideways snow, and it kind of subsided and we had a little session. I was just like, Dude, when is it going to be summer camp? But when the sun came out, it was hitting.

But you know, if I had to say one thing that I really loved is the very end of the whole camp session, we kind of migrated up to this minipipe that was twelve or fourteen feet with a kind of short, flat bottom. All the coaches and photographers were there and Katie Kennedy and a bunch of rippers went up and we just threw down for a bit. I was like dying, I’m always looking for an image that resonates with me when I leave, something I’m proud of. I saw Matt Roebke was up there and I seized the opportunity to get a photo. So, yeah those kind of things are the stuff I really like, and honestly battling with Blaise made me try a bunch of new tricks that I hadn’t been doing during the week and I got some corks going over the jumps and got upside down a little bit. I love that whole thing.

Hell yeah. Well, that’s a wrap for session one, so we will be anticipating your win against Blaise next summer. Thanks, Sarge.