Interview with Dave Enright

Dave Enright founded Evergreen Outdoor Center in 2000.

Dave, tell us a bit about yourself?
Well, I might as well start at the beginning.
I was born in North Vancouver, BC Canada and grew up in Squamish, halfway between Vancouver and Whistler. I attended Totem Hall pre-school while living in Squamish and was one of only two white kids at the Native school. Needless to say, I was always the cowboy in games of Cowboys & Indians. This might give some clues to those who know me as the person who spontaneously breaks out into drumming and song around a camp fire. It is also where my love for the outdoors began. I started canoeing with my father on the Squamish River, skiing with my mother at Whistler and also horseback riding during those years.

At the age of five we moved back to the North Shore of Vancouver and I graduated from high school there a decade later.

I was very concerned with the state of the world in my teen years, as I still am now. But I was much more active and vocal about it during high school and college. One of my major projects as head of the school environment club was working to stop the logging and proposed building of an 18 hole golf course in an area of old growth forest on Cypress mountain. We did actually stop that. Another project was a school-wide recycling program that spread to all schools in the district and still runs to this day. I also brought in various speakers on ecological topics to the school to increase awareness within the student population.

After a couple of years out studying in Japan and ski patrolling on Blackcomb Mt., Whistler, all my love for the outdoors and outdoor recreation transpired into me studying Outdoor Recreation Management at college. After that, it was back to Whistler to work as patrol and heli-guide in the winter, and canoe, Mt. bike and hiking guide in the green season.

Next it was back to Hakuba, then Niseko, then Minakami (Gunma) before finally settling down in Hakuba and starting COACH - Canadian Outdoor Adventure Club Hakuba. This started as just Avalanche Awareness Courses and snowshoe tours in the winter and mountain bike tours in the summer. I changed the name to Evergreen Outdoor Center after a year and a half, as that name was more in line with the image I wanted to portray. Evergreen has now been operating for just over two and a half years, and is providing Japanese and foreigners alike with great outdoor adventures in the spectacular Japan North Alps year round.

How did you initially become interested in Japan?
I had been interested in Japan since I was a child as we had close family friends that were Japanese-Canadians. I was also fairly well up on European and North American history and wanted to study more about Asian history and culture, something that I really knew very little about. I started taking Japanese in grade 10 after failing French by 2% a year earlier, thinking that Japanese would better my chances for future jobs.

So what finally brought you to Japan?
I always say that failing French in grade 9 was the catalyst that set me on a course to Japan, as I needed a second language to graduate high school and that language was Japanese. I studied Japanese for three years in high school and received an all expenses paid trip to Chiba for a month during the summer vacation on a Lions Club student exchange program when I was 15. That was my first time to Japan.

So once you got to Japan, what next?
The next time I came to Japan I traveled through large parts of the country by train, mountain bike and automobile. I then became an Outdoor Guide in Honshu and Hokkaido - I've also been behind the bar, been under the bar (yet to be behind bars, however!) I have also ski patrolled, got married and started my own business!

How was your business initially started?
It started out very small - just me guiding people on snowshoes in the Hakuba mountains and instructing a few avalanche courses while I continued to ski patrol at Hakuba Cortina. I decided to teach people about the danger of avalanches after a tragic accident that saw three New Zealanders die in the Hakuba mountains in a huge slide in 1999 (see this article).

Tell us a bit more about your business/activities
I had worked for lots of other companies guiding and instructing canoeing, mountain biking, river rafting and trekking. All of which gave me the experience that I needed but not the satisfaction, nor the stability that I guess I longed for. (Not that I am any where near stable now!) So, it was a natural progression to continue my winter programs into summer as well. I started by buying six secondhand mountain bikes, made a flyer and began knocking on all the pensions and hotels in Hakuba to drum up business for mountain bike tours, while at the same time continuing to supplement the low income with raft guiding in Minakami (Gunma).

I broke even the first year and fed myself with the veggies my wife Mariko and I had farmed at our house in the mountains of Otari. It was probably one of the best summers of my adult life.

I expanded my activities the second summer to include canoeing, kayaking, mountain bike downhill tours, rock climbing and hiking as well as our now famed Canadian Salmon BBQ. That was when we changed the company name to Evergreen Outdoor Center.

The winter activities were expanded the following winter as I left patrolling behind and went full-time with Evergreen in the winter by adding ski & snowboard instruction, on-resort guiding for foreigners, increased the number of avalanche courses, back country ski/snowboard tours, snowshoe tours and Nordic ski instruction.

›› Interview with Dave Enright - Part 2