JP Auclair, 1977 – 2014 – Pioneer, Romantic, Innovator, Student, Friend

October 3rd, 2014


JP in his happy place. Image:: Julien Regnier

Mountainwatch | Chris Booth

It’s the year 2000. The summer Olympics are in full motion in Sydney, the whole world is watching, and JP Auclair is being chased by police through the Olympic athlete compound.

JP is striding ahead, putting body lengths between him and the cops. He jumps a barrier, rounds a building and bounds up the stairs. He enters a corridor and hastily wraps on a door. His (then) girlfriend answers, she’s on the Canadian synchronized swimming team, and until now, JP wasn’t allowed in to see her.

She gives him a familiar, but surprised look, as if to say “wow, great to see you, but how did you get here?” And then, before JP could open his mouth, two policeman and a security guard tackle him to the ground and hand-cuff him. He spends the night in jail.

To get that far, JP apparently waded through marshland, traversed a bushy embankment above a freeway, mounted a 15ft high concrete wall and timed the security cameras to sneak in. To this day JP is the only person in Olympic history to successfully infiltrate the Olympic compound without being detected, well, almost.

This is the JP Auclair I knew: romantic, creative, restless, curious, brilliant, fun, and innovative. But if there is one thing about JP that shone through more than anything else, it was his sense of adventure.

From the early days at High North Ski Camp right up to my first trip to AK and then beyond that, I have been one of the lucky people to know JP Auclair. I have seen him do great things, on skis sure, but mainly off them. I have seen him start a ski company; I have seen him start a charity; I have seen him help kids land a jump, or slide along a rail, even if it takes thirty tries; I have seen him connect deeply with people who only ever got to meet him once; I have seen him settle down and become a dad; and, I have seen him have fun with everything, every little ounce of life that he finds along the way.


I remember doing a shoot with JP once and he was doing laid out backflips for his new Armada ad. I said to JP
“I’m not sure if skiing is at a place where it can be nostalgic and laugh at itself yet.” He didn’t agree, and he was right.

Not all that long ago JP and I spent a week or two ski touring around the forests of La Plagne in the Savoie, France. He and Ingrid had not long settled in Zurich and he was itching to get back into the mountains. One particular afternoon we set off quite late from La Roche, arriving at the Croix de Saint Jacques just on sunset. We sat on the summit as the sun approached the alpine horizon, casting everything in golden pink light. I pulled out a flask of Genepi and some dried sausage I had bought the day before and shared it with him. As we looked out across the valley and north towards the ombre of Mont Blanc, I asked him if he was ever going to step back from all of this, if there was ever an exit plan back to regular life. “No, I think I’m just going keep at it,” he replied, “there’s still so many things to learn and I feel like I’m only just kind of at the start of it.”

Over the last few winters JP showed us all the depth of that intention. Even though he was already a pioneer, a leader, and an ambassador of our sport, he never considered himself anything more than a student of it.

I wish I could remember more of the things we talked about that late afternoon by the Croix de Saint Jacques, because that time in France was the last time I saw JP. I parted promising to give more to his charity and to keep in touch more often. Regrettably I never did either.

The one great sadness about sunsets is that they don’t last long. Eventually the sun disappears below the horizon, leaving only the memory of light, and a feeling that just a moment ago, the world was a much warmer place.

So long old friend. It sure was nice knowing you.

If you wish to honour JP’s legacy, please become a donor to Alpine Initiatives, the charity JP founded. There can be no doubt that this is what he would have wanted. You can donate to the Auclair Fund by heading to http://www.alpineinitiatives.org/.