We sit down with Charlie Krarup, mountaineer, skier, adventurer and CEO of Adventure Base, a mountain adventure tourism specialist company co-founded with Olly Alkema and 15-time Everest summiteer Kenton Cool about their mission to create meaningful human experiences through daring adventures.
Charlie, first up, tell me how is life better from being in the mountains?
Well, for me it’s more like how can life not be better from being in the mountains? They offer so much in the way of fun, activity and adventure of which we’re huge advocates and then when you’re immersed in a mountain experience you may stop in awe of their scale and realise something about your own presence and place on the planet.
Mountains humble you, or at least they humble me…and I think they offer something like a reset experience from the noise of a city and the grind of life.
Are you a businessman or extreme sportsman and what do you think is the difference between running a business that immerses you in your passions than one that doesn’t?
Well, for the first part of your question I would say that I’m both. I’m passionate about climbing, ski touring and trekking, but then I’m also fascinated by our business operations and working with my partners on how we can grow our business to be the best at what we do. Both Olly and myself who run the company day-to-day don’t believe in ‘work and life’ separation as we have a privilege of ‘life is work and work is life’ because of our connection to Adventure Base. We’re fortunate to be doing this and I believe that association is appreciated by our clients; they get that our values are driven by something higher than the business operation.
Do you believe that tourists are seeking more risk in a vacation post-pandemic?
In all honesty I don’t know… though post pandemic we’ve seen a surge in enquiries and the speed at which we’ve sold out our annual slots for our most popular climb of Mont Blanc surpasses other times. Perhaps more people are open to taking on an adventure challenge and exposing themselves to new experiences. For many its also a question of how to start; a desire to scale the Matterhorn can’t happen without knowledge, skills and training, but we’ve also committed ourselves to getting our guests correctly introduced with a range of training courses for different adventure disciplines. I think ‘managed risk’ is a better descriptor of what people are seeking and beginners to mountain sports can still get the same rewards and excitement as experts with us.
Adventure Base has been in operation for over 13 years and your safety record is excellent and is something you prioritise – my question is: how do even begin to plan for the unexpected?
For each trip there is a dynamic risk assessment that covers the dangers and situations that are standard to the environments we are going through, but then like every adventure, nothing goes exactly to plan and then we’re reliant on the decision-making skills and experience of our guides. Critically, our safety record comes down to the quality of the people we work with.
In the world of mountaineering, trekking and ski touring you operate with subcontracted guides, mountaineers or leader and support crews, and we’ve spent lot of time finding the best and then working alongside them to know that beyond their professional capabilities that they’re really good human beings – not only as their character and people-skills matter to our clients, but they’ll consistently make better, sounder decisions because they care about what they’re doing and who they’re guiding.
The best piece of advice that Olly and myself were even given was by one of our guides, Pablo: ‘If there is doubt, there is no doubt’ and I guess you can say that this is a foundation of our approach to the duty of care that we have to our guests.
Adventure Base is very transparent with clients that part of what they pay is for a carbon offset scheme. Is this just good PR, or is it good guardianship?
Yeah, it’s a tough question, and everyone in the travel industry needs to acknowledge the uncomfortable position that is created when people go on holiday. We love the environments within which we work and yet we’re contributing in various ways to why they’re being damaged. I think anyone in the travel industry that isn’t concerned, that isn’t taking significant steps to counter their impact is deluded that there is any future for them.
Olly and myself discuss this often as we don’t want to be seen as greenwashing the issue just by signing up to Tourism declares and a carbon offset scheme: yes, we can do our bit and make good personal environmental decisions in our life here in Chamonix, but it is still a fraction of what needs to be achieved.
It’s a big part of the business we are working on. We don’t have all the answers, but consider responsibility for nature and our own existence as fundamental as any other business standard, such as, do you treat your staff correctly….. We’re transparent with our action plan that holds us, as a company, and clients, as individuals, on our collective responsibilities because it’s not the tenet it must be.
If we only had 30-seconds to do this interview, how would you describe what Adventure Base represents?
That we provide daring adventures to create meaningful human experiences because we believe life is better when you’ve been in the mountains.
All images ©2022, Adventure Base
