Pete Alport arrived at the young snowboarder’s home at 11pm on a winter’s night in late 2022. The pair bid a cheerful goodbye to Kai Huggin’s parents and drove south from Bend into the night. Where Highway 138 intersects the north access for Crater Lake, they ditched the truck and fired up the snowmobiles. During the summer, Crater Lake’s north entrance is a well-maintained road, but in winter, it’s nothing but a snowy track through the trees, barely discernable as the off-season access to Oregon’s only national park. Illuminated only by the stars above, the pair set off through the forest toward the rim.
After 12 miles of travel in pitch black dark, they reached the North Junction — the point beyond which snowmobiles are forbidden. Parking the sleds, they swapped them for split boards. Next came two tough miles of touring through unmarked snow. By now, it was the witching hour, the darkest and coldest moments of night upon them. Just before dawn, in the earliest light, the lake appeared. They paused to rest and take in the sunrise, the light illuminating Crater Lake’s famous deep blue hue even more striking in contrast to the snowy surrounds.
Nearby, a small peak was just the vantage they sought. Huggin hiked up the hill and immediately turned to descend, launching himself off a jump into the air while Alport caught the action on camera. Twenty drops, several hours and many great photographs later, the two reversed their journey: split board tour, snowmobile, truck, highway, Bend. When they made it back to Huggin’s home, they’d been awake for 25 hours.
All in a day’s work for Alport, a Bend-based professional photographer and videographer who specializes in capturing epic shots of adventure sports. “The amount of s**t I do just for a photo,” he laughed, recalling the efforts necessary to pull off that Crater Lake trip and the handful of shots that resulted—one of which graces this issue’s cover. But maybe, he quickly acknowledged, being out in the wild was always the original motivation. “The photos provide the medium to be able to experience all of this,” he said, gesturing around him — to Bend, to the river, the mountains, the forest. Another key motivator for Alport is sharing these outsized experiences with athletes. He laughed, “Whether that resonated with [Huggin] at the time, when he’s 40, he’ll be like, ‘remember that time I followed that psychopath to Crater Lake?’”
Alport began capturing outdoor adventure on video camera in the mid 1990s, when he found himself in on the early days of action sports TV. A Portland native, Alport earned a degree in urban planning from Portland State University and held a job as a door-to-door salesman before landing somewhat accidentally in action filmmaking. He always had a video camera around, he recalled, as well as an innate and rather fearless knack for leaping at an opportunity when he saw it. He managed to talk himself into a few early gigs, and one thing led to the next.
“It was really the digital infancy,” he said of those times. Shooting snowboarding, surfing, skateboarding, and skiing for Ambush TV, Rage Films and Poor Boyz Productions paid the bills for Alport for over a decade. Footage he shot landed on syndicated television, in documentary films that made the film fest circuit and on the X Games. The work led to epic adventure and stories he still loves to tell. “I got the first heli permit on Mount Hood,” he recalled. “It was incredible — doing laps over the mountain, me hanging off of the helicopter shooting, then flying back over my hometown, chasing the east wind over the gorge.”
When life on the road — and being away from home and family — grew tiresome, Alport pivoted to photography. As with videography, he said, “I have no formal training.” Instead, what Alport seems to possess is exceptional internal drive. “I don’t have a lot of quit,” he stated. An early riser, Alport maximizes his days by starting well before dawn. He’s not afraid to stand in the cold for hours to get the shot. As with the trip to Crater Lake, he pushes the athletes he works with hard, too. “I expect a lot — punctuation and performance.”
Alport admits that his characteristic drive comes from someplace deeper than merely a strong work ethic. Family, social and school struggles defined his youth. He had a rough upbringing without a lot of support. “I had to achieve my own goals, because no one else was going to do it for me,” he said. “I had to find and create community. I had to create my family from an outside source.”
One way in which Alport has done so is by building experiences that reach, benefit and bring together community. He’s built jumps at 15 Bend WinterFests, held an annual snow camp in the Cascades, crafted a cornice contest on the slopes of the mountain and created a snow wall ride in middle of Drake Park. By bringing a taste of big winter sports down from the mountains into town and making these events free and easy as often as possible, Alport hopes to increase access and excitement for action sports for everyone. “I want to remove the barrier for entry for snow events,” he said. “I love to create something other people have fun doing.”
Next spring, Alport will turn 50, a milestone that looms large. These days, he’s feeling particularly introspective about the challenges he’s faced in his life, the larger-than-life experiences under his belt and what might be coming next. “Sometimes, I’m surprised to still be here at 50,” he said. Alport mused for a moment about whether celebrating his 50th birthday would be the thing to make him start slowing down. Then he seemed to shrug off the idea. “I know how good it feels to achieve something because I also know what it feels like to fail. I know what it’s like to miss an opportunity. It’s impossible to get that back.”
See more of Pete Alport’s work at www.petealport.com.
This article appears in the Source December 11, 2025.
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