Sharing a Love of Tahoe
Making family memories is what Tahoe Family... Read Article
Alpenglow Sports has been a vibrant and uplifting staple of the Tahoe City community since it moved its location from Truckee in 1978. Providing high-quality gear, engaging community events and passionate and knowledgeable staff, it continues to set the industry standards and lead by example.
Alpenglow Sports is more than just a store; it is a community committed to being environmentally conscious and community-focused. To inspire greatness, share stories of exploration and athleticism and bring relatable stories that resonate with the human spirit, they host the annual Winter Speaker Series, the country's largest community speaker series event.
I recently had the honor of speaking with Max Rehkopf, the director of marketing for Alpenglow Sports, to learn more about Alpenglow’s incredible history, commitment to excellence and community growth, their annual Winter Speaker Series and what he believes makes the Tahoe region so special and worth saving.
Continue below to read my interview with Max.
Max Rehkopf, Alpenglow's director of marketing. Photo Credit: Alpenglow Sports
How would you describe Alpenglow Sports in terms of overall mission in providing high-quality gear and events to the Tahoe community?
Alpenglow Sports was founded in 1973 in Truckee. At that time, it was one of the first outdoor retailers in a mountain town. It was an era when adventure enthusiasts relied on the Sierra Club in Berkeley. The energy was based in cities and their local community centers, where they would gear up and then head to the mountains. Alpenglow wanted to change that and have it more locally centralized.
In 1978 Alpenglow moved locations to its current store in Tahoe City. Since then we have seen a constant stream of growth and community engagement. Alpenglow Sports takes pride in being community, socially and environmentally responsible. We want to ensure that Lake Tahoe is the best place to explore and live for generations to come, and in doing that, we take pride in being an outstanding member of the community and leading by example.
We sell gear for all four seasons and focus on human-powered explorations such as backcountry skiing and splitboarding, climbing, backpacking, tail running and hiking. We want to ensure that our clients have access to the best gear for their activities and passionate and knowledgeable employees who can help them with advice. Our employees are dedicated athletes themselves and know what it takes to get to the elite levels with training and the correct gear.
We also make good on our core values by hosting a full calendar of free events, such as the Winter Speaker Series, which is our most well-known event. We also manage a nonprofit fundraising group called the Donor Party, which helps us run the Winter Speaker Series through local community outreach and philanthropy.
Our culture isn’t mostly focused on selling gear, but on philanthropy, outreach and community events. We will never try to sell you anything you don't need and are just here to help you be prepared for your adventures and endeavors.
Alpenglow's original store in Truckee. Photo Credit: Alpenglow Sports
What is The Donor Party, and how can people get involved?
Founded in 2017, The Donor Party is a group of about 100 Tahoe families that commit to a set fundraising amount during the Winter Speaker Series season. The members are an anonymous group that raises money without any fanfare, plaques or recognition. They do it purely for the community.
The Donor Party is run by Alpenglow Sports, with no management fee, so 100% of the contributions go to five nonprofits we support each season. Each event in the Winter Speaker Series has its own featured nonprofit, which is one of the five for the season. For 2025 The Donor Party is on track to raise $500,000, which equates to $100,000 per nonprofit we support. Our nonprofits include Tahoe Area Mountain Bike Association (TAMBA), Headwaters Science Institute, Courage Project, the Scotty Lapp Foundation and the Tahoe Waterman Foundation.
It’s very accessible to join, as everyone can contribute what they can. We encourage everyone to check it out.
Learn More or Get Involved: The Donor Party
Alpenglow's Winter Speaker Series is a huge success. Photo Credit: Alpenglow Sports
What inspired the Winter Speaker Series, and how has it evolved into what it is today?
The Alpenglow Sports Winter Speaker series is the largest community speaker series in the country, and our speakers are often some of the biggest names in the outdoor industry. The event is focused on storytelling and outdoor adventures, usually skiing since it takes place in the winter season. This year marked our 19th annual event, and we had a great speaker lineup featuring Leanne Pelosi, Kimmy Fasani, Greg Hill, Angela Hawse and Dave Nettle.
The events are broken up into two parts. There is a reception and a happy hour vibe for the first half, where participants buy giveaway tickets. All proceeds go to the featured nonprofits. Our average giveaway is around $25,000, which includes boots, skis, apparel and outdoor gear for the winter season. We work with dozens of outdoor brands to get the gear for the giveaways and have multiple tiers of sponsorship that companies can apply for. Our sponsors range from the biggest outdoor companies in the industry, such as North Face and Arcteryx, to local companies here in Tahoe.
We give our featured nonprofit a lot of airtime next and play a video about their nonprofit and mission that we produce in-house at Alpenglow Sports. Then the speakers present for about an hour, sharing their story of a grand expedition or a milestone goal they set in their career. The stories focus on the human experience, tackling more in-depth topics like motherhood or coming back from an injury. Outdoor athletes can relate to them, even on a non-professional level. Our focus is to go "one click deeper" by sharing these in-depth stories instead of just a "stoke fest."
Our Summit Sponsor this year was North Tahoe Chamber of Commerce. The sponsors and sponsorship dollars make the event free for the community. Each event has around 500 in-person attendees at the Olympic Village Event Center in Palisades, and 300 to 500 that livestream the shows, so about 1,000 overall attendees for each event. They also are on YouTube to watch after on the Alpenglow channel.
View the Speaker Series events: Alpenglow Sports Youtube
What are some of the most memorable moments from the Winter Speaker Series?
We’ve had an extensive laundry list of impressive outdoor athletes, such as Alex Honnold and Timmy Conwell. But the stories we tend to love the most go a lot deeper and relate on a very personal level. One that stands out is Michelle Parker, who shared how she balances a pro skiing career with her father’s aggressive Parkinson's diagnosis. Another is Kimmy Fasani, who was a speaker this season. Kimmy shared how she balanced her professional snowboarding career with a very personal stage-four breast cancer diagnosis. We also learned from Elyse Saugstad how she worked to make new avenues available to female pro skiers, both in competition opportunities and equal pay.
View Kimmy's story by clicking this link.
Alpenglow is dedicated to getting you prepared for your favorite activities. Photo Credit: Alpenglow Sports
How do you aim to inspire personal greatness, exploration and conservation through storytelling and engagement with the community?
Alpenglow Sports works to employ a lot of inspirational athletes as our day-to-day staff, so we take a lot of our credibility and pass it along to our clients because we are so engaged in the very same sports that we sell gear for. Each staff member is dedicated, extremely knowledgeable and passionate about what they do, and it shows.
Some of our staff run 100-mile races, stand on podiums or ski every day no matter what the conditions hold. The best we can do to inspire others is pursue their own goals and strive to achieve as much as we can, which gives us the experiences to coach others and achieve their goals along the way.
We believe in the power of adventure storytelling to inspire achievements on any level, and our goal is to make the stories accessible, which we do in our free events. Bringing people into our community and having engaging one-on-one conversations helps us build deep personal relationships that we hope last for generations.
Alpenglow has been celebrating the community for decades. Photo Credit: Alpenglow Sports
How do you define "responsible recreation," and how do you aim to inspire that mindset with adventure enthusiasts who visit the region?
Everything starts with our business practices. We don’t buy from brands who have no strong environmental initiatives. We require our brands to not ship products in single-use plastic and encourage brands to change shipping practices to be more environmentally friendly from the first day.
We believe that responsible recreation happens in the context of your community, so our culture is less about pursuing personal greatness and more about pursuing it as a community and team. We strongly believe in uplifting those around you in any way possible.
We also have a mountain running club that runs all summer, which is a great example of this core value. Our trail athletes who work at the store do an easy, accessible local run that anyone can join. It's fun for all levels! Accessibility is in the forefront with these sports, which can be intimidating to enter. We want to make it fun!
We support sports that are already entirely human-powered, so we don’t advocate for more fossil fuel use. We advocate for local adventures with your own power. We are also advocates of carpooling. Small habits make for big differences. And leave no trace.
What are some tips you would give to aspiring adventurers looking to gain knowledge and experience in a safe and sustainable manner?
My first tip is to find a mentor. Find someone in the community, ideally with decades of experience. Without a mentor, it's hard to safely progress through many outdoor sports, especially backcountry skiing because of the risk threshold.
You will also need to do formal education, so there are guide services that we trust to educate customers on topics such as backcountry travel, trail etiquette and avalanche awareness.
Don Fyfe at the Tahoe City location. Photo Credit: Alpenglow Sports
What are the essential items you carry from Alpenglow Sports in your winter outdoor adventures?
I always carry an ample supply of water, and I use HydraPack soft flask. That makes a great tool for most of my outdoor adventures.
I also bring extra nutrition and hydration. I really like the Skratch Labs hydration mix and energy chews for fuel. I bring them everywhere and always travel with a full medical kit; I like the ones provided by Adventure Medical Kits that come in a variety of sizes.
What makes Tahoe such a special place?
Tahoe is most special for me because of the community that exists here. We have a strong, close-knit community of people devoted to keeping Tahoe an amazing place to recreate, visit and live.
We have so many strong environmental organizations like Clean Up the Lake and recreational organizations like TAMBA that advocate for outdoor exploration, and so many dedicated athletes and adventure enthusiasts who practice what they preach and invite others to join.
I feel super fortunate to be a part of this community.
Alpenglow has everything you need to hit the slopes! Photo Credit: Alpenglow Sports.
Check out their winter season clearance, happening in late March!
Alpenglow Sports, 415 North Lake Boulevard, Tahoe City, CA
About the Author Kirsten Alexis
Kirsten is an outdoor adventure enthusiast, writer and photographer. You can typically find her hiking, paddleboarding, cross-country skiing and checking out new spots to share in the Tahoe Donner region. She has been lucky to call Tahoe her second home since she was a child and aims to inspire people to experience Tahoe and fall in love with the beauty and adventurous spirit of the region through her blogs and content. 
