Airborne
Monday morning, Jim and I headed over to the heli-skiing rendezvous point, bubbly and excited at the prospect of our first-ever helicopter snowboarding adventure. The company handed our avalanche beacons, pointed us to our lovely guide Paige, and bussed us out to the heliport, some ten minutes' drive outside Whistler. There, under threatening low clouds and with an increasing sense of foreboding, we got trained in avalanche procedures and helicopter safety. After about an hour and several scouting flights by one of the light choppers, the company told us they wouldn't be able to fly, and they drove us back to the resort. We didn't make it onto the slopes until almost noon, so we lost more than half a day. Even though the weather didn't look much better for Tuesday, we decided to try to fly again anyway.

We spent the rest of the day in the Symphony Amphitheater, a group of bowls and glades that we hadn't explored previously. Visibility at the summit was atrocious - five or ten feet sometimes, with flat light making what little terrain was visible very difficult to read. Once we struggled down to the bottom of the bowls, though, we found riding through the sparse trees to be quite enjoyable. Jim called one snowboardcross-like track the best run he'd ever taken!

The next morning, we were out at the helipad again, bright an early. The weather was considerably better, and everyone was excited. After a short repeat of the safety lesson, our group of eleven (eight customers and three guides) boarded the helicopter. The door closed, the rotor spun up, and suddenly, almost magically, we were airborne.

I'd never flown in a helicopter before. The feeling is quite different from flying in an airplane, at least a large one, and pretty amazing. The takeoff is imperceptible, and feels effortless somehow, despite the engine noise, but level flight feels labored. The feeling that the machine is not meant to fly is palpable from the inside, but from the outside they look quite graceful and the rotor's ability to hold up the vehicle seems reasonable. The flight was dramatic. The machine flew low and banked hard, so we frequently found ourselves staring straight down into the heavily wooded valleys below. After a short time, the trees thinned out and we found ourselves flying over the vast sheets of snow we were headed for. Finally, the copter slowed down and we realized we had reached our landing point.

Like takeoff, landing was completely imperceptible. As the engine speed was reduced slightly and the cloud of blown snow receded, we followed our guide out the door and huddled on our knees in the snow just a few feet from the helicopter. On the other side, another guide removed our skis and boards from the basket, then hunkered down as well. A few thumbs ups were exchanged, and the pilot lifted off in a huge blast of snowy air, then rushed foward and down over a cliff. Suddenly, everything was silent and we were standing on top of the world on an infinite field of snow.

Snowboarding in these mountains was like nothing I've ever done before. I'd ridden in powder, and getting around here wasn't basically different from that, but doing it on these vast, seemingly unending slopes, perched high above cliffs that dropped precipitously into the void, that was something new and very different. It took some time to become comfortable with the heights, but I followed our guide and everything turned out just fine.

We made four runs. At the end of each one, our guide would collect the skis and boards into a pile and crouch next to it. The rest of us would hunker down in a kneeling huddle perhaps ten feet away. With remarkable accuracy, the helicopter would set down between us and we would board. It was a sad moment when we got into those cramped seats for the final time. As we lifted off we could see our tracks coming all the way down from the distant top of the mountain, and it was hard to imagine riding anywhere else after that.
- posted by Joachim @ 9:00 AM