Pacific NW/AK/BC TR: Points North Heli, April 9-16

[ScotsSkier]

That sounds awesome -- how cool to get to take a heli trip during that era with Doug Coombs. You have any pics or anything floating around?

need to dig around for some. I suspect my ex still has them in the UK....

 

[RachelV]

A friend just forwarded me this article in the Washington Post, written by a woman who was at PNH the week before I was and didn't get to ski. I think it's really well-written. Coincidentally, she also lives in Boulder. I wonder if we've crossed paths.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...9aad90-2ccc-11e6-9de3-6e6e7a14000c_story.html

I gotta say, reading more details about just how terrible the weather was that week (above 68 degrees in the mountains!), I'm even more grateful that mother nature got her act together in time for me to ski at all.

(Edit: I misremembered -- the no-fly week was 2 weeks before my trip, not 1. Still.)

 

[RachelV]

(I still want to go back. )

 

[Jim McDonald]

I just read that and logged in here because it was such a contrast to your experience.
Luck plays such a role in the lives of powderhounds!

 

[Tricia]

@RachelV That is a very interesting article.
I'm impressed by her resolve in the end.

 

[Doug Briggs]

Thanks for the terrific report. I've only been in a flight for life helicopter. I'd like to change that sometime.

 

[Jim McDonald]

I haven't been in in helicopter since 1971, and don't plan to ever be in another one. Snowcats rock!

 

[Doug Briggs]

I haven't been in in helicopter since 1971, and don't plan to ever be in another one. Snowcats rock!

A friend won a trip to AK to heli-ski and was fortunate that the guide company had cats as they couldn't fly at all while he was there. Cats ability to travel when the birds are grounded is a great advantage.

I still wouldn't say no to a day with a chopper, though.

 

[Blue Streak]

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to spend a week at Points North Heli-Adventures, an operation in Cordova, AK, that is owned and operated by Tahoe locals Kevin Quinn and Jessica Sobolowski-Quinn.

Short version: IT WAS AMAZING. Totally surreal. Best week ever.

Longer version:

There were a bunch of reasons I picked PNH.

1. I wanted to go to Alaska and experience that terrain versus that of the Canadian Rockies.
2. I wanted a place with a more laid-back vibe than a luxury resort.
3. I wanted to be as frugal as possible while still going heliskiing (ha).
4. I’d skied with Jess before and had a great time, and trusted her to match me up with a good group.

PNH was great, and exactly what I was looking for. The lodge is bare bones but nice enough. The common area where you eat and hang out on down days feels like summer camp, with big long communal dining tables, a foosball table, ping pong, and a TV well stocked with ski movies. The food is delicious, simple comfort food, and they feed you a ton of it. Best of all, the guests were some of the most interesting, accomplished, and humble people I’ve ever met — a totally awesome cross-section of super-enthusiastic skiers including a female fighter pilot, a “yacht mechanic to a Russian oligarch” (his exact words), tons of small business owners, the Warren Miller film crew, and a base jumper who was the most continuously psyched person I’ve ever met.

The downside of Alaska is that you really have to deal with weather. When you buy a week at PNH (trips run Saturday -- Saturday), you pay for 4 heli hours, which roughly equates to three big days of skiing. It’s pretty rare to need more than that. My week (Week 8) skied 2.5 days, with one day where we didn’t get back until after 5 p.m. Week 6 didn’t get to ski at all, which is quite rare but also particularly brutal (PNH does credit you for unused heli hours at the end of your trip). Week 9 got four amazing bluebird days, which is pretty much the best-case scenario. So, you’re going to have some down days to deal with.

On your down days, you can:

1. Hike! We did a glacier hike into a crazy ice cave that was really, really cool. Note: it will probably be raining while you hike, which is why you’re not skiing.
2. Bike or walk to town! Stop at the place on the side of the road where the bald eagles swoop down and eat fish. Surprisingly entertaining.
3. Ski from the town lift! Unfortunately not an option this year as the weather was unusually warm and there was no snow at sea level. PNH had a really odd season in general, weather-wise.
4. Go to the bar! Popular option.
5. Play ping pong with the Australians!
6. Do laundry!

You get the idea. If you’re the kind of person that can’t handle down days, Alaska is probably not the place for you.

However, the upside of Alaska is that when you get to ski, you’re magically transported via helicopter into the middle of the most unreal, mind-blowing terrain you’ve ever seen. I’d been in a helicopter before, and it in no way prepared me for how awesome it is to fly through the Chugach, swoop around a peak, and get dropped off on a ridge that’s straight out of a ski movie. Anytime anything was happening that involved skiing or helicopters, I had to pinch myself to be sure it was real.

As far as the actual skiing goes, I think our conditions were average. About half of our skiing time was kind of overcast, which really limits where the helis can land; visibility is obviously very important, and the pilots were only willing to fly to one small area on our first day out. It was also warm, so in general the top parts of our runs were amazing snow, and then the lower sections got heavy and manky pretty quickly. Conditions were also really sloughy, which I admittedly don’t have much experience with, but some people were saying they were skiing more conservatively as a result.

The good news is, I was so psyched to be in Alaska for the first time that I really didn’t care. Even on an average day, skiing in Alaska for the first time is a pretty surreal experience. The terrain is huge and looks like it goes on forever. The snow really does feel like velvet, and sticks to faces that wouldn’t be skiable anywhere else. You can ski lines that would be off limits due to avy danger in any other snowpack. To top it all off, there’s a helicopter that whisks you to the top of peak after peak so you can ski untracked lines over and over again. If you need perfect conditions to have fun under those circumstances, I feel like you should consider hanging up your skis.

I also genuinely didn’t want to push my limits on this trip; I just wanted to have the experience of skiing in that terrain, which I absolutely did. It was definitely a little intimidating to be in terrain that’s clearly so BIG, and so remote. Dealing with slough was also a challenge for me, since it turns out my preferred skiing speed is the exact speed at which my slough would catch me and knock me over. After getting bumped by my slough just hard enough to lose a ski, and then taking 20 minutes to find it and put it back on like a total gaper, I started taking the “take two turns and let your slough pass you” approach, which is very effective, but also makes for very boring GoPro videos.

In general, our guide (Silverton local and guide Kim Grant) would ski first, get down to a good stopping point, and then radio back up to us with whatever information we needed. Kim, while being a total badass who spent 8 years guiding on Denali in addition to many other impressive alpine accomplishments, had the sweetest vibe. The walkie talkie would crackle, and you’d hear something like, “Hey, Rachel? It’s really sloughy, hun. Stay left of my tracks, and when you pass out of the shade you’ll see kind of a dimple — stay right, that’s a crevasse. Be safe, and have a great time!” At the end of the week she gave me a huge hug and told me I did A GREAT JOB (I didn’t do that great a job). I loved her.

I have a few GoPro videos, both from some of the more chill terrain we did, that give an idea of what the skiing was actually like. The video where I’m scared of my slough is kind of embarrassing, because, man, I am squandering some good turns -- but it does show how little it takes to get a good amount of snow moving. I did have moments where I was less scared of my slough and actually made some decent turns like a competent skier.

Overall, I really can’t speak highly enough of the whole experience. I’m definitely going to try to get back in a few years, this time with the intention of pushing myself a bit and skiing some more committing terrain. I can only hope the weather cooperates, but if not, I’ve got some ping pong to play, some bald eagles to watch, and an excuse to try again.

Spectacular!
Great report!

 

[RachelV]

I just read that and logged in here because it was such a contrast to your experience.
Luck plays such a role in the lives of powderhounds!

Meant to reply to this sooner, but I'm moving soon and it's been a crazy few weeks.

That article absolutely was a contrast to my week in that I got to ski and she didn't, which is obviously the point of the trip. However, we skied 2.5 days out of a 7 day trip -- that's a lot of not skiing.

The day we arrived, Saturday afternoon, was pouring rain. On Sunday, still pouring rain, we did a bunch of avy safety stuff and general walkthroughs. The forecast for the week was clearly pretty iffy. I asked the guide at some point that morning how she thought the week was shaping up, and she said something incredibly cagey about "not so hot, you really never know, we'll see what happens." Despite the fact that PNH is very clear about how much heli time you're buying (~3 days) and how variable the weather is up there, that was the first time it really occurred to me that we might not get to ski. That sounds silly, but I was so psyched about the trip that my usual demeanor was overtaken by unchecked optimism and I honestly never seriously considered the possibility. Based on my chats with guides at the bar on Sunday, they get that a lot.

Monday we wake up and the weather still doesn't look great. However, it's just ok enough that they're able to get the helis up and squeeze out a half day on limited terrain for half of us. I feel super, super lucky that I was in that half. This is speculation on my part, but my guess is that if the forecast for the week was better they wouldn't have tried to get anyone out on Monday. PNH was coming off two pretty bad weather weeks, and our forecast was no guarantee, so I think they were in "we are taking advantage of every marginal opportunity" mode.

Tuesday was our great day, and we kind of knew it was going to be because the fishermen in town were really optimistic about Tuesday's forecast. Wednesday, no flying. Thursday we got out for a full-ish day, and that was a bit of a surprise -- the forecast was the same cloud picture with a 50/50 chance of rain that characterized the whole week. Friday and Saturday we didn't fly.

So, this is all a long way of saying that the week was a bit of an emotional roller coaster. That sounds silly, because I know how lucky I was to be up there at all, but man, I booked that trip something like 9 months in advance and was crazy looking forward to it the whole time. I went to a ski fit class at the gym all winter. On days that are marginal, PNH hesitates to just call things off, so you can't even leave the lodge -- you're just sitting there on standby, looking out the window every 5 minutes trying to conjure a break in the clouds with your mind [1].

The thing is, when you get out, it's so unreal that you glaze over all the waiting. When I go back ( ), I'll be more prepared for the waiting going in. Let me tell you, if you're rich and could spend ~3 weeks up there, that would be so, so much fun. You could really enjoy the downtime, settle into a nice routine, and know that you're gonna get your days in eventually. Maybe someday I'll make that happen [2].

None of this is intended to knock PNH -- Alaska has weather and there's only so much they can do. The staff was clearly just as demoralized by the weather as anyone. It was still a great week and I'd go back again in a heartbeat.

[1] totally doesn't work
[2] lol probably not

 

[TonyC]

That sounds silly, but I was so psyched about the trip that my usual demeanor was overtaken by unchecked optimism and I honestly never seriously considered the possibility. Based on my chats with guides at the bar on Sunday, they get that a lot.

Not silly at all. I'm known for diligently researching worst case scenarios, but once committed there seems to be a mindset to make the best of it and presume things will work out. I've been in a couple of those worst case scenarios and I also try to keep quiet about the bad luck around other guests for whom it might be a first experience. After the fact I may reassess in terms of future planning.

I have a $1,600 credit with Points North from that marginal trip in 2014 and I'm going to let my son Adam use that sometime, as he has a huge upside if he gets lucky with conditions in that big mountain Alaska terrain. If I do another multiday heli trip, it will probably be with Arctic Heli in Iceland.