Saturday 19 December 2009

Heli assisted ski touring!


I started today in the dark at 7am, down on the Lake cross country skiing and watching the sun ride over the mountain. Only my 2nd try at this here and much better this time around! Even getting quite fast. I did the tour de lac in about 1 hour and came home for breakfast and lots of skype calls with the folks back home in UK.



Jason from Kokanee helicopters dropped in to the lodge at lunch time park is helicopter for Xmas so he gave Cliff and I a lift up to Crane Pass. The views at the peak of the ridge were awesome- a white winter wonderland as far as the eye could see.




We looked down at one white bowl of untouched snow below us and dropped in for our first turns on the fresh powder.


With the recent dump of 60cm this week- Descending down into the treeline the powder just got sweeter and sweeter and deeper and deeper.




We skinned and snowshoed back up to the ridge twice to get a couple more runs in then we hit Cinnabar road and the snowmobile track out at about 4pm ish and it was getting dark. We still had around 100om to descend on a fast narrow snowmobile track with trees overhanging each side.

To top that we had our headlamps on and could only see about 3m ahead- tough to avoid trees when you are hurtling down at 30km/hr or more! As the snow got cruddier I took my board off and hiked the last bit out- faster and safer than I was becoming on my board!

We finally made it out to my truck at 6pm- thoroughly knackered but big grins on our faces- what a rush!

Wow! What an awesome day!

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