All Time in the Zone!

We have had two amazing days in the zone.  April Fools was no joke out there!  We had been down in the Chugach for over a week and everyone was doing their best to keep the spirits high.  But all the stress and worry went out the window on Wednesday morning when we finally woke to brilliant blue sky and incredible snow in the zone.  

Ice Box, Worm Glacier

Sometimes it is tough up here in AK, waiting for the sunny days to get out and fly the heli's.  It seems like it never happens enough.  But then you get a day out and you remember that it is worth any down day to ski deep, steep powder on some peak deep in the range.  When it goes off here, I really do believe there is nowhere better.

The guide meeting in the morning had us all on pins and needles, dying to get out and check out how much snow there really was in the zone.  We knew it would be deep, and we knew the winds hadn't been huge, but watching the weather is nothing compared to really getting out there and putting your hands in the snow.  We all agreed that we needed to start off slow and get a real handle on the snowpack before we started increasing the angle.  Lucky us, there was about 45 cm of super light snow on top of a classic Chugach snowpack.  Sluff was moving around, but we were able to ski some awesome runs.  

The first day out we skied in snow so deep and light that it was pretty much a face-shot on every turn.  We hit four different runs, and got eight nice long laps.  I think my favorite runs of the day were either Nailed It, or our first run down Ridiculous.  Each one of those is about 3500 ft.  and super aesthetic.

Sarah J. slaying with her heavy camera pack on!

Yesterday was just as good as the day before.  We awoke to a little cloud cover, which broke in no time at all.  The satellites were showing a bit of low pressure pushing in, and we thought it might turn into a half-day if it really came in on us.  But once again we scored, and had another killer eight run day!  

So part of heli-skiing is putting in landing zones and pickup zones.  It can be pretty important if you want to put a heli in somewhere tight to have it flat and flagged, especially if the light gets a bit bad.  So yesterday I was on top of a run called Barney Finger Dip.  It is a bit of a tight landing for the pilots, the blades are only a couple of feet from a big rock, and the pilot has to keep power up on the heli for a toe-in landing.  That means that basically the heli is still flying while we are all getting out and the skids are hanging out into space.  Pretty great if you ask me.  But, the point of the story is that we skied off the top and into the best snow we had found all day for about 4200 ft straight.  And trust me, the snow was fantastic everywhere, so the best we found was unreal.  It was so good in fact that my crew got to the bottom and we decided to "hot lap" (go back right away and do it again) it.  Pilot J takes us right back up and as we are coming into land this is what I hear in my headset, "So I take you in for a tough landing, you take me right back to it, and you didn't even build me a good LZ?"  It wasn't even until this point that I realized that I had forgotten to put it away.  Needless to say, we spent a good bit putting in a bomber landing after that.  Then skied some more of those best turns ever!  Thanks Pilot J!