Chairlifts Are for Sissies

The helicopter lifted off in a blur of stinging snow, leaving face and squint and violin with buckles on top of a mountain far from what had been initiated. There's nothing white, but as far as we can see, each peak apparent large enough to accommodate all of Vail Mountain, yet accessible only to those who share the helicopter. We looked out at the glaciers, bowls, chutes AND - far below as patches of scraggly hair - almost impossible firs and space to make turns.
I was a relatively new snowboarder. I took up the sport a year earlier, and not spontaneously after more than a decade of skiing, but still had to negotiate anything harder than a black diamond with the size of refrigerator and beating (not easy, nor fun, but more annoying than life-a threat). Standing up there in the air and near silence, facing a 3000-foot-plus vertical descent, the only alternative escape having whoomp-whoomped in the distance, I felt more than a little jittery.

Like ducks, which fell in line behind our guide, Mike Aucoin, aged 37, with tanned face of the oft-uneven Goggles. Rather than choose between careers outlined in a complex map, was the selection of trails across a range of mountains. If this section of British Columbia's Monashee range was less than looking just right - too slushy, too windy, too-and avalanche - we can always take the helicopter zag a little to the north across the Trans-Canada Highway in next journey in search of something better.

Aucoin has guided in this area for a period of five years, all with Canada mountain holidays, the first and largest heli-ski company, whose graying of hikers on behalf of holiday-it does not justice. The C.M.H. guides, like Aucoin, often joyful, loving cliché skiing burns, many experts on both skis and boards. Unable to release a full week for more formal powder Introduction workshop, my friends (backcountry novices as well) and I had prepared for a mini-clinic within CMS "pay as you play" program, which allows skiers to pay a la carte for as many races as it is for. We have formed a group, with Aucoin as our leader.

He told us to stay within a few metres from his track. When stopped, we were on the verge, uphill from him. Unlike an action racing, which are groomed and where obstacles are removed carefully, heli-skiing terrain is unpredictable. Some of these snowfields are the top of the glaciers that include deep cracks enough to swallow a helicopter.

"Along the way we are going to talk about some of the idiosyncrasies of heli-boarding," said Aucoin, perhaps as a way to quit with nervous questions. And with that he had ido, makes it coherently and elegant that you can measure their pace in a metronome. I have followed almost exactly your path, stay next to his track, and immediately felt better about my horse.

I had not noticed before that I was doing bigger, softer becomes my heel side (left, where I am more comfortable) until I forced myself to match his way, and with fluffy, ankle under deep powder, it was easy to follow.

It took just one run - no, more like a few hundred meters - a mockery of floating speed of snow to the consistency of flour to realize that in all my years of sliding on snow around, I had experienced anything remotely like this. How am I ever going to take seriously lift again?

Aucoin pause at the top of a container deep, falling lip requires the kind of quick, sharp turns that are hard to get into a snowboard. He reminded us to stay loose, bending at the knees and waist. Most riders, including myself, tend to strengthen in steep terrain and make awkward turns, resulting in a rattling of the board of directors known as "user". Aucoin fell at first and disappeared in a mist of dust. The first turn on a steep face is the worst - that always causes my stomach to knot up - but my knees bent, relaxed and pointed downhill. Free of tension, let the board do the heavy lifting.

At the bottom of the container, Aucoin asked how he felt around the world. "Most of the time, apologize for the conditions of this kind," he said. In early winter, apparently, it is not uncommon for powder to be chest deep. "I would call this mediocre. But we are in bad condition. For most of you, this is probably the best skiing you've ever done."