Helicopter Skiing
Tamok, Norway, - March 19th, 2008- Due to adverse conditions, the helicopter arrived yesterday a day late and came with more bad weather. For those of you who know how a helicopter works, then you understand they do not work when there is bad visibility, high winds, or any other adverse factors. Therefore, much of the helicopter skiing experience is spent waiting for the optimum conditions to appear like kids waiting for Santa Clause on Christmas Eve. Many of us have spent our mornings glued to the windows watching the clouds pass and others have just sat and drank coffee talking about the weather.
Anyway, the week here in Norway has been anything but uneventful. With the amazing local crew ready for adventures on snowmobiles or ready to go skinning anywhere, there has been a lot of activity to say the least. The typical day has started with breakfast around 7:30, although I got up around 8:30 because there has been plenty of food and the coffee has been flowing all day. When people were done studying maps of the area and coming up with speculated answers on where we are allowed to go and where we all thought snow would be best, people have been splitting into groups to go on adventures looking for the best snow, ice climbing, building jumps, or whatever else our child-like imaginations could muster. My brother Onie and I made friends with the right crew, so the locals have been bringing us on small missions to explore areas far beyond the distance accessible with only the use of skins. Therefore we have had the local tour of an area that has never been explored from a freeskier’s perspective. With so many unknown variables in such large terrain it is very comforting to have a gentleman who has lived and played in these mountains as a hunter and explorer for his whole life. “Thank you Leif-Arne and the whole HUAS crew.”
Yesterday we did have the opportunity to pop Onie’s cherry in the helicopter. Yesterday we were able to get lifted to the top of one of the mountains above our camp and ski something that took us five hours of skinning the other day took six minutes in the heli. I have concluded, “Walking is over rated.” The best part of the day however was watching Onie’s face as the helicopter took off and the nose dropped forward. It was his first time in a helicopter so smiles full of effervescent elation filled his n use face. The feeling of taking off in a helicopter is rather unexplainable, but Onie’s face would be a good marketing took to any helicopter company.
Otherwise we are expecting great weather the next few days so things are looking great. The crew we are here with are all amazing people, although the Finish language is impossible to understand or even harder to try and speak. Therefore we do not know what is being said around us most of the time, but none-the-less we are having a great time and the next few days should be all time.