Lift Off, Norway
Tamok, Norway – After many cups of coffee and some Finish style oatmeal for breakfast the anticipation started building. Outside the window the pilot is taking off the bird (Polly’s) pajamas as we got our gear together, change radio batteries, check beacons, pack a lunch and prepared for the day. With three or four languages being spoken all around me, I tune out most of the gibberish and concentrate on my elation. With Bob Marley playing on the stereo, the leader of the group reads off group orders for take off and pick up. Our group was first today, so I knew it was time to get outside as I could see the pilot topping off Polly’s tanks with Jet-A silhouetted against a pristine blue sky.
My excitement was hard to contain as I ponder the reality of this situation. All around me people from different nations prepare and ponder, but everyone here has a different goal. Some are new to the big mountains riding scene and are here to gain some fruitful experience, while others have already set first descent lines off peaks like Denali, Robson, and other in Russia and Alaska. It did not matter what I was there for, but the fact that I was putting on my ski boots 6000 miles from home was enough to give me goose bumps. Knowing that we are flying a helicopter in an area of the world that helicopters have never been flown in before is special, but the area itself is beautiful enough to make you confess your sins.
However, the conditions were an encumbrance for concern with no way to describe it aside from dust on crust. As you may have read in my first post from this trip, the weather in this is very extreme and I was wrong about the warm temperatures. While we were in Oslo and Tromso for the days before we came to meet the group the weather was mild. Light snow and rain, but warm considering our geographic location. However, after the bad weather we had experienced the first few days the skies cleared and the heat left. Today it was -28C with a wind chill of about -34C. Therefore, all the warm weather and new snow that had fallen was more than frozen and the wind effected many slopes into a hard crust. However, this morning the wind died and left us with a few cm of fresh snow on top of the bullet proof crust. This was not the conditions any of us were hoping for, but the stability in the snowpack allowed us to ski some steeper and usually un-skiable lines. However, as I got ready I put on layer after layer to prepare for the landing at the top of a peak after not working to get there which is enough to shock your senses. With all my skin covered and gear locked down we walked out to the copter where the pilot Andreas was waiting with a smile on his face.
We loaded our gear into the ski box mounted on the side of the skid as the turbine engine fired up. The blowers pushed hot air into the gears as the rotors started to spin. Ever so slowly the rotors gained speed as the turbine engine hits fire speed and the roar of the jet engine was drowned out by the spinning blades just above our heads. As we pensively climbed into the chopper the sound, vibration, and thunder of the displaced air above us created an eerie or almost supernatural ambiance in the cockpit. The pilot poked and adjusted buttons and levers as the blades built speed. Packed like desperate refugees into the back seat we struggle to buckle seatbelts and situate ourselves as the cockpit starts to bounce from the force of the spinning blades above. The door shuts and with an unspoken nod from the pilot we despite the physics of gravity lifted from the ground.