Heli-Skiing in Valdez
Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 4:23 pm
These are not thoughts you want to have crashing around inside your skull as you tentatively traverse out across a 4,000-foot elevator shaft of hardpacked snow. But the subconscious whispers were hard to beat back.
Noting the fear in my voice, one of my helicopter mates, John Alfond, of Vail, calmly advised me to be aggressive, then executed a series of solid jump turns, triggering a mini-slide of loose snow before ducking into a "safe" zone below a rock outcropping several hundred feet below.
Welcome to helicopter skiing in the Chugach.
from By David O. Williams and the Rocky Mountain News