Heliskiing Unlimited Vertical!
Newsletter
February 2010
In this email:
Hi everyone!
Guide Alison Dakin enjoying the new snow and awesome conditions this past week. Photo: Andreas Berggren/Langley Travel
Wow, we've had an awesome past couple of weeks and it's still going on!
Many of you have been asking what the conditions have been like as there hasn’t been much new snow in Western Canada for the past few weeks. I knew we hadn't received any new major dumps for awhile, so I thought it would be prudent to go out and do some product testing and report back to you. Well, I was AMAZED!
I joined some super fun guests from the Czech Republic and we were skiing about 15-20cm of fresh powder and it was awesome! We managed to ski 14 long runs and did 9,400 metres (30,840 feet)! The day before they skied 16 runs!
So, what are conditions like? Want to hear about it from our guests and not the marketing guy? Here are some quotes I got from our guests that have been at our lodge this week:
“The snow and terrain are awesome! It’s great! You should come to test it!”
- Vladimir, Czech Republic (new guest, 6 days at GCH).
“I would like to say MANY THANKS to you for perfect job in organizing our trip. Everything went well included resort skiing where we followed your suggestions. It was the best skiing in my life!”
- Boris, Czech Republic (new guest, 6 days at GCH).
“I left Utah powder-hungry after a long dry winter so far and went to GCH the first week in February where it snowed 5 of the 6 days. By Utah, Canada or anyone else’s standards, the week was as good as powder skiing gets. Not just Canadian... Great Canadian!”
- Harry the Dreamer, Salt Lake City, Utah (35 ski days at GCH).
“Tim, just write it for me. This place is amazing.... I love it here. Just write something really good and you can sign my name to it!”
- Ian “The Frog Man” McTavish, Park City, Utah (78 ski days at GCH).
"I don't like crust on my toast and I don't like it on my heli-ski trips. This week there was no wind, no crust, I am a happy man."
- Justin, Connecticut (30 days at GCH).
Good news... there’s more snow in the forecast (snow-forecast.com/resorts/GC-HeliSki/6day/top)!
Pro-skier Leah Evans enjoying the conditions at GCH. Leah runs some awesome women’s freeskiing clinics. If you have a girlfriend/wife/friend that would like to come heli-skiing but for some reason is afraid, a clinic could be a good idea! Photo: Dave Silver.
The weather has been conducive to LOTS of skiing!
While we do not promote quantity over quality, some people like to know how much we’ve been skiing. I guess it makes sense that if we’ve been doing a lot of skiing it means conditions have been great as you obviously ski less if it’s bad weather.
Here’s what we’ve been doing this week:
Now this is cool.... we’ve had NO DOWN DAYS this winter! There were a few days with a late morning start, but we have skied every day. And those days it was a later start we managed to get a lot of skiing done.
How many heliskiing operations can boast zero down days? Even when all of Western Canada experienced that warm spell, we had snow up high and still skied 42,000 metres that week (that’s 137,795 feet) when other operations shut down and had to resort to low vertical catskiing.
Great news! We are endeavouring to have our fantastic guiding team take some video footage of our clients during their stay with us.
At the end of the week we take that footage and edit it. We then post it to the Great Canadian Heliskiing YouTube page (www.youtube.com/user/GCHeliski) and to the Video page on our website (canadianheli-skiing.com/hubmedia.html).
This way it’s online for ever and you can forward the link to your envious friends.... and you might be able to convince them to come with you on your next heliskiing trip!
So if you skied with us this past January and February check out either links to see if you’ve made it into the videos.
Guide Terry “T.M.” Makos has guided for 20 years, 15 of which have been at GCH. In those 20 years he’s worked at several different helicopter skiing operations, but thinks GCH is the best!
Heliskiing operations often brag about such things as the size of their tenure, the depth of their snow and their accessibility. And yeah, we do too (because it’s worth bragging about), however, we think one of our most important, if not the most important, advantages of heliskiing with Great Canadian Heli-Skiing are our guides and pilots. They have trained and worked hard for years to get where they are in order to give you the trip of a lifetime.
So that you may get to know our guides and pilots better, we’ve added a page to our website with a bit of a biography for each of them (NB the page is still under construction). Click on “About Us” or go here: canadianheli-skiing.com/aboutguidespilots.html
Take particular note of the length of time they’ve been guiding for and how long they’ve been with Great Canadian Heli-Skiing.... at the very least they have a decade of experience! So you KNOW you are in capable hands when you come heliskiing with us.
Ride GuidePro-rider Justin Baun.
Photo: Dave Silver
As mentioned in previous newsletters, we’ve had some good film crews out here. Just this last week we had the founder of WestJet, Don Bell and his son Jeff join us for a day of heliskiing. The Bells were filmed by GlobalTV Calgary for a cool little news segment on Jeff’s ambition to ski race at the Olympics and what a cool experience it is for a father and son to spend some time together by heli-skiing!
As you may remember the Ride Guide (ski and snowboard show) went heliskiing with us a couple of weeks back. The episode should air sometime in March. I’ll let you know when it is due to air. We can’t wait to see it!
Wow! We’re going from strength to strength! Not only were bookings for the months of November and December in the top 2 most bookings ever for those months, this past January was the best January ever for bookings! It seems more and more people are discovering that the Great Canadian Heli-Skiing formula of small groups, unlimited vertical, great food and guides plus easy access is the way to heliski! You just need to look at how other operations are following suit...even the big ones!
In case you are wondering, here are the weeks where we still have some availability;
No doubt many of you would have heard of the Ultimate Ski Bum contest. It was a competition organised by Kootenay Tourism (our regional tourism association) that promotes the “Powder Highway” a joint marketing venture between ski resorts, cat-skiing and heliskiing operations in the area.
The person who made the best “Why I’m the Ultimate Ski Bum” video was the extremely lucky recipient of free skiing all winter long with unlimited resort skiing at places like Kicking Horse, Revelstoke, Red Mountain, Fernie, etc and the coolest part: 1 free day of heliskiing at all the different cat and heliskiing operations in the region.
A 2nd generation Aspen/Sun Valley ski bum, Chris ‘Tats’ Tatsuno won the competition with this video: powderhighway.com/SkiBum
Tats visited us last week for a day and had a blast! In fact, he racked up 14 powder filled runs! Maybe he should of visited us last as we may have spoiled him!!
Here comes the heli!
Photo: Andreas Berggren/Langley Travel
Last Saturday we were visited by a fun group of Viking powder warriors! The 13 Scandinavians were part of a group from Langley Travel, a Swedish tour company with offices in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. I actually worked as a Tour Guide for them years ago and knew that they would make the perfect heli-skiing guests...... as they were all keen and excellent skiers, snowboarders and telemarkers!
Fred Syversen with no scary cliffs in sight!
Photo: Andreas Berggren/Langley Travel
In order to help publicise the trip, Langley approached Chamonix-based Norwegian freeskier Fred Syversen to be a guest on the tour. Never heard of him? I have no doubt many of you will have seen his most famous video! Fred was filming a movie part and was going for a large cliff jump. Unfortunately, he took a wrong turn and skied off a MUCH higher cliff. In fact, it was so high he can now lay claim to having done the biggest cliff drop ever. How far did he go? Fred dropped 107 METRES.... yup, that’s 351 feet! To read some more about it and to watch a video of the jump, check it out here: http://homeboyski.com/2008/12/03/fred-syversen-107-meters-cliff-drop-video/
We had absolutely amazing conditions on that Saturday, with many of the Swedes saying they were definitely coming back... and for more than 1 day!
Tim Wilkinson
Director - Marketing and Communications
Great Canadian Heli-Skiing
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