heliboarding

That's snowboarding but using helicopters instead of ski lifts to get up the hill. Of course "the hill" tends to be tucked away in the back country so there's no one else there. Fresh tracks every time, all the time. Accept no substitutes.

You can heliboard in any number of places. Those I'm aware of include: Canada, Alaska, New Zealand, Italy, Nepal, Greenland, and the USA. Where you go depends on how you like to balance the riding, your creature comforts, and your safety.

I paid my money and made my choice, so what follows is based on Canadian helicopter skiing /snowboarding. The snow's the second best in the world, the food's good, the safety's as good as it gets, and there are plenty of helicopters there.

finance

Check out the prices at the various operators' web sites. You need to pay attention to the bottom line cost and what exactly it is you're getting for your money. As far as I can tell the scale is fairly linear: the more you pay the more vertical you get.

It doesn't come cheap, but then there's nothing else quite like it. You don't get many miles to your gallon out of a helicopter.

package

You need to be a little careful to ensure that you get what you expect in heliskiing / boarding. There are any number of ways of doing this. Essentially it breaks down to a choice of:

1. “daily” heliskiing. In Europe this generally means a single trip up a mountain in a helicopter. In Canada it may mean sharing a helicopter with nine Japanese beginners for three short runs down a mountain.

2. “weekly” heliskiing. First you hand over all your cash. After that you fly up and slide down all week pretty much from dawn 'till dusk. You get enough runs per day to lose count.

3. Three or five day "packages".

Daily heliskiing is probably fine if you want to check out your ability before dumping your life savings on a week, but bear in mind that it isn't the real thing. I have heard tales of groups with widely differing abilities, poor terrain selection, and general compromise which for me is a waste of jet fuel.

Packages of less than a week are risky: it's easy to get three down days in a row, which makes a three day trip risky. Weather patterns change fairly rapidly, and things average out over a week.

format

There are no doubt as many ways to organize weekly heliskiing as there are operators. The helicopter's the key to the way operators organize heliskiing.

Generally you'll either be flying in big bus like a Bell 212, which looks like the helicopters on MASH only painted in brighter colours, or a smaller machine like an A-Star/ Bell 206. It doesn't make much difference which type of machine is used from the customers' perspective, although the smaller machines are used in places where you couldn't sensibly use the large ones.

If you're booking your own helicopter then of course you can choose the type and even the colour (seriously!). If you're slumming it with the rest of us, then there are two common formats as below.

bell 212

Both CMH and Wiegele's organize these machines in a similar manner, as do some of the smaller operators. CMH generally only use a single guide, so for them the second guide is replaced with a paying customer

The 212 takes 13 people at a time: the pilot, guide, second guide and ten punters. The helicopter is shared by up to three groups (four for CMH). You don't normally see or meet the other groups when skiing as the logistics are handled to make you feel like it's your helicopter. The sharing works best when you have three competent groups. If one group is slower then the logistics can get difficult with the result that you have to wait. These machines are huge and make a lot of noise. They're dark and dingy inside and you're all squashed up in there. You generally lose all orientation during a flight. If you're sitting by the heater then it's polite to offer to dry everyone else's goggles.

A-Star

The A-Star is a three bladed whizzy little thing with a lot of glass up front. Four customers sit facing forward in a row behind the pilot and guide. Small machines are used by the big operators to give more flexibility: instead of booking customers in groups of ten the smaller machine allows modulo-4 arithmetic to rule. You may find up to four groups sharing one of these.

The comparison of an A-star week with one in a 212 depends more on the type of skiing and the ability of the groups than on the machine.

You start when the sun comes up and you ride until it goes dark.

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