Heli skiing Coastal British Columbia in January can be very fickle. Which is why after two attempts, we decided to give it one more shot at a chance for glory. So in mid January, my brother Henry and I went back to Terrace to meet up with Northern Escape Heli.

Day one is usually slower moving. There is always a heli briefing, avi gear briefing, and time to get everyone in the lodge dialed in for the next few days. We were able to get up into the alpine for one low angle run before the clouds closed us out from another drop. The snow was already better than the last two years, and stoke was high despite only one run. It was just good to get up high.

Once the clouds rolled in it began to dump snow. We woke up on day two to a bunch of fresh snow, but more heavy cloud cover. By noon we knew we weren’t going to be able to fly, so we took the bus down to local Shames Mountain Co-op to do some on piste shredding. With all of the fresh snow, conditions were phenomenal.

Day three was riddled with weather and helicopter complications, but despite that we were able to fly to some lower altitude tree zones and get some good skiing in.

On day four, we still had a ton of weather keeping our flying to super low elevations. Luckily, we were able to get to Cat Land and have a huge day of cat fueled powder skiing. Conditions were classic coastal BC – dark, deep and heavy snow. At this point in the trip the Buck Naked Pro’s had seen it all: deep, heavy untracked snow; cut up on piste mank; and wind buffed / weather effected snow and ate it all up like a bowl of fruit loops. To be fair, the skis were skiing even better than anticipated in varied conditions.

Day five began deep in a dark cloud, with little intellect pointing to us getting up in the heli. Then the call came over the radio “lets give it a go”. We geared up, piled into the heli, and took off into the clouds. It was dark and thick and didn’t look promising at first. Then we broke through the cloud layer to find a crystal clear, gorgeous morning waiting for us in the alpine. So we commenced “The Day Of Days”.

Drop after drop of unreal, low angle, high alpine BC heli lines. The stuff dreams are made of. Huge alpine peaks showered in low angle January light covered our entire field of view. Each run seemed to get better and better as we tested pow. As our legs gradually turned to jelly, our smiles hung true. It was the kind of day we set out to get years ago. There was finally a validity to the plan, and proof of concept for why to go for five days. With our hearts full from a truly epic day, we said goodbye to the Skeena River and flew out from the Terrace airport.

Music:
Bass Physics & COFRESI
“Keep You High”
bassphysics.com