I lucked out and got to swoop on an open seat in a North Cascade Heli trip last Friday (2/27). My hommie from Hood River hit me with an email offer the week before. I replied quick–yes, done, sign me up.
The week of the trip was spent working in 4-10 mode. I split Thursday evening straight from work and made the 5-1/2 hour drive to Mazama in about 4-1/2. It was cloudy pretty much till i got to Roslyn, then cold and clear the rest of the way. Conditions were looking good so far.
The mountain weather up till the week before i left was pretty much crap. No new, windy, cloudy, etc. I was stressing thinking we were gonna be riding on a bunch of yuk. But we lucked out and got a mini storm that dumped enough to make it sic. It’d been cloudy, and/or windy most of the week up till when we all got there. When we woke up Friday morning in Mazama–Bluebird!
That morning at the Heli barn, we went through a safety seminar and a quick transceiver training session. The safety seminar consisted of how to deal with the helicopter on take off/landing, approach, and generally being around it. The transceiver training consisted on how to turn on the unit, how to run a systematic search, and how to pin-point a victim. All-in-all, it took about an hour.
The helicopter they’re running out there is brand new. By brand new, i mean it had 50 hours of flight time. The guides were extremely particular about how to conduct yourself, what to do, what not to do with regard to damaging the helicopter. This thing is fragile, “a big guy could easily rip this door right off.” I didn’t break anything.
There were 4 groups of 4 that day so there was a bit of a wait once the heli started running. We were the last group to get taxied out.
I’ve never been in a helicopter so i was pretty much giggling like a girl when we took off. The pilot, Shamus has a lot of experience flying and was clearly on point flying the thing. Dude was pretty much carving it up in heli.
We got dropped off on Drop Zone 1 and proceeded to LZ1 (see map below). Sic run. Wide open pow, perfect vis, nothing too sketchy, so we all hauled ass. We hit 7 runs over the course of the day. All runs were pretty much wide open pow, huge arcing turns, slashers and huge sprays. On Run 6, i got to hit a super fun chute. It was about 15 feet wide and pretty long. The terrain that we hit was advanced intermediate for the most part. The steeps that we did come across were short. It was mostly mellower slopes with short sections of steeps in between–like a series of benches. In the pic below Dax drops off the rock right in front of him and set off a little slide. My cam died right as he was in the air.
There was some super fun tree runs. A lot of the tree coverage out there was the Larch tree which is a deciduous conifer–it’s a pine tree that looses it’s needles. Pretty cool. Around here you find them all over the east slopes of the Cascades. I’ve never ridden in them.
The snow coverage out there was like it is out here–low. There were rocks and trees sticking out here and there but it was pretty chill for the most part. The rocks out there are mostly granite which tend to be a lot less jagged than the stuff we see in western WA. So the few that i did hit didn’t do any major damage (sorry Ride).
Super fun trip. We scored big time with the weather and snow conditions–couldn’t have been better. The heli operation out in Mazama is awesome. Organized, efficient, professional, safe and fun. If you got some extra coin check em out.
I wish i was rich. Maybe next year…
Check out the full photo Gallery.
Check out some Vholdr clips (volume is loud).
Here’s the KML of the map above. Check it out in Google Earth–pretty rad 3D stuff.
Find out more about North Cascade Heli on their website: http://www.heli-ski.com/
A-Star has three rotor blades what spin clockwise AKA that shit is hella euro.
Looks like you got it goooooood! Some of those vholdr quotes are classique brah!
And thanks for the info about the larch tree, fuckin Mark Trail Ed Hume Gardening with fuckin Cisco over here wtf
ALSO:
every single heli pilot in the world looks exactly like that. It’s very necessary to have that white stache… Part of the rules.
hey suck it.. if i went on a heli trip you know I would have more pictures than this.. man.. still, good work
@Swapp-eye. im sure you would have more pics. hit dax, he’s got a picassa album with all the pics he took. there’s a bunch of rad ones.
@A – do not dis the Larch tree.
does he have any of you two idiots running into eachother at a high rate of speed?
motherfuck a larch, barch.
RAD!! don’t know what else i can say.. RAD!!!
oh, i can say this.. what fuckin radical killer lucky timing u had beings this the shitty winter of no pow in 2009..
things are shaping up out there but until this trip its been shit.. man, what killer timing..
oh and.. RAD!!
good work yo!
Good thing your LZ was in the DMZ or else you would have run into some VC and then you would have been SOL and prayin’ to JC. Can I get a KML for that?
Good shit man!
LOL
I say FU.
You guys could not have been luckier.
nice work makin that happen! last second, 4 10’s, long haul solo, etc. talk about timing.
weekend trip to tahoe anyone? they got like 4ft in the lat 24minutes!? so ridiculous.
extra pat on the back for the surfboard info/prices for the airlines! handy for sure.