Heliskiing

John Forrest has been a mountain guide for 35 years. He has also practiced his profession in the Alps for several years in the summer months, but he lives in Canada and has been running a heli-skiing company there for 20 years. Northern Escape Heliskiing (NEH) is based in Terrace, in the very north of British Columbia.

"Your posts are constantly encouraging people to go powdering all over the world. What's the point! I think it's fatal in view of the ecological consequences." We are always happy to receive reader feedback, even if it is critical, like this message that Roman recently wrote to us. If a Facebook message then turns into a meaningful discussion and an entire article, we are all the more pleased. PG reader Roman Bonderer criticizes the contradictory (travel) behaviour of many winter sports enthusiasts:

The straps, which originally come from helicopter-based locomotion, are used for quick, safe and easy attachment of winter sports equipment and are a favorite of every freerider and other sportsperson.

After a pretty messed up season, in which the good skiing days could be counted on one hand and the dust was already settling on the skis in January, I was tormented by the thought of storing the equipment in the cellar almost unused in May....

The fact that Courmayeur has a lot to offer freeriders has become increasingly well known in the north of the Alps in recent years (it took long enough). However, Rudy Buccella's guide, which was published in 2012, is relatively unknown. Reason enough to present it in a PowderGuide review.

Films about skiing fall under the umbrella term "ski porn". The porn aspect probably refers to the fact that there is often little or no framing story and that you don't have to think about it because of the moneyshots. There are occasionally films that do it differently, or at least try to. The complexity of the plot is usually somewhere between "Why is there straw here" and Fifty Shades of Grey.

The Click on the Mountain photo contest took place for the seventh time in mid-March 2015 on the south side of Mont Blanc in Courmayuer, Italy. Difficult conditions characterized this year's edition of the competition. However, the teams did not let this slow them down and delivered strong photo books at the end of the three days of the contest.

It is with great anticipation that the organizing committee of the Freeride World Tour (FWT) has announced that the fourth stop of the 2015 tour will take place in Haines, Alaska (USA). Since the FWT was founded in 2008, it has been the goal of the organizers to hold an event in one of the birthplaces of big mountain freeriding. The March 14, 2015 stage (nine-day weather window from March 14-22) is set to make that dream a reality and likely a highlight of the FWT season. Like all FWT events, the action in Haines, Alaska, will be broadcast online via livestream and Central Europeans can look forward to a convenient broadcast time due to the ten-hour time difference.

Powder in the forest and steep gullies, tapas and red wine, crisp peaks, tours and freeriding in the national park area. In Val d'Aran, many facets of ski mountaineering and freeriding can be celebrated in style.

The bedrock of powder skiing history. When the Völkl company brought out its widest ski to date for the 1993/1994 season, it was not only so wide that it was practically exclusively intended for heliskiing in North America, it could not even be pressed in pairs as is usually the case with skis, the existing presses were simply too narrow.

"If ya got twennythousand bucks, ya can fucking slam that fucking door!" Jean-Marc is beside himself with rage and we look pretty embarrassed. Jean-Marc is the helicopter pilot. Small and stocky, dressed in an oil-smeared red polyester flying jacket with the words "Klondike Heliskiing" printed on it, he looks at us angrily through his mirrored pilot's goggles.

This year, Teton Gravity Research presents "The Dream Factory", a film that shows the development of freeriding in Alaska from then until today. The film depicts the first beginnings of heliskiing in Alaska and the protagonists who have made this place what it is today: the dream of all freeriders. You can see big mountain skiing at its best in Alaska with small detours to Pemberton (BC) and Jackson Hole (WY) that are well worth seeing.