Facing the challenge and beauty of heli-skiing in Alaska
By Robert Silk
Ever since I was a boy, I’ve watched videos of helicopter skiers making smooth turns in untouched powder and wondered if one day that could me.
So, on a recent Thursday morning in Alaska, as I waited to be picked up by shuttle for my first heli-skiing excursion, I was excited with possibility but also tense with self-doubt.
Fortunately, as staff from Chugach Powder Guides arrived at Alyeska Resort, about 45 minutes south of Anchorage, a moment of levity helped me relax. Behind me, I heard a woman explain to one of the Chugach guides that she was not among the day’s heli-skiers.
“That’s okay. You’re still a good person. You’re just going to have less fun than us,” the guide responded.
Chugach Powder Guides, which has been operating since 1997, flies a fleet of four helicopters and offers access to more than 750,000 acres of terrain in the Chugach range, where annual snowfall averages 650 inches. With so much variable weather, the company also uses a back-up fleet of snowcats as, historically, helicopter operations are canceled approximately half the time, my guide Peter Ostroski explained.
On this day, however, the skies were sunny. So, at around 10:30 a.m. I found myself atop my first peak of the day, turning my back to a 25 mph wind as I struggled to cinch up my backpack. The ride to this location had been relatively short, maybe 15 minutes, and altogether amazing as we climbed out of the small town of Girdwood, traveled over the icy Cook Inlet and then flew over a mix of boreal forest and the glaciers of the Chugach range. My trip was sponsored, but many people, I realized, pay several hundred dollars just for a ride like that, and they don’t even get to ski.
We headed down the mountain, and at first, I was mildly disappointed. Yes, the open wilderness views were pristine. But the snow at the top didn’t match my naive image of heli-skiing as a vehicle for accessing never-ending light powder. The area had seen approximately a foot of snow over the previous two days, but as Ostroski later explained, winds in the region the previous night had been as high as 70 mph. As a result, the wind-scraped snow at the top of the mountain was a bit crusty.
Still, as we got lower, the snow deepened and softened, providing a taste of what was to come later in the day.
We boarded the helicopter for our second run, and our guides steered toward a new location in search of less wind and more consistent snow.
We found both ingredients, but especially shelter from the wind, on the second landing, where our launch point accessed a wide, appealing skiing alley overlooked to the right and left by rocky mountain faces.