All heads intact, eyes starry, after lifts to powdery balm

Press, 8 August 1989, Page 11

All heads intact, eyes starry, after lifts to powdery balm

TIM DUNBAR, after a couple of decades testing or being tested by club and commercial ski-fields of New Zealand, hovers and gets among the untracked snow.

Most first-time hei•iskiers probably worry less beforehand about the risk of having limbs lopped off by rotor blades or being burled in an avalanche, than whether or not they can do it. That particular ego problem is soon satisfied, at least amongst the sublime light frost-dry powder encountered recently in the Thomson Mountains (Mount Nicholas) overlooking Lake Wakatipu. But at the preliminary briefing in an unlikely spot, the side of a deserted road, our Southern Lakes Heliski guides, lan Wilkins and George Robbi, were getting a lot more attention than air hostesses do when they talk about safety procedures. Blase attitudes were quickly discarded as George made his joke about us not wanting any flat-top haircuts (courtesy of a Squirrel helicopter) and Pieps 2 avalanche transceivers were Issued and beep-beeping away. The guides have reason for making sure that the skiers under their care know how to use the transceivers. If one of them gets buried under a couple of metres of snow it’s up to the group to find him. There is scant comfort in the detail that the batteries last 500 hours.

To that end you indulge in a little game of Pieps hide-and-seek. The skiers divide into pairs and take turns finding the transceiver hidden by their partners in the undergrowth. It was a worry when one fellow was still wandering up and

down the road trying to pick up a beep on his transceiver a good 20 minutes after all the other pairs were finished. “Your mate’s getting a cold butt,” George quipped. Eventually, it turned out that the transmitter on the missing set had not been turned on, hence no beep. And so to the heli ski-ing for which there were no injuries, no avalanches and no wind, despite the receipt of a weather forecast predicting (thanks to a misprint) winds of up to 65 knots. Queenstown had been having a remarkable spell of fine weather, coinciding with its annual winter festival, and it was the tenth day in a row (a record) the heliski company was able to fly. After 20-odd years ski-ing the club and commercial ski-fields of New Zealand ... finally the chance to try heli ski-ing and all that untracked snow. Southern Lakes Heliski takes skiers into three main areas covering 1000 square kilometres, The Remarkables Range, the Thomson Mountains and the Richardson Mountains. We were doing the Mount Nicholas special which (at a cost of $368) takes up a full day with three long ski runs, a gourmet lunch, a helicopter landing on the beach at the Mount Nicholas high country station, and a cruise back to

Queenstown on the T.S.S. Earnslaw. i Mount Nicholas, with a choice of 30 different runs of up to 3000 vertical feet (914 metres), is considered ideal for intermediates, a category that apparently includes many Australians who would be classified as advanced skiers back home. New Zealand mountains are much steeper. On our first run, Golf Course, the snow initially took a little sorting out, and the stunningly clear hoar crystals (the hoar frost actually grows a layer) were examined rather too close to the eyeballs. A couple of Australians ended up in a creek bed at one stage (“it just zoomed up at me,” said one) and Mike also had bindings which ejected him at nearly every turn for a while.

A few tips from George, a Swiss who grew up virtually beside St Moritz’s famous Cresta Run, and things gradually got better: getting in the middle of the skis, slowing the pace and working on rhythm, using the poles as “triggers” with a more aggressive plant. By the second run, down the appropriately named Brochure Shot, everyone was managing the boot-top-deep powder fairly well, stringing together turns that no longer looked quite so far re-

moved from those of the guides. Lake Wakatipu below us looked a gorgeous blue. “It’s like ski-ing into the sea, eh,” George said.

“Yee-ha” shouts increased as did the banshee screams of a young Japanese woman, whether or not (and usually the latter) a fall was imminent. Later, over a daring little jump we all tried with varying degrees of dignity she exceeded previous efforts with a bloodcurdling scream of delight (?).

After lunch, Miranda, an Englishwoman who has ski-iri-structed at The Remarkables, Queenstown (three chair lifts), and in France at Avoriaz (250 lifts), transferred from two skis to snowboard to sample the powder.

For the first time snowboarding really looked like fun as she swooped down the Barbi Doll run like a graceful bird. “It’s an amazingly cruisy feeling,” she said. On the hard-pack of commercial ski-fields it is sometimes more of a tortured traverse. We had already been told why Barbi Doll and Lip Gloss were thus named. Supposedly, Hugh Hefner’s former girlfriend, Barbi Benton, refused to go heliski-ing there with her film crew until the bag with her lip gloss had been retrieved.

By the end of the ski-ing part

of the day we had done about 8500 ft (2590 m vertical and that was just about right. With back country ski-ing the usual tiredness in knees and thighs was missing. “You don’t rush heli skiing; no need to,” said George.

What remained was some of Antarctic pilot Alfie Speight’s repertoire of loops before the beach-landing and a couple of relaxing Gluhweins during the chug home on the refurbished steamship Earnslaw. Did we have a good day? The Japanese nodded their agreement.

Southern Lakes Heliski can call on up to a dozen guides (four are full time) and through Southern Lakes Helicopters (Queenstown), Ltd, three sixseater Squirrel helicopters are available, two of them based in Queenstown and the other in Te Anau. A maximum of 60 skiers can be comfortably handled in a day. From July 24 they have also had a 13-seater Bell 212 to make for quicker ferrying. Fraser Skinner, managing director of Southern Lakes Heliski and a former co-director of the Coronet Peak ski school is hoping for a season’s total of about 1500 heliskiers. There were more than 250 customers in July, which he regarded as phenomenal.

The heliski company is in its fifth season, starting out as N.Z. Heliventure, Ltd, and operating under the new name for the last two years to tie in with the helicopter company. “This year things seem to have really clicked into place,” Skinner says.