I just returned from a week of heli-skiing at Crescent Spur, British Columbia. I was there with my two boys as a 60th birthday present to myself. While I’m not sure I could ever logically justify the high cost of the trip or the huge carbon footprint we left, it was truly a magnificent week of skiing. The lodge, the terrain, the snow were all A+… exceeding my expectations in every way. Every day I skied more powder runs than I had in my entire life. Nearly every run would have been considered “epic” if I had skied it at a resort. On the second day we skied a run called Cathedral… without a doubt the best ski run I have ever had.
If you want to skip the text… here is where to go to see the photos.
For context it might be useful to try and compare this ski week to a week at the ski resorts in Summit County Colorado (Keystone, Breckenridge, Vail, etc). First you need to picture Summit County with only a single lodge holding 20 guests. These 20 guests would be the only people allowed to ski any where in Summit County. It might be that the back bowls of Vail would only get skied once in the entire season. You will never cross another skier’s track unless you want to for fun. You also need to picture an addition 8-10 feet of snow in the base layer. Then instead of the typical 1,000 – 1,500 feet of vertical drop on a resort ski run; you need to picture 3,000 – 4,000 vertical feet of drop. Finally, instead of trying to find the best runs via hit and miss techniques on your own, you would have a very experienced guide that will lead you directly to the best runs given the prior snowfalls and today’s weather. Of course, there would be no lift lines and you would just be skiing laps on the best terrain all day. That begins to frame the Crescent Spur skiing difference.
Crescent Spur is located in a valley between the Canadian Rockie Mountains and the Caribou Mountains. It is about 2 hours east of Prince George (the nearest airport) and about an 8 hour drive north of Revelstoke, BC. This location provides an abundance of dry powder, immense open bowls, spectacular glaciers, inviting glades and challenging treed slopes. They have an exclusive operating license for 1,500 square miles of skiing terrain. This far north location means great snow without excessive altitude. The tops of most runs are in the 7,000 to 8,000 ft range and the lodge is at 3,000 ft… so no altitude adjustment issues here. (For context, Colorado resorts have bases around 8,000-9,000 ft with mountain tops in the 10,500 – 11,500 ft range.)
The Crescent Spur lodge is a skier’s dream. It is a beautiful structure that makes good use of some massive logs in key structural places. The interior is gorgeous with wood floors, several fireplaces and many comfortable places to sit and chat. The bedrooms are spacious, comfortable, and well appointed. There are no TVs or phones in the rooms… the only TV in the whole place is down in the basement. Also the bedroom doors do not have locks… it is much more like staying in the guest bedroom of your brother’s house than it is like being in a hotel. They do have wireless internet and most late afternoons find 4-6 laptops out on the bar as people load photos and videos to relive the day’s skiing. The helmet cams worked great. Aaron and several others had the Contour camera which seemed to be the best. Getting good action shots is still hard & requires the skier to stop and look up the hill at skiers coming down. In the back corner of the lodge there is a skiers’ “dressing room”. This is a large area with stone floors and lots of benches and cubbies. First off, one full wall is covered with a boot and glove drying system that guarantees that each morning these key components are totally dry and fresh and ready to go. The cubbies are provided for each guest and hold all the safety gear that must be taken skiing. There are also two bathrooms in this area, so if the need arises you can quickly take care of business without having to take your boots off. This room has its own door to the outside which leads to a covered patio with ski racks for holding all of the skis & poles. From the patio it is a short walk to the helipad… of course this is all on level ground so no awkward climbing or descending of stairs in your ski boots.
Food… nothing short of delicious. All meals are served at two long tables where the guests are joined by about 10 staff members. Breakfasts are served family style with a choice of eggs, meats, fruit, cereal, breads, yogurt, and juices. Lunch is picnic style out on the mountain and includes a soup plus a choice of sandwiches with veggies and cookies with a juice box for drinks and chocolate bars for those that need an afternoon sugar rush. Returning to the lodge around 4pm skiers find appetizers and then dinner is served at 7:30pm restaurant style but with a different fixed menu each night.
For skiing I wore my normal resort ski clothes… no need for one piece powder suits. It was warm our week with temps in the 20-30F range so no real test of our cold weather tolerance. For safety gear, you wear an avalanche transceiver in a harness over your chest; a two way radio in your jacket pocket; and a small backpack that holds a shovel and an avalanche probe. Each morning as you leave the lodge the guides check that each transceiver beacon is working correctly. During a training session the morning of day 1 you learn how to use all this equipment. Even with a guide, you are skiing in the back country and they take the dangers quite seriously. It turns out that falling into a tree well is the danger most frequently encountered while heli-skiing. We had a couple people fall into tree wells in our group, but nothing very serious. Crescent Spur provided skis and poles. We all were skiing on Rossignol S7 fat powder skis. The guides loved these skis which have only been out for a couple years… and I know they saved my butt numerous times by staying on top of the crust & refusing to dive under even when I caught an edge.
One thing I had not thought about in advance, was that using a helicopter means that you are constantly taking your skis on and off. You use 2 velcro straps to bundle your skis and poles together for transportation on the helicopter, then you wrap the straps around your wrists while you are skiing. Of course you need to do this quickly and with your gloves on… oh yeah. But the real problem is icing on the bottom of your boots. The helicopter is pretty toasty & so when you jump out at the top into 2 feet of snow your boots are relatively warm which causes snow & ice to build up on the bottom of your boots. This means that your boots must be scraped clean of snow/ice at the top of every run. This is a real pain as you are standing in snow over your boot tops, sometimes on a relatively steep incline. They had a special technique for using your ski bindings to scrape your boots, but I never caught on to it and just used my ski poles to scrape the snow off my boots. Also it turns out that putting duct tape on the bottom of your boots greatly reduces the icing problem.
The ski day was fast paced. We had breakfast at 7:30, then some time to ourselves before the first group got into the chopper at 9am. On days where our ski terrain was far from the lodge, the second group would jump in a van to drive to a closer pickup spot to minimize the wait times. Once you were in the chopper the pace was nonstop. We were doing runs about every 30 minutes… getting in 10-15 runs a day. When you got to the bottom of a run, you quickly bundled your skis and could usually hear the chopper approaching before everyone had their skis bundled. They wanted you in close as the chopper approached to avoid being hit by the rotor blades… but that means it feels like the chopper is going to land on top of you… the pilots are quite amazing in their precision control of the aircraft. The blast of wind when the helicopter lands is amazing… you must have goggles on and everything buttoned up or it will blow away. A quick 5 or 10 minute flight to the top of a new run, jump out, get your skis back on and do it all again. They had small water bottles in the helicopter so that you could stay hydrated on the ride up to the top… the helicopter ride beats the crap out of a ski lift for comfort getting to the top of a run. There is really no way for a skier to take a breather, or to say I’d like to take an easier line. Once you’ve left the lodge it is go, go, go and you ski the runs the guide picks; for better or worse. Since we were mostly skiing alpine bowls and glaciers our runs covered 3,000 to 4,000 feet of vertical. Usually we would stop twice during the run to regroup and hear from the guide about obstacles in the next pitch of the run. I guess I had expected that we would spend more time standing around waiting, but it was like skiing laps at a resort on a weekday with no lift lines. Someone told me that is another major difference between cat skiing and heli-skiing… with the cat, transportation is very slow so you don’t get in many runs (not to mention that a cat couldn’t reach most of the starting points for our runs). We had lunch as a 30 minute picnic in the snow around 12:30 and then returned to the lodge around 4pm. My legs were definitely burning by the end of each day. On Wednesday (day 3) my whole body was hurting and I had a headache. But Thursday morning I rebounded and felt great and was able to go full speed the last two days. I felt like I was in great shape coming in to the week, so I’m glad I didn’t try this without being well prepared.
In general the deep, dry powder and lack of moguls made the terrain relatively easy to ski. But some of the pitches were very steep… as steep as anything I’ve ever skied, and you often started the run by dropping 5 ft from the lip of a cornice. Again, this is made much easier because of the deep soft snow you land in. On occasion at the top we were skiing on wind blown crust, sometimes on a steep pitch and that took all I had to not fall and then slide all the way down the slope. We also did a couple tree runs that were tough for me. First its harder to follow the guide’s track in the trees and second you have so many turning decisions quickly forced on you by the next group of trees. The most enjoyable terrain for me were the glades. These were usually the last pitch after a long run down a bowl or glacier. The slope was not too steep and there would be terrain features like small trees, big boulders, gullies, bumps, etc that you could weave around and have fun with… of course the boys used this space to do jumps and such, but I kept my skis on the ground for the most part. I would say my skiing skill level is pretty much as low as you would want to go to ensure that you would have a good time on the slopes at Crescent Spur. (At resorts I spend most of my time on black or double black runs… but shy away from trees and don’t go at high speed.)
For our week of skiing, they didn’t quite have a full house of 20 guests, so there was a bit more room on the helicopter. That also allowed them to let some staff members come out skiing a few days. The group was all guys except for one couple. Four guys from the UK, the couple was from Germany, 2 guys from Slovenia, and a bunch from California. Most people had heli-skied before, but we were not the only rookies in the group. Most of the guys were in their 40s… Brian was clearly the youngest and two of the guys from the UK were up in age like me. I was surprised by the number of Europeans in the group. Guests are split into two groups of no more than 10 and each group has a lead guide and a tail guide. You ski with the same group all week. We had a great group that was very mellow… the 3 of us, two older guys from the UK, 2 very strong skiers from Slovenia, and one guy from California… no snowboarders in our group. Apparently the other group had some issues with personality conflicts.
Monday, Day 1: We start skiing late because of the safety training session. We ski glaciers and bowls in the Mt Rider area. Knee deep untracked powder from top to bottom. I fall 4 or 5 times today, mostly in the morning. By the afternoon I’m gaining confidence and getting a rhythm going. Other people fall as well and I don’t feel out of my league. Terrain is not too steep, maybe like 2 Bowl at Mt Hood Meadows. Some times we are in trees, but nothing too tight. We ski 24,000 vertical feet today.
Tuesday, Day 2: Unbelievable day… my best ski day ever. Even long time clients said that today is as good as it gets. We skied in the Caribou mountains. We started in wonderful snow down in trees and glades. The trees and traverses pushed me to the limits of my skiing ability. In the afternoon we are back up in the alpine terrain with significantly steeper pitches and we end the day on a run called Cathedral which is the best ski run I’ve ever been on. The helicopter lands on this tiny spire with spectacular views. The run starts with a side slip past some rocks and then a very steep 2,000 ft descent full of fluffy light deep powder into a bowl that goes on forever. I’m skiing much better today… and the fat skis save me several times. I just need to remember to keep my speed under control because its when I go fast that I get scared, then bail and fall. Bernard fell into a tree well, but the next skier got him out without any trouble. Brian had lots of problems with icing… the guides said his brand of boots is notorious for icing problems. After 29,000 vertical feet of skiing, I end the day with a massage back at the lodge.
Wednesday, Day 3: Another spectacular day of alpine skiing in the Caribou mountains. We had some crust up top, but virtually all of our time is in 2 feet of soft powder. Some more steep pitches today as well as some fun glade skiing with rocks, trees, chutes, and gullies… I am hurting all over by the end of the day. Brian used duct tape on the soles of his boots today and that helped a lot in terms of reducing the ice and snow build up. One of the buckles on my boot broke today and can’t be repaired. We exceed the 80,000 vertical feet in our package price today. From now on we will be paying extra for the ski runs.
Thursday, Day 4: Another beautiful day of alpine skiing. I’ve been overheating so I drop down to 3 layers today without my helmet hat or glove liners… I stripped down to 2 layers after lunch. My body feels good today and seems to have bounced back from its troubles on day 3. The runs today are not as steep as the last 2 days. I do a face plant skiing a glade when I try to cross a gully that is too narrow and my tips dig right into the far side of the hill while I go flying… thank goodness for the nice soft snow to land in. Aaron did a pretty big jump then crashed into a tree after landing… he was OK but had all of us laughing.
Friday, Day 5: I go with just 2 layers today. The guides continue to do a great job finding good snow for us. However, today we did ski on some pretty yucky snow… we’re getting very spoiled. I had a total yard sale on a slope of breakable crust when I caught an edge and went flying. I had the lead on one long glade pitch today and had a great time swerving around all the terrain features. We came home early today closing out our skiing at 2:30pm with 140,000 feet of vertical for the week.
The only thing we did not see was the bottomless, chest deep powder. But the experienced heli-skiers said you can’t have both. If we had bottomless powder (usually found earlier in the season) then we would have been skiing the less steep tree and glade runs because the alpine terrain would be too avalanche prone. We also would have likely had colder, cloudier, and snowier days on the slopes.
I’m very lucky to have the two boys to push me to be more adventurous and continue to ski difficult terrain. This has been a dream week that I won’t forget.
Go here to see photos from our week at Crescent Spur.
