Skiing in Revelstoke

Looking at the village of Revelstoke

Late last week, I escaped from Toronto and did Planes, Bus and Automobile to Revelstoke BC.  I flew into Calgary while they were having one of their ice fog weeks, grabbed a Taxi for $15 to downtown Calgary where I jumped on a Greyhound bus (for 6 hours) and then parked myself here in Revelstoke right on the Trans-Canada Hwy.

Drying room

The purpose of this trip is some skiing.  For 2 days, I skied the resort right in the town of Revelstoke.  Over 5000 vertical feet and some amazing terrain to power through.  No crowds and not a lot of fresh snow at this time.  Revelstoke has had one of the years where they have had the most snow in almost 100 years.  The skiing is great, but be warned, this is not a place to ski if you are an absolute beginner.  It is a great place to ski if you want to cruise at high speeds, or get down and dirty skiing the trees.

But, the real reason I am here is to do some Heli-Skiing with CMH helicopters.  CMH takes over the Regent Hotel here and they are one class act.  After checking in Monday afternoon, we had our first introduction followed by several safety meetings.   That was followed by an amazing Prime Rib dinner.

Jump on the Scale

We get a tour of the drying room and all the equipment.  It has a place to hang your boots on dryers complete with your gloves.  As well, lots of hangers in them middle of the room to hang your pants and jacket.  Very very nice!

Today was day 1 of skiing.  Stretching at 6:30am, followed by breakfast, equipment pickup and weighing of all us and stuff (weight and balance for the helicopter) and then catch the van at 8am to the baseball diamond.  I was wondering just why the baseball diamond.  The question was quickly answered while we did avalanche search practicing.  Out come the radios and the probes.

I think we found it

It became apparent that we were not in a rush this morning due to the weather.  Back in the vans and off to the pick up point.  The Bell 212 helicopter shows up right on time and as we are group 1 (out of 4), we get to load first (after another safety meeting on helicopter safety).  I get to sit in the back side seat which gives me a great view out the left side of the aircraft.

Off we go and we all (10 of us) can't wait to get skiing.  The problem is that we can't get through the clouds at 1600 meters and to the alpine above us.  Steve our pilot tries 3 different routes, but no go.  We come back and wait 30 minutes.  2nd try, but again no go after trying 3 unique routes.  Back to the LZ (landing zone) again and we decide to have lunch.  An hour later our 3rd try and it looks like we are going to break through about 1650M asl.  Again, no luck and Steve spins around as we head home.

We are fortunate (as group 1) that at least we got in the air 3 times, and then we also got to fly all the way back to Revelstoke along the Columbia River.  Sometimes a few hundred feet above the water.  Pretty cool.