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Northern Rockies/Alberta My CMH Heli Ski Trip (minus MDF Mike)

DanoT

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Feb. 14-17 2017 at CMH K2 Rotor Lodge, Nakusp, B.C.
Mike's knee injury aside (I hope it is not too serious and I hope it doesn't require surgery) having insurance and cancelling the trip was the best thing that could of happened to Mike because in a word, the SKIING WAS HORRIBLE.

Driving to Nakusp, it rained all the way there. The first day of skiing it was raining and foggy and the choppers didn't fly. Same thing for day 2 except that CMH arranged a day trip to Revelstoke about 1.5 hours away. I didn't go as I was concerned about aggravating my hip flexor that I tweaked at Whistler the week before. They got wet snow on the Stoke Chair (the top 2k vertical) changing to rain part way down to the upper gondola base.

Day 3 was clear, colder, and windy and the choppers did fly but not to the highest landing sites due to severely wind affected snow. Where we did land the first few turns were slightly wind affected but quite ski-able, followed by some nice boot top turns and then the bottom third to half of the run to get to their highest chopper pick up zones, we encountered 2"-3" thick breakable, hard frozen rain soaked, noisy crust. Real knee twister very difficult to turn in ugly crud.

One person in the other group quit after a couple runs and some other skiers in another chopper quit at lunch time. A couple of runs after lunch, I quit and chose to finish the day riding in the chopper. The rest of my group lasted one more run. The other group sharing our chopper did another 2 or 3 runs after that. Most of the runs were short, about 1,000 to 1,500 vertical feet.

At one point we could look down a run and see what I thought were partially covered old tracks, but our guide explained that what I was looking at was the result of water flowing downhill on top of the snowpack.

Afterwards I realized that that was the worst conditions that I had ever skied. "Why is that?", I asked myself. The answer: when the conditions are that bad, I don't go skiing, I go home. With that in mind I chose not to ski the 4th and final day.

CMH offers a partial money back guarantee if minimum vertical is not met during the trip and it was not. They also offer an additional $500 credit toward a future ski trip if the refund is applied toward that same second trip. I won't be taking them up on the $500 second trip offer.

On the plus side, the food was very good, they had a dog friendly room for Tia and I and they didn't charge extra for Tia or for being in a room by myself. I also found a very nice pair of winter clogs at the Nakusp General Store. A plastic clog with a fake sheepskin slipper liner that are warm and comfy for in my camper and short walks with Tia if there is not too much snow on the ground

CMH does have some absolutely fabulous looking terrain. We did see one area where a very long horizontal crack had opened up in the higher snowpack, but no avy.

One other good thing was that when we did get skiing the visibility was better than last week at the Whistler Gathering, unfortunately the skiing was not.

And one more good thing: (I am trying hard to find good) my hip flexor didn't bother me at all even in the unski-able frozen crud. I was worried about my knees in that stuff but fortunately no crashes in the crud for me, just curses.
 
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Kyle

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Sorry about your bad luck. My guess is that they don't get too many trips like that in the course of a season but it probably happens a little more than I would like to believe when I am fantasizing about a similar trip.
 

mdf

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Wow, sorry to hear about the bad weather. I guess the warming yuckiness from the end of the Gathering followed you east.

Their Web page with current weather gave no clue (though I am not sure I checked every day), so that is not very honest.
 

Lorenzzo

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With the CMH venue we frequented it seemed as though there'd be a really poor skiing week maybe one out of seven. It really sucks it happened on your first.
 

Jim Kenney

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Thanks for the report Dano and for sharing the good and the bad. I assume for trip dates you meant MARCH 14-17, 2017. I've always been curious about heli-skiing, but never really super motivated to experience it for myself. Coming from the mid-Atlantic, I'm really easy to please with standard resort skiing. My feeling is - why bother with the trouble and expense for a helicopter? I also have to admit that I have an underlying insecurity that I'm not skilled enough to really maximize the opportunity. I'm open to (and have occasionally tried) the cat-skiing operations that some of the resorts conveniently offer such as Powder Mtn, Loveland, Copper, Keystone. Maybe I'll get an "ah-ha" moment with one of those??
 
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DanoT

DanoT

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Yes, you are correct Jim it should say MARCH. If it had been Feb., then it probably would have been better weather.

I have been cat skiing a couple of times and didn't get more than a skiff of fresh snow but still had excellent skiing. In this particular case a cat would have got us skiing on day one and two with snow changing to rain or very short snow only runs.

Overall i think cat skiing is a slightly better value and at my advanced age I think I prefer the rest offered by a slow cat ride between runs.
 

Monique

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I'm sorry. This is the thing with these expensive trips that you have to book in advance. Sounds like you made some good choices - sometimes the best skiing choice is not to ski. As one of our instructors texted my husband when my husband bailed on a crazy cold day, "That's good skiing!"
 

coskigirl

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So, I have to ask, you mention that you won't be taking them up in the discount on a future trip. Is that due to something they did wrong or just due to bad weather etc and you're not willing to risk that again?
 

RachelV

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So, I have to ask, you mention that you won't be taking them up in the discount on a future trip. Is that due to something they did wrong or just due to bad weather etc and you're not willing to risk that again?

I'm curious about that, too, especially since I was under the impression that CMH could fly pretty reliably with the interior BC lodges. Some friends of mine go regularly (they're rich :) ) and they've had great conditions just about every time. Do you really think you'd get skunked if you went again?

I'm sorry your trip didn't work out! It really does suck when you look forward to something like this and it doesn't deliver.
 
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DanoT

DanoT

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So, I have to ask, you mention that you won't be taking them up in the discount on a future trip. Is that due to something they did wrong or just due to bad weather etc and you're not willing to risk that again?

I have always felt that cat skiing is a better value than heli skiing and this heli trip was at 40% off for first time CMH customers so it was pretty much heli skiing at a cat skiing price. Ironically, with cat skiing in the fog and snow turning to rain, means we would have gone skiing on day one and two and had better skiing than with the chopper on day 3 and 4 when the weather cleared and it got colder and the rain soaked snow froze up. Also cats are more flexible as to where the pick up zones are located.

So, number 1 reason to not go heli skiing again is cost, number two reason is that at my age I think I prefer the rest between runs that you get in a cat or chair lift.
 
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Tricia

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Great report on an interesting Heli trip.
Maybe you and Mike can go on a Cat trip next year to celebrate his belated birthday.
 

mdf

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I'm thinking the lower risk but lower reward of a close-to-a-resort one day program makes sense. I still want to do it, but....
 

Ken_R

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Sorry to hear about your troubles on the Heli trip. Booking trips in advance is a crapshoot but with a Heli there are much more options regarding terrain but this past month has seen some crazy weather. Climate change is real. I highly recommend a cat skiing trip. Specially if you can decide when to go on short notice. There are several really good cat ski outfits in Colorado and I am sure in other areas as well.
 

Tony S

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Dano, that rots. Meanwhile I'm really enjoying the fun t-shirt you sourced for us. :)

On the heli thing, my cynical and ignorant but possibly not unwarranted suspicion is that ski conditions are always a crapshoot, no matter where you go or how much you pay. You can't buy mother nature. The people who can actually afford heli skiing on a regular basis can afford to write off the bad days, just like I do, in my own middle class way, when I encounter crummy snow around here. But they're not motivated to talk about it, and obviously the trip operators aren't either.
 

surfacehoar

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That sucks that you had such poor weather. As I'm sure you know it was a cold winter this year and your timing was the worst.

I checked the St.Leon weather station, which is in CMH's K2 tenure at 1800m.

It rose to +4c during the rain event February 14th. The last time the temperature was above 0c, was November 15th!

After you left on the 17th, the temperature didn't rise above 0 again until March 14th. Flirted with freezing a few times late march/april but didn't go warmer than +4c again until April 18th.

Not that it's any consolation prize, but you got the worst heli skiing of the winter for sure.
 
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surfacehoar

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That sucks that you had such poor weather. As I'm sure you know it was a cold winter this year and your timing was the worst.

I checked the St.Leon weather station, which is in CMH's K2 tenure at 1800m.

It rose to +4c during the rain event February 14th. The last time the temperature was above 0c, was November 15th!

After you left on the 17th, the temperature didn't rise above 0 again until March 14th. Flirted with freezing a few times late march/april but didn't go warmer than +4c again until April 18th.

Not that it's any consolation prize, but you got the worst heli skiing of the winter for sure.


Oh I see that your dates were March 14-17! That was the other rain event. +2c for about 30hrs or so.
 
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