Malam Jabba, Pakistan’s only ski area, was utterly destroyed by the Taliban in 2008. However, an enterprising group of locals rigged a makeshift ski lift on the Malam Jabba ski hill and this week are celebrating skiing with a week-long festival of competitions and fun called Skiing for Peace.
Malam Jabba lies in an area renowned for natural beauty, tucked into the scenic Swat region between the mighty Hindu Kush and Karakoram ranges. Skiing, like dancing, is considered illegal by the Taliban. To ensure no sinful schussing, the Taliban destroyed the base area and the ski lift to the point that no sign of the lift remained; the base area is a hulking ruin.
But skiing has survived. With the Taliban ousted from Swat the skiers are trying again. Someone rigged a ski lift with a recycled motor, and some ski gear is homemade with skis made from wooden boards with old shoes nailed to them and sticks of wood for poles. Lucky skiers get their hands on real skis. Even 1960s ski technology is cutting edge in Malam Jabba.
Matee Ullah Khan runs the country’s only ski school, using it’s 15 pairs of battered skis to teach people to ski. In an article in the BBC, Khan explains that he sees skiing as an important part of the health of mountain people. In the BBC article he's quoted as saying:
"It keeps you alive - especially the spring skiing when the temperature starts to warm, and the snow starts melting, but at night the temperature falls and frozen ice crystals form on the top layer of the snow. When you start sliding down it in the early morning, breaking that ice, it produces a very good sound and you can feel it down your skis. We say that having one run on this spring snow makes you young for a year."
Kahn's may be the best words ever spoken about skiing...
For now, skiing in Malam Jabba will remain a ramshackle endeavor. The cost of rebuilding the resort has been determined by the government to be not worth the small volume of tourism it would bring to the area. Perhaps visionaries like Matee Ullah Khan will keep skiing alive in Pakistan long enough to see the area once again become a ski destination.
I don’t think I’ve ever come across a more moving story about skiing, nor have I ever felt luckier to live where I do. I’ve skied enough spring snow to make me feel young for several lifetimes, and am free to dance and ski to my heart’s content. Kahn should be inducted into Skiing's Halls of Fame, and somehow we should send hundreds of pairs of used skis, boots and poles to Malam Jabba.
"The children of the area are very happy that we are skiing again. It's a good message that peace has been restored or is being restored in Malam Jabba," says Kahn in the BBC article.
That says it all. I think my next dream ski trip will be in honor of the skiers of Malam Jabba.
How lucky are we? Photo of Heli-Skiing in Canada at CMH Bobbie Burns by Topher Donahue.
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house,
Every skier was dancing, a few were quite soused.
The fat skis were all standing outdoors in cold air,
In hopes of more powder, face shots and big air.
The guides were still scheming with runs in their heads,
Planning tomorrow and finding sweet shreds.
And mama in tight pants and I in my chaps,
Had just hit the shot ski and made up silly raps.
When out by the spa there arose such a clatter,
We all stopped dancing to see what was the matter.
Away to the hot tub we ran with a flash,
Threw on our jackets, ignored the boot rash.
The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Gave luster to the good times and party below.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But the Austrians, all naked, and drinking cold beer.
They were far from the hot tub, waist deep in snow,
Singing and shivering, putting on a good show.
Without words we all knew they were playing a game,
To see who could last longer and still ski the same.
At first we all wondered who these skiers could be,
until one raised his glass, and shouted “Prost! Pulverschnee!”
It was Gmoser and Grillmair poaching the spa,
Those two? The legends? We stood there in awe.
The next day they joined us as we took the first flight,
After not sleeping a wink - they had danced through the night.
They led the charge and we maxed out the fun,
From McBride to Galena we charged every run.
The Sasquatch was relaxing on a cornice to munch,
When we joined CMH K2 to share their fine lunch.
In the Bugs we held power and opened the hatch,
Clicked into our skis and carved the Snowpatch.
We skied every area, no one cared about vert,
We launched all the big cliffs and no one got hurt.
Back at the lodge, we were tired and sore,
But not Hans and Leo - they wanted some more.
They put on their touring gear, and skied into the night,
Yodeling, “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!”
Mars boasts the solar system’s biggest mountain, Olympus Mons, a 90,000 foot behemoth that’s three times as tall as Mt. Everest and so wide that from the view on top its base would extend beyond the horizon; and now, with the Curiosity rover grabbing headlines almost weekly, Mars is capturing our fascination perhaps more than any time since the controversial radio hoax that broadcast H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds in 1938.
Then, just last week, NASA discovered snowfall on Mars! Scientists with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, using data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, have discovered evidence of snow falling on the Red Planet’s south pole during the Martian winter. Their discovery will appear in an article in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
This is the first example of snowfall anywhere in our solar system besides Earth, but before you call CMH Heli-Skiing to see if we’ll be opening our next Heli-Skiing Lodge on Mars and going big off of reduced-gravity kickers and pillow drops, there’s a catch:
The snowfall on Mars is carbon dioxide snow, or precipitated “dry ice” as frozen carbon dioxide is better known. Carbon dioxide freezes at about -125C (-193F) so even Arc’teryx’s most futuristic technology wouldn’t protect a Martian powder skier.
According to the JPL press release the report's lead author, Paul Hayne, said, "These are the first definitive detections of carbon-dioxide snow clouds. We firmly establish the clouds are composed of carbon dioxide, flakes of Martian air, and they are thick enough to result in snowfall accumulation at the surface."
The data for the recent discovery was supplied by the Mars Climate Sounder, a device on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that measures changes in atmospheric temperature and composition using a wide range of channels across the electromagnetic spectrum to map the planet's atmosphere.
In 2008, the Phoenix Lander observed water-ice snow on Northern Mars, and the presence of carbon dioxide ice caps on the planet has been known for much longer. The latest Mars mission, Curiosity, has captured the imagination of both adults and children, with the very naming of the mission coming from a competition held among school children from K-12.
Clara Ma, a 6th grader from Kansas, won the competition with her essay, Curiosity:
Curiosity is an everlasting flame that burns in everyone's mind. It makes me get out of bed in the morning and wonder what surprises life will throw at me that day. Curiosity is such a powerful force. Without it, we wouldn't be who we are today. When I was younger, I wondered, 'Why is the sky blue?', 'Why do the stars twinkle?', 'Why am I me?', and I still do. I had so many questions, and America is the place where I want to find my answers. Curiosity is the passion that drives us through our everyday lives. We have become explorers and scientists with our need to ask questions and to wonder. Sure, there are many risks and dangers, but despite that, we still continue to wonder and dream and create and hope. We have discovered so much about the world, but still so little. We will never know everything there is to know, but with our burning curiosity, we have learned so much.
Her words embody the phrase, “Out of the mouth of babes oft times come gems.”
Much of what we enjoy in our modern lifestyle - including the very invention of skiing (the oldest evidence found dates back about 7000 years), lift-serviced skiing, and eventually CMH's invention that we now call Heli-Skiing - owes its inspiration to the seemingly limitless human curiosity.
As a skier who has been lucky enough to taste our world's greatest skiing, I can't help but be curious about what it would be like to shred huge Martian peaks, ripping turns in crystalline dry ice. For starters, those Martian face shots would really hurt.
Photo composite of Jordy demonstrating a Martian Kicker in the Bugaboos by Topher Donahue.
"I don’t know what that is, but it’s not skiing.” I overheard one heliskier say to another as they watched one of the group's last skiers make their way to the lunch spot at CMH Bobbie Burns. “Look. He started way over there on the left, crossed all our tracks, and skied down the other side. That’s not skiing!”
It was one of those perfect bluebird days with CMH, with the mountains generously blanketed in easy-to-ski powder, and a group of guides who were fired up about getting in as much skiing as a twin-engine jet helicopter could provide.
Everyone was having a blast, and even the skier who was irritated by the cutting of the tracks didn’t stay grumpy for long. But it made me wonder. What is up with our fascination with tracks in the snow?
I enjoy looking back up the hill at ski and snowboard tracks as much as anyone. The tracks tell a story. The long arcs of the snowboarders, the symmetrical lines left by good powder skiers, the chaotic patterns of a heavily skied powder slope that shows the crashes, the timid traverses, the big airs, landing craters, the speed demon's lines, and slow zen-like lines all reveal the fun of a powder day.
There are still a few heliski groups who choose to adhere to the "Arlberg style" where each track spoons agains the next, leaving a perfect comb-like pattern. Largely, however, thanks first to snowboarding and now to big mountain freeskiing, diversity is the name of the game and each skier, safety and space allowing, can leave their own mark, from straight-lines, to 50-metre arcs, to tight parabolas.
Joe Vallone, a new-school ski pro who has skied the Eiger, is a skilled jibber in the terrain park, an experienced alpine climber and UIAGM Mountain Guide, says, “I like to make every kind of turn I know on every run I make.”
Some might argue that snowshoes don’t leave as nice of a track as skis or snowboards, but French artist Simon Beck, after foot problems forced him to give up running, began making massive patterns in the snow while wearing snowshoes, sometimes working several days on a design like the one below. More if his spectacular snow art can be seen here.
Even in the summertime, leaving tracks in the snow is a blast, as shown below in a photo by CMH hiking guide Lyle Grisedale of a Bugaboos-sized bumslide during a CMH Summer Adventures fun-fest. These adventure travellers might have ridden a zipline over a canyon the day before, and climbed a via ferrata the next day; standard fare with CMH Summer Adventures.
In the concluding lines of Bugaboo Dreams, the book about the invention and state-of-the-art of heliskiing, I wrote: “There is poetry to it: perhaps the most fitting monuments to his (Hans Gmoser) team’s contribution to the mountains are the countless tracks left beside each other each winter in the snows of the Columbias, as impermanent as one man’s life, yet telling a story of excitement and friendship in the mountains.”
There’s nothing wrong with snow-riding as fast as possible into the water for fun, but if you think about other sports, there is no other momentum sport that has a tradition quite like pond skimming.
Imagine mountain bikers in high gear pedaling full power into a mud hole to see how far they can go before the inevitable face plant, surfers chattering onto a rocky shoreline to see how far inland they can make it, skateboarders riding onto ice to see how long they can keep it together - and then the sport’s aficionados going on to make a tradition out of it.
Squaw Valley claims the first organized pond skimming event, in 1990, on Lake Cushing, with a Ski Patrol party that included the brilliant idea of trying to ski across the lake. Today, the wild event is known as the Lake Cushing Classic, explained nicely here by a Transworld Snowboard writer, and it's the Tour de France of pond skimming events with life preservers and helmets as mandatory equipment.
Warren Miller popularized the pond skim in the vaudeville sections of his ski films, and the idea caught on. Now many ski resorts hold springtime pond skim parties - and in the process have risen the bar in both silliness and innovation. The double-pond shown in the clip below from last year’s Big Sky event has taken the pond-skim construction to terrain park levels of engineering.
This coming weekend, April 14-15, there’s a Pond Skimming Championship at Heavenly where contestants are judged on success (staying dry) and distance, as well as the more esoteric criteria of style and crowd appeal.
And crowd appeal it certainly has. The unpredictable nature of snowboards and skis moving at high speed on water creates a rodeo-like spectacle. The bull might throw the cowboy immediately, or he may hang on for a bit, but most of the time it all ends with a spectacular wreck.
The magnitude of the stunts reveal that people are taking their pond-skimming efforts to a higher level. Last year at Big Sky, on the kicker between the two pools, jibbers were pulling aerials, sometimes sticking the second pond, other times not...
The floatation of fat skis has changed pond skimming every bit as much as it has changed skiing; maybe for the next generation of the X-Games we’ll see skier- and boarder-cross courses with water sections and wave pools, but for now the fun factor of the pond skim still rules.
Photo by Topher Donahue of the Mt. Everest of pond-skimming potential: CMH Monashees...
Lounging on the beach for spring break is an institution; heli-skiing for spring break is an inspiration.
The trouble with the beach holiday is that it sounds so good from home, but then you get there and there and it's surprisingly boring. One year, during my family's quintessential beach spring break, my sister got so bored that she decided to write her boyfriend’s name on her bum with sunscreen every day. It was all well and good until the toasted skin around the name began to peel - that, and the sunburn lasted longer than the boyfriend.
Then there are the pleasures of visiting the most popular spring break destinations during one of the most popular travel times of the year. First there are the crowds, the over-the-top parties just outside your hotel window, the waiting lines at restaurants and the traffic - all compounded by your kids high expectations. You know how it goes. When you get home and you feel like you need a vacation.
Or you can take your family heliskiing and blow their expectations out of the galaxy. Everyone expects you to come back from spring break with tan lines; nobody expects you and your family to show up Monday morning after spring break with ear-to-ear grins and that far away look in your eyes that says, “I just had the best family spring break of my entire life!”
With the growing popularity of parents heliskiing with their children, CMH Heli-Skiing has designed the Next Generation heliski program to fit the ski endurance of younger skiers - and the pocketbooks of their parents.
The bottom line is that Next Generation Heli-Skiing trips are half price for the younger skiers. The trip is open to any skier but if you have someone between the ages of 12-25 who wants to join you, they get the trip for half price, and that includes half the guaranteed vertical and the entire week's world-class CMH hospitality and accomodation.
Over the next few weeks, CMH Lodges will be welcoming a number of families who have decided to skip the sandy toes and sunburned shoulders in favor of snowboards, powder skis, face shots and rosy cheeks.
And the big news: there are still a few spaces left on the in CMH Monashees March 10-17 and March 17-24 for this season, and next year as well if you’re already committed to the bikini option this time around.
CMH Heli-Skiing gear guru Bruce Rainer has been taking care of the shop at CMH Galena for 22 years. He’s seen the transition to fat skis, custom ski boots, and online gear sales - not always for the best.
We talked about the mistakes people make in buying gear for world-class backcountry ski trips, and while he spoke he worked on a snowboard binding that was the cat’s meow for the resort, but when the deep snow works its way under the binding it literally separates the binding from the board.
Bruce laughed at the irony of our conversation while working on the bindings: “Things that seem to work just fine at the ski hill, sometimes don’t work at all in the environment we ride in out here.”
He quoted former CMH Revelstoke area manager Buck Corrigan who had this to say when explaining the difference between ski resort and backcountry skiing: “We ski in the snow, not on the snow.”
Here’s the 9 biggest gear mistakes people make, according to Bruce, when going backcountry, cat or heli-skiing:
- Taking new boots on a ski trip. Skiers spend a bunch of money on new boots for their dream trip and then end up with sore feet, blisters, and simply don’t have as much fun.
- Buying stiff, top-of-the-line racing boots for deep powder. Most people prefer a softer boot for powder skiing anyway, and stiff boots just make the fluid motions of deep powder skiing more awkward and difficult for all but the world’s best skiers.
- Fixing boot issues with thick, custom orthotics. When skiers are having foot issues, they try to solve them by retrofitting their boots with custom orthotics that take up so much space in the boot that they decrease the volume and often make the boots even less comfortable. Bruce noted that in numerous occasions he has helped people by simply taking their orthotics out of the boots. Bruce's advice: if you are going to use custom footbeds, get them fitted to the boots from day one.
- Assuming gear that works in bounds will work well in the backcountry. Skis and snowboards that work in a ski area, even a famous powder area like Alta, don’t necessarily work well when there is no firm base under the powder. Part of the issue is the sheer volume of deep powder heli-skiing allows. “Even on a good powder day,” explains Bruce, “in a resort you only get a few runs in the fresh before it gets cut up and packed down - out here we ski fresh snow all day every day.”
- Wearing small, low-profile goggles. You’ll notice the ski guides all wear the big, dorky looking goggles that allow lots of space between the face and the lenses. This keeps the warmth from the face from fogging up the goggles and work far better than the more stylish close-fitting goggles.
- Wearing inadequate ski gloves. Many cool ski gloves have short gauntlets that quickly fill with snow, or have too little insulation to keep the fingers warm in the deep winter of Western Canada.
- Skiing in too many clothes. “People go out in big, heavy jackets, and pretty soon they’re sweating, their goggles steam up, and then it’s just not as fun anymore.” says Bruce. If you don’t know what to wear, ask an experienced heli-skier or ski guide.
- Wearing jackets with open necks and fur. This should be obvious, but after a few tumbles or even just a meaty face shot, a fashionable fur-rimmed jacket will be holding a kilo of snow that slowly melts down your neck. Save the fashion for St. Anton or Aspen, and bring a jacket designed for powder to CMH Heli-Skiing.
- WEARING WHITE! “This last one is the biggest mistake of all!” said Bruce, “It’s a matter of safety!” When you wear white, you blend in with the snow and you make it harder for your ski partners and the guides to see you, and if you get lost even the sharp-eyed pilots will have more trouble finding you.
When he’s not fitting skis, adjusting snowboard binding positioning for better performance in the deep, and answering gear questions, Bruce is always hoping for another ride on his favourite ski run in the universe: Galena’s Freefall.
Photo of a heliskier demonstrating why yellow and blue are better colours than white when riding in the backcountry.
I talked to a professional snowboarder last week who said that the conditions in the Columbia Mountains were creating the deepest snow he had ever ridden - then it snowed for the next week straight...
Over the last 2 weeks, the Columbia Mountains’ snow machine has dumped nearly two metres of low-density snow at treeline in the CMH Heli-Skiing tenures.
Shooting photos in these conditions resulted in some exceptional images of the deep powder heliskiing experience, some of which I shared last week, but some of the best face shot photos have yet to see the light of day. It seems only fitting that the loyal readers of the Heli-Ski Blog should see them first.
This first shot shows CMH Galena guide Bernie Wiatzka, the ski guide with by far the most experience at the tree skiing paradise of Galena, doing what he does best - disappearing in a cloud of cold, white smoke.
It snowed between 10cm and 30cm every night, and the CMH Galena Lodge was as fascinating in these conditions as the skiing itself:
While much of the time, the snow was so deep that it was impossible to tell if the CMH Heli-Skiing guests were on skis or snowboards, occasionally everything would ride to the surface and the deep powder travel tool of choice would be revealed:
Conditions were ideal for big air, and the CMH guides were in good form suggesting the best pillow drops, not to mention the mandatory air on some of the runs. Here, the co-owner of The Source snowboard shop demonstrates one method of choking on a mushroom:
The CMH Ski Guides wear bright orange jackets to make them easier to follow, but in these conditions much of the time they were nearly invisible in a cloud of snow. Luckily, CMH Ski Guides, one shown here up to his earlobes in low-density powder, are exceptionally good at giving directions and nobody had any issues following them down run after run of the deepest snow imaginable:
Even the Bell 212 helicopter, known to be the safest helicopter ever made, seemed to enjoy the mind-blowing storm cycle:
Yesterday, the CMH Heli-Skiing area's snow reports showed up to half a metre of new snow over the last 24 hours - on top of what you see here. If you haven't booked a heli-ski trip yet this year, call your boss, your partner, and CMH Reservations at 1 (800) 661-0252. Not necessarily in that order!
Buying ski boots seems like it should be easy, but for some reason when I start trying to decide which boots are the perfect fit, I always feel like Cinderella’s sister.
So for an expert’s opinion on how to fit ski boots, I tracked down Matt Carlson of Surefoot, the ski boot company that customizes Lange ski boots for the ideal fit and performance - a favourite brand among CMH Heli-Skiing guides. Matt is a veteran moguls and aerials competitor who moved from the East Coast to Utah when he’d had enough of skiing on hard snow.
He replied with what is certainly the best explanation I’ve ever heard on how to fit ski boots:
Generally, each level of skier ability requires a similar fit. The goal should be to have a boot that is as snug as possible without being painful. Non-custom boots pack out very quickly, and will become much looser after just a few days of skiing. Therefore, they need to be very snug at first.
Even though each level of skier needs a snug fit, there are a few different things each needs:
Beginner skiers needs a soft flexing ski boot. Beginners do not have the balance of an expert, so the flex helps them stay centered in the middle of the ski. A boot that is too stiff will result in the skier leaning back. But there is a catch; often the softest boots are very poorly designed and are very wide. Find a soft flexing boot that is not too wide, and not made out of poor quality plastic. Typically the softest-flexing quality boot for men is about a 90 flex and for women is 75 to 80.
Intermediate skiers require a slightly stiffer boot to transfer energy quickly from the boot to the ski, but still soft enough to allow them some forward flex. Often the flex for guys will be 100 to 110 and women 80 to 90. The weight and height of this skier also helps to determine the flex. The more leverage the skier has, the stiffer the boot the needs to be. It is also more important for this skier to have a slightly narrower boot to transfer the energy quicker.
Advanced skiers have good balance and rely on their ability in order to stay centered over the skis. Therefore, they can have a stiffer boot that will transfer the energy much faster and result in better performance. This skier usually wants a narrower boot to transfer the energy faster. Depending on the ability level, this guy will want a 110 to 140 flex and women 90 to 110.
For everyone: Ski boot companies save money by not making a 22-sized shell but just slide the 22 liner into the 23. If the shell is not the size of the liner, don’t buy the boot. Most importantly the skier must not rent. Rental boots are lowest quality of all ski boots and they do not help the skier improve or enjoy their hard earned vacation - plus they can be gross.
Custom orthotics:
If the customer is not getting a completely custom ski boot it is very important that they get a ski orthotic.
- First of all, it must be specifically designed for skiing. It will support the foot in the best position for skiing and result in more comfort and performance.
- Ask the store what position they make the orthotic in. All feet are different and one way of making the orthotic does not work for all. Generally orthotics are made un-weighted, semi-weighted, or fully weighted. If the store only makes them using one method, the skier should go somewhere else.
- Find out if the ski orthotic will hold the foot in neutral - the best and strongest position for skiing. If it does not hold the foot in neutral then they should not buy the insole.
Since all feet are different, the best ski boot is a custom ski boot. But if that is not possible, then the skier must make sure the store has ski boots in several different widths. Some examples are 98mm widths, 100mm widths, and 102mm widths. If the ski shop does not have all these widths in various flexes than the skier should go somewhere else. The shop should also be taking very detailed measurements of the width and length of the feet to immediately narrow down the choices.
Ski racing –There are narrow and stiff boots available, but for children the flex still needs to be very soft.
Extreme cold – Some after-market liners like Intuition are great in the extreme cold, but they break down quicker and do not ski as well as other custom liners. Also find out what ski boot heaters are available. The highest end boot heaters work very well - you get what you pay for.
Heat-molding a standard liner will improve the fit, but if heated the liner will break down faster. Unless the liner is designed to be heat molded, it is usually best to just ski on it and it will mold to the foot the same amount heat molding will, but last longer.
The best is a custom ski boot with ski orthotic that holds the foot in neutral, a shell that is the proper stiffness and width, and a custom liner that fills in all the gaps between the foot and the shell. A boot heater is always a nice way to top it off.
Of course the Surefoot Custom Boot is the ultimate for performance and comfort for everything from riding the lift at your local hill to a dream trip to the world's greatest skiing.
Photo of finding out if the boots fit in CMH Cariboos by Topher Donahue.
There is no better way to put the World’s Greatest Skiing in perspective than through the eyes and words of the world’s greatest ski and snowboard athletes. Recently, Gretchen Bleiler, one of the world’s most accomplished snowboarders, and Tyler Ceccanti, a ski star in the most recent Warren Miller film, “Like There’s No Tomorrow” both tasted CMH Heli-Skiing and, like many of us, rank heliskiing in Canada with CMH among their favourite moments in the snow.
Tyler was interviewed by Stephanie Stricklen of KGW Portland and, between clips of him ripping jaw-dropping pillow lines at CMH Monashees, he had this to say about heli-skiing with CMH: “The best ski runs I’ve ever had in my life.”
Gretchen was interviewed by National Geographic for their “Ultimate Adventure Bucket List 2012.” She chose CMH Galena as her "must-do" experience, and summarized heli-skiing in Canada with CMH simply: “Amazing terrain, amazing snow, and totally experienced, safe and fun guides and staff. And the food is delicious - need I say more?”
Great athletes have been part of the fabric of CMH ever since CMH invented heli-skiing in the 60s. Jim McConkey, the father of legendary extreme skier Shane McConkey, was on some of the original exploratory ski missions into the Columbia Mountains with Hans Gmoser in the early 60s that inspired the birth of heliskiing.
Ever since then, a long line of ski and snowboard superstars have visited CMH. Sometimes, it is it in the line of duty during a film project, but more often a visit to CMH for the world’s ski elite is not so different from the reasons the rest of us go to CMH: for a week in ski paradise far from the pressures of the rest of our lives.
And amongst the super-athletes, it’s not just the skiers and snowboarders who find CMH Heli-Skiing to be an incomparable experience. Martina Navratilova, the tennis superstar, went heli-skiing at CMH Galena, and at the end of one particularly spectacular run she turned to her guide and said: “I’d have given up tennis ten years earlier if I had known about this!”
Booking day for the 2013 Heli-Ski Season at CMH is November 17. To assure yourself a spot on the prime weeks, call 1.800.661.0252