Avie Burials and Heli Crashes- A Super-belated AK TR

[goldenboy]

Better late than never, says I. I don’t have a ton of pictures, but I have a few, thanks to Dev. I would like to think that this is a pretty entertaining story, so I hope you enjoy reading it.

In spring of '05, a group of us convened in Valdez, pilgrims to Mecca, the north shore of skiing. It was a strong group, for the standards needed to be high to ensure a complete slaying of the Chugach. We had enough for a fully private heli, meaning that we were calling the shots, and the guides could only advise against any perceived foolishness. Things were looking good. But it was not to be...

We arrived at the heli-op headquarters with $1,200 worth of food and booze packed into the RV for the 10 of us. We were the first group of the year, and the heli had not yet arrived. The ATCO trailers were just beginning to thaw out, and smelled heavily of diesel and dampness. The first day was grey, so we decided to make some laps off the pass. This was entertaining, but certainly not why we were there. Thankfully we got a good workout pushing the rear-wheel drive van around:


The following day was partially cloudy. Sadly, this meant that our heli would still not be making the trip up-valley to us. So we decided to skin up across the valley for a much bigger run than the pass shuttles were offering. Plus, we knew the snow would be better up high. Being a large group, we split up for the skin. My group of 5 got involved in an avalanche during our skin up. It was a natural, caused by cornice-fall. Only one was caught. He was buried chest deep, lost a ski, but was unharmed after a few hundred vertical foot ride. I would love to go into more detail, but my friend recently sold this story to Backcountry mag, and it is in the current issue. I don't feel it would be right for me to tell the full story here, for that reason. A couple of observations: I was wearing trekkers, since my main goal was heli-skiing, not touring. I was not caught, but was left in an awkward position since I needed to deal with the trekkers before I could even begin looking for the skier caught in the slide. Trekkers have their place for side-country and the like, but it sucks when you know that the first couple minutes of your search will be wasted dealing with trekkers. 2- The older style Tracker beacons were attached with plastic D-rings. These all shattered in the force of the avalanche, so the skier caught was wearing his beacon by literally a thread down by his boot. If the skier had been buried and the beacon had been totally ripped off, we wouldn’t have found him, just the beacon. The new Tracker beacons have a sweet harness, and the old ones can have the plastic D-rings easily replaced by key rings. I would prefer if this thread doesn’t become an avalanche dissection thread, so if you have any questions or comments specific to the avie, please PM me or start a new thread in the slide zone. Thanks.

After that little bit of excitement, we weren’t exactly in the mood to tour, the days passed without the arrival of our helicopter, which made it hard to go heli-skiing. One rainy, snowy day, we decided to rebuild the trailers’ deck (disassembled during summer and early winter), in case fair weather ever returned and we wished to have a BBQ. We had some carpenters in our crew, and plenty of hands to complete the project. You would think that with all the money we were spending that the guides or somebody would help, but no, we would tackle the project ourselves:


Sadly, in my other life, I am the very worst kind of dumbass known as a drywaller. So, naturally, I was nominated to screw the deck boards off once they were in position. Now, a sheet of drywall needs to be tacked off pretty quickly or it will fall on your head. But a deck board can just sit there. The only thing you need to be careful of is that you NEVER EVER step on a board that isn’t screwed down. Despite triple checking where I was walking, I did it anyway. WHAM!, right in the nose. I’m sprawled out in the joists, blood dripping from my nose, when a guide thinks I’m really hurt and comes running to save me. WHACK!, he goes down, too. Thankfully, neither of us was hurt that badly, though my nose looked a bit swollen:


The deck was completed and the days continued to pass by, always raining or snowing, and still without a heli to even pretend that we were heli-skiing. This shot, more than any other, sums up my AK experience:


One night Adam took it upon himself to “take one for the team”. The theory goes like this: If you get so wasted that you guarantee a hangover the following day, the next day will dawn bluebird and you will be flying. Everyone not hung over will have the day of their lives. I think he shot gunned a case by himself. Adam was very animated and gestured wildly with his steak knife, which was thoroughly amusing and slightly scary at the same time.



Eventually, our day came. Pedro made the call: “Could we get a helicopter here, STAT!”



Our first fly day was short, by the time we did our heli safety lesson and all that good stuff. The guides weren’t too familiar with the snow pack, so we built our way up, slowly. The only good run that I remember: RFS, which stands for really fuckin steep, though another guide mockingly said it also stood for really fuckin short. Sorry for the lack of action pics. But I love this photo. See the rotors?



I think a couple of grey days passed before we were able to fly again. At this point, we had hardly used any of our fly time at all, and many of us were scrambling to change our return plans. We had been there for about two weeks. But then we were greeted with a beautiful bluebird day, and the game was officially on. We were off to ski areas I had long dreamed of: The Books, the Library, and the Valley of the Tusk. The first group took off, and then we were in the air as well. Here’s some shots:

4



At this point, my trip to AK really hadn’t been going that well. I had taken a 2x6 to the nose, and had narrowly averted being caught in an avalanche or having a friend killed in one. But my luck was to remain bad.

We landed on a big, flat plateau above some nice looking shots. The guide got out, but the helicopter was really shaking, and the pilot motioned to us to stay where we were at. I already had my four-point harness off at that point, when the pilot took off again. He landed a second time, not far from where he first landed. I got out first, and by the time Jordan got out, the heli was really shaking. The pilot tried to take off again, but the helicopter was really having difficulty by now. We’re all huddled on the snow near the body, while the heli desperately tries to gain altitude and stop shaking and lurching all around. It only gets worse. The heli is shaking violently, like a 30 year old washing machine, and the blades are angled towards us, maybe four feet above our heads. Standing up would have been a fatal move. I really thought it was the end for me, and I remember thinking that it had been an OK run for me. I didn’t start praying to a God that I don’t believe in or anything else.

Meanwhile, the pilot was fighting valiantly for our lives as well as his own. He was fighting ground resonance, when the air from the blades bounces off the ground and back into the blades, making flight unstable. The shaking was so violent that one of the control levers was ripped out of his hands. Despite this, he was somehow able to fly backwards away from us and crash into the snow. He was not hurt.

A close-up of the rotor assembly. That cable is supposed to be tight, and there should be three of them. The other two sheared off and flew onto the glacier, somewhere.


Goldenboy, thinking about the past 10 minutes of his life:


It was worse than it looks:


After making some radio contact and getting a plan, it was time to ski our final run and get picked up by another company. Here’s Pedro, making the best of it:



We were reunited with the other members of our group, who thought that the problem with the heli was simply mechanical, since nobody was squacking over the radio about crashed helis. We made our way back to base and negotiated for our remaining time, etc. Then we were out of there.

[goldenboy]

Continued....


The trip back on the heli was nuts. The video from that drive back precludes any of us from ever running for public office. I think that one member of our group single-handedly drank a case of Redbull and smoked more than Bob Marley would have in a year. I really thought he might die of a heart attack. My fun wasn’t over yet, though- I was starting to feel pretty shitty.

Our (the 3 of us from Crested Butte) flight that night was overbooked, so we volunteered to get bumped, earning ourselves a $600 voucher and a hotel room for the night. When I woke up the next day, I was wishing that the rotor blades had gotten me the day before. I went to the clinic, where the nurse informed me that I was “really sick”, with a fever of 104. Full-blown flu. How nobody else got sick is beyond me. We showed up at the airport again that night, and promptly volunteered again. $600, cha-ching! The flight was overbooked again on the third night, but the girlfriends of my friends weren’t having it anymore, so we flew home.

The sliver lining of the ass-kicking that AK handed me? I purchased a couple of tickets to Argentina just a few months later, and by the time my buddy paid me for his ticket, I was up $300 by the time we arrived in Las Lenas

[mc_roon]

nice TR. sounds like you had some pretty shitty luck though

[goldenboy]

nice TR. sounds like you had some pretty shitty luck though

Yeah, but it did help me get to Las Lenas, so it's all good in the end.

[splat]

Nice AK tr.
Chet lost his license over bad wind like that.
But he had to set it down a little harder and shear all the blades off.
Props to your pilot. The moment of truth is edgy.

[BlurredElvis]

I visited Alaska once.


it was frigid cold.

[Mofro261]

Way to tell it like it... can be in your worst nightmares of AK heli skiing.

You still use the trekkers?


Thanks for the TR.

[ill-advised strategy]

Nice TR!

Hey, so, I'm curious if any heli-savvy people can tell me WTF is up with this ship disintegrating in HIGE? I mean, obviously there's a lot of potential variables and whatnot, but we (federal wildland fire agencies) do a lot of hover-in-ground-effect maneuvers under load and this sort of thing is really rare and usually is due to mechanical trouble or flying in questionable weather.

My instinct is to find out if there was anything that could be gleaned from this near-miss....like overloading or an overdue 1000-hour or something.

[goldenboy]

You still use the trekkers?

Not much. They're good for quick little jaunts out of ski areas and not much else. I only had them up there because I wanted 2 sets of alpine skis in case I broke a ski.

[kona12]

Sounds pretty crazy but seeing as I am a glass is half full kinda guy, I would say the fact that you made it through and avalanche and a heli crash with no death or other carnage, that you are pretty damn lucky. And you scored some free airfare too. Have fun down south and I wish you better "luck"!

[splat]

Nice TR!

Hey, so, I'm curious if any heli-savvy people can tell me WTF is up with this ship disintegrating in HIGE? I mean, obviously there's a lot of potential variables and whatnot, but we (federal wildland fire agencies) do a lot of hover-in-ground-effect maneuvers under load and this sort of thing is really rare and usually is due to mechanical trouble or flying in questionable weather.

My instinct is to find out if there was anything that could be gleaned from this near-miss....like overloading or an overdue 1000-hour or something.

The mountain winds are not completely predictable and Valdez has some sharp geologic features those winds move through. Like tornados dropping out of the sky in the midwest, weird shit happens. A pilot might cruise up a face, then spock an lz to touch a skid on while drifting over a very large cliff on the other side. The wind rushing up that wall can lift the chopper and everyone will go "whoaaaaa". Then you pile out onto a very narrow spine with a cliff on one side and a steep slope on the other while the chopper hovers. Meanwhile the wind does what it wants. A million things can happen...

Chet said he got caught in a freak sudden downdraft and plowed it in on the pilot side to prevent the blade rotation torque from spinning the transmission into the cabin, shearing the blades in the process. That bird is stil slowing descending Mt. Spurr as far as I know.

[mtnbikerskierchick]

The bad luck surrounding that trip just didn't seem to stop! While I'm sure you guys were super-bummed out, it's still pretty dang funny to read Glad you guys got a sweet trip to LL out of it!

[smmokan]

That really goes to show you how much of a crap shoot heli skiing can be sometimes... sounds like you guys made the best of it though.

[Karl Stall]

that TR has more acquired wisdom about skiing in Valdez than I have ever heard packed into one trip. It is a funny, quirky place in a way, which is why I think it becomes such an addiction - always about the line you could have skied and trying to get it when it is perfect.

Thank you for sharing - really cool.

Splat -- Chet's deal was fucked - Mt. Spur is a sick place to land. Liska, Fowler, Perata, Simmons - those were the days - sushi at the totem

[summit]

thanks for the tr!
at least you got las lenas!

[Cornholio]

Man, that's a good read. Thanks for putting it up.

Was Chet the pilot or the guide?

[lemon boy]

sweet writup about a tough trip GB!

cornhole- he was a pilot (not GBs pilot though)

[Cornholio]

Oh.

Why are we talking about him, then?

[lemon boy]

b/c he lost his ticket in a similar incident and he is the archetype for an AK heliski pilot.

Over the years powder has done a couple of pieces on him and he gets a little screentime in Groove.

[hutash]

A good example of "shit happens". All you can do is go with the flow. Not point getting all pissed off, and it sounds like you guys still had a good trip with lots of stories. Sometimes those end up being the trip we remember the most. Glad all came home well, aside from the flu. Great TR!!!

[~mikey b]

Nice TR!

Hey, so, I'm curious if any heli-savvy people can tell me WTF is up with this ship disintegrating in HIGE? I mean, obviously there's a lot of potential variables and whatnot, but we (federal wildland fire agencies) do a lot of hover-in-ground-effect maneuvers under load and this sort of thing is really rare and usually is due to mechanical trouble or flying in questionable weather.

My instinct is to find out if there was anything that could be gleaned from this near-miss....like overloading or an overdue 1000-hour or something.

I thought the same thing. I fly a lot for the FS - Fire and other stuff, and I've never heard of this just happening randomly. I've got a heli mission planned for later today, but it looks like the weather is going to shut us down.

Great trip report.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

That story ruled. Thanks for posting GB. We need more of this kind of delayed-TR stuff around here in the summer.

[wstdeep]

Alaska is like a woman,

She can be a Goddess......she can be a total Bitch

Sounds like your date started out as dinner with the Bitch, she changed into the goddess about when desert came, and after dinner you turned down the lights to get ready for action and a huge ugly Bitch walked out from the bathroom........

Better luck next time it is a magical place.

[FrankZappa]

Great story GB. Thanks! Looks like some s-e-r-i-o-u-s thinkin' goin' on here.

Goldenboy, thinking about the past 10 minutes of his life:

Got any more of these tasty treats?

[Ireallyliketoski2]

That was a great read, well written and consistent with my theory that the worst trips make the best stories.