Revelstoke and Banff/Lake Louise were really just the warm up. I’d been wanting to heli ski since I was a kid, and I figured turning 40 (which doesn’t actually happen until July) was a good time to tick it off my bucket list. When I started looking into heli last year I read about down days – when the chopper can’t fly due to weather – and figured if we were going to do this once we might as well opt for cats given they can operate in any kind of weather. When trying to book I was amazed at how tough it is to get on a cat in BC, the rebooking rates are astronomically high (95%+) and many people find themselves on waiting lists for more than five years before getting a seat. Keefer fortunately added a second cat to their operation for 2018/19 so there was no rebookings from last year…
It was another few hours west through the Monashees from Revelstoke to Keefer, we wound along Highway 6 from Vernon through cattle country to the small country town of Cherryville before veering up a snow covered (but fortunately plowed) forest service road for the 14 kilometer/nine mile drive to Keefer Lake Lodge. The lodge is quite impressive, newly built a few years ago it sits overlooking picturesque Keefer Lake and the 86,500 acres of mountainous leased crown land for the catskiing operation. We were greeted with drinks and our bags taken to our rooms, followed by a short rundown of how the next four days would unfold and some basic training on avalanche transceivers and the avalanche packs with which we’d be skiing. Dinner was exceptional – as was every other meal we ate at Keefer – but after four days of skiing before arriving, we weren’t quite up to partying late night with our fellow Keefer crew on night one.
BC hadn’t had the greatest year of snow, there was still plenty to go around but we had to do a little hunting for fresh lines the first couple of days. Some of the south facing pitches were a little ruined by tree bombs (when the snow falls off the trees and turns the powder underneath crunchy), north facing slopes still had plenty to offer, though. We had a fun first couple of days, and were fortunate to get put with a really entertaining group of guys on our cat, all of whom were great skiers. The other cat was on average a little older and didn’t ski as quickly… Lisa was the only woman at the whole lodge and the only snowboarder on our cat, but she more than held her own (and I think kept the fellas on our cat behaving somewhat respectably [most of the time!]).
For day three the temperature dropped and the skies darkened, we woke up to close to a foot of fresh, Monashees powder and it continued to snow all day. We skied one of the tree covered faces of Keefer’s tenure pretty much all day, working our way from east to west with fresh tracks each run. There was some pretty tight tree skiing, some areas so tight it was tough to turn, but that was matched with some great snow and lots of hooting and hollering from everyone in our cat. Not too many photos from day three, too much pow to be had!
For our last day we started on a bit of a sour note: our guide thought there had been enough snow the day before to ski some south-facing slopes, but we soon discovered that wasn’t the case and wasted our first couple of runs hunting for good snow. But… We made our way to the very edge of Keefer’s tenure to an area called Estonia Bowl for some absolutely amazing runs through glades and chutes into the untracked open bowl below. We had to go down one at a time given the avalanche risk, but everyone agreed we finished the trip with our best runs.
Apart from our quick trip to Australia for the Fulton wedding last year, it’d been a long time since Lisa and I had been away together just the two of us. So lucky to have in-laws with whom the kids are comfortable and who were willing to be on deck for this trip. A really fun adventure, but heli is still on my bucket list!
Hip hip hooray and happy birthday! An amazing journey for sure. The video was great, watch out Warren M .
What the Heli, why not?