Back in August, I was able to go on my first Heliboarding trip. It’s like Heliskiing, but with snowboards. I was able to join Alpine Heli Ski on one of their Freeride days.
I’ve done powder days and snowcat snowboarding in Lake Tahoe, California. But, this proved to be a great way for someone who had never been before to get a taste, and then drink a lot of the koolaide of helicopter based backcountry skiing. The deal this time was $250 NZD for a lift on the helicopter in and out and lunch. The trip in drops you at the top, so you get one run as part of the deal. The add-on runs were $65 NZD a piece. Pretty awesome deal with not much commitment. The thing I didn’t realize or bother to ask, was how many people were on it. I think there was over 50 people on this day trip. I ended up doing 7 runs total, which turns out is a lot of untracked snowboarding. I was pretty exhausted by the end because I kept going full on. I could have squeezed in 1 or 2 more, but it was pushing my budget and we ran out of time. The lunch was an incredible spread of parsnip curry soup, fresh baked pies, and make-your-own sandwiches. Needless to say it was a great spread and really provided the energy to take advantage of the amazing amount of powder and skiable terrain.
The bowl we tore up was Mount Larkins, which was not far from Queenstown. The vistas from the top revealed some of the scenery featured in “The Lord of the Rings” movies and also the upcoming “The Hobbit” movies.
I took a bunch of gopro footage as well, so I’ll be cutting together something with that fairly soon. Below is a map of where we were, as well as the 15 best photos I took from the day.
