NORTH AMERICA
“That was a first descent, mate!” announced our ski guide Pat Delaney with a wide grin: cue whoops and high fives all round — after all, how often does a regular skier get to make a first descent? Carving down a ‘first descent’ on a never-
before-skied mountainside is exactly what you’d hope for from a heli-ski adventure. Ours has begun with our skilled helicopter pilot Loran dropping us on a knife-edge ridge with the rear end of the aircraft hanging over a sheer drop. Scrabbling out onto the safe side of said drop into a blizzard of snow thrown up by the machine’s madly whirring rotor blades, we find ourselves on a snowbound saddle between Mount Fyles and Mongol Mountain in British Columbia’s Coastal Range. After the helicopter has clattered off to wait
for us on the Monarch Icefield 2,625 feet below, we’re left to take in a landscape that is truly otherworldly — huge black crags and peaks thrusting up like mighty fangs above endless, blinding white glaciers, sparkling turquoise- blue ice falls tumbling down their slopes and a total silence broken only by the occasional sough of an alpine breeze. Clipping into our fat powder skis and
donning our avalanche packs, we follow Pat as he traverses beneath Mongol Mountain’s south summit ready to descend the glacier flowing down its flanks. The slope is excitingly steep at first (Pat estimates around 38-40 degrees), and we
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spread out so each skier can draw their own line in the wide, open snowfield; I stay at the back, happy to let everyone disappear from sight so I can savour the sense of being totally alone in one of the wildest, most primeval environments I’ve ever encountered. The afternoon sun has warmed the slope.
As I set off downhill my skis slice through butter-soft ‘corn snow’ (so-named for the granular quality that happens to snow when it becomes soft and forgiving, but not too wet and slushy). The turns are easy, so there’s ample opportunity to glance across to my left at glinting blue seracs where the glacier spills over a steeper section of the slope. It’s impossible to resist a holler of sheer elation. Eventually the angle of the slope lessens,
and we all came to a halt beside Pat, which is when we discover that, to his knowledge, this is the first time the slope has ever been skied. As Wikipedia points out with a certain degree of understatement, “the Monarch Icefield is very remote and is rarely visited.” Unless you have a helicopter, this is essentially inaccessible terrain; indeed, many of the mountain peaks surrounding our anonymous slope are similarly yet to be named. We christen the ‘run with no name’ over
beers at our rustic-luxe ski base, Tweedsmuir Park Lodge, a former hunting and fishing lodge deep in the Great Bear Rainforest, safe in the knowledge that for your average experienced skier this is as good as it gets.
Clockwise from top left: awaiting a helicopter pick-up on a ridge; perfect powder on an untracked Bella Coola slope; a helicopter waits out clouds above Bella Coola Valley; a guide and skier discuss the best line of descent
Previous pages: Skiers make a first descent into Bella Coola Valley
IMAGES: YVES GARNEAU; ERIC BERGER; CHRISTIE FITZPATRICK
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