AK Sledding

My new snowmachine a Yamaha Nytro 1000kbk is the shiznit,! We are still waiting for the heli to come in so we have been sledding some the last couple of days. We hit a nearby spot called sunshine mountain where we skied laps in perfect snow in a superavesome terrain. It’s really nice to get some skiing in before hitting the gnarly stuff up high. The wheather is still really stabile and we have had bluebird for three days in a row now. Unfortunatilly Marks and Stephans sleds have had some engineproblems the last couple of days. This meant we couldn’t get to the really good sledskiing stuff. But I have been having a blast just sledding and skiing fresh pow. My ampmeter is about to reach top and I really feel I’m ready to hit the gnarlines real soon.

Sleds are great as long as they work.

The swiss boys Bimba and Stefan just arrived and they will be the ones that I will be splitting the heli with. Both of them are really strong snowboarders out of Engelberg. The sky was still blue and the heli had finally reached Haines. I was ready to go. Unfortunatilly our cameraman Mark went to Whitehourse to get his sled fixed. He had counted on bad wheather, but as I mentioned earlier you can never count on the wheather reports in Haines. It turned out we missed two perfect bluebird days while Mark and Stephen where in Whitehorse . The MSP crew – Abma, Petit and Hjorleifsson where up flying and they apparently got some really nice stuff. Good for them! Well anyhow we kept on sledding on the nearby mountain and that was still awesome. Still it was pretty anoying knowing the conditions where perfect and we couldn’t go up with the heli. To quote Seth Morisson ”its not blue bird every day you know ”.

Finally up in the bird.

So after missing out on 5 bluebird days of shooting, we finally where ready to go up with the heli. Mark was back and everything was all set. We went up at 5.30 pm cause we wanted to get the morning light. Once we where up in the air we started searching for a good zone to get started in. Appaerantly alot of stuff was pretty boney/rocky this year due to some warm storms earlier on. The snow wasn´t sticking as good as usual. I still think everything looked great though. We found a zone that looked perfect for a warm up run. I skied a nice looking ridge with some great light on it ending up with a drop in the end. The feeling was great and the snow felt really stabile. Bimba and Stefan got two nice lines to.

A stolen heli for a couple of beers

Once we got down, our guide Tim informed us that the MSP dudes had just borrowed our heli for a short while. They wanted to shoot their other heli in the air. No budgetproblems there I guess. We didn’t mind since we thought it would just be a short wile. We had a look on another line in the same bowl that looked really nice and got ready for the pick up… 2 and a ½ hours later we where still waiting for the heli. We could see the light slowly move out of our lines. MSP had fu__ed us over, bastards! We got the pickup, found another zone and then the clouds moved in on us killing the light. The day was over. We met the MSP dudes on the cafe at 33mile just by the heliport. They luckily where really apologetic and Steve Winter promised us a couple of rounds in the bar later on to make up for loss of the heli. I’ve got a soft spot for beers so it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. In the end there where no hard feelings and I was still stoked getting one line in on the first day in the bird.
Finally it looks like we have a storm coming in, which is good since the more serious lines need another dump or two.

Text and photo: www.sebgarhammer.com