Snowglobe

We joined up with H2O Heliguides in Valdez, luckily they had 2 spots in a heli for myself and best friend Amanda. We struck gold with a bluebird day and fresh snow in cold conditions so it was fluffy powder, just the way we like it! Being picked up by our helicopter Pilot for the day was so exhilarating, finally our dream of heli-boarding in Alaska really was coming true!

Our guide Pete was fantastic and knew how to keep us as safe as possible as we were snowboarding on glaciers!! Our first run for the day was Forest, Service, Cash. I will NEVER EVER forget that run! The powder was light and effortless, especially on my brothers Burton Fish!

Snowboarding down was so exciting I was shaking when I got to the bottom! All I could think was this really is what dreams are made of. This is heaven! My mind has been blown! Everyone had a great run and we knew we were going to have the best day snowboarding with a great crew on glaciers!

We did another run there and then took the helicopter to Backpacker. I went first which was a bit scary, I just love getting my heart racing like that! The runs are so long cause you ride down the steep peak, then boost fast dreamy turns down a smaller glacier. It gets steeper again at the bottom of the run where we join back up with the massive Pencil Glacier to meet the helicopter.

We headed to Chick Flick which was mellower. We were hauling ass! It got steeper towards the end with crevasses so we had to be careful. We went down a convex slope to meet the helicopter on the glacier, it looked like we were riding to the clouds! We saw a few avalanches as the sun is finally out!

Next was Andrometer, the heli didn’t have much room so it was still flying with it’s skids just on the ridge as we clambered out. We walked down the ridge being mindful of massive cornices. There was a rock on either side of this run and it was pretty steep! Just had to get the first turn in and it was on! Once we were on the mellower part of the run there was some fun lumps to jump and we were rolling around corners.

Last but not least was King Kong! Very appropriate name cause it was big, scary and awesome. I was definitely scared to get my first turn in, that run was a bit tracked out and the tracks were deep and a bit daunting, but a great challenge! We boosted straight across a glacier in a trench as we all had to stay in the same tracks, in case of a crevasse. Couldn’t put the brakes on in the trench, so just had to roll with it and hope not to eat it!

We walked up for 10 minutes to the start of Wolverine. Lots of crevasses to be careful of, so we followed the guides path until we were past them. Then we boosted fast dreamy turns all the way down, where we called it a day. And what a day it was! 5pm already!

By Dani Ingle

#snowglobenz