Vitamin I

Canadian heli-skiing is for expert skiers – or those that have a natural deficiency of fear or sense.

I survived six days of it with a group of five non-expert skiers aged 45 to 70. As the baby of the group I was one of two survivors that made it injury free to the final day (my seventy year old companion, Dick, was the other.) We lost a person a day for the first three days with injuries to a hamstring (Mike), back (Bill G.) and knee (Steve) respectively. The damage I sustained was less obvious. I leave Canada with a massively bruised ego and a liver that has had to process massive doses of Vitamin I. If beaten paths are for beaten men, consider me battered but not beaten.

Heli-skiing is one of those once-in-a-lifetime, bucket list activities that can hardly be described with words. Flying in a helicopter through the mountains on a sunny day is an experience in itself. Learning to do the heli-ski huddle as you get blasted with snow multiple times per day is imperative, as is learning how to find your buddy buried under the snow. I was fortunate enough to ski through an avalanche that I created and do a perfect nose dive into the debris pile at the bottom of the pitch. Call me a newly certified powder pig.

The folks at Great Canadian Heli-Skiing are the best and the memories created at the lodge will last a lifetime. The small group there was a virtual UN of ski crazies. There were Italians, Belgians, Australians, Swedes, English ladies, sorted Americans, and then, or course, there were the Canadians, “eh”. Love them all.

Vitamin I is my new friend. Get enough of it in your system and you can forget the pain for a few more hours on the slopes. I was told that I can buy it in bulk at any drug store. Apparently it is also known as ibuprofen.