We all gave our boards to Kris who stood about 15-20 feet away from us, and we all gathered together in our huddle (faces now beginning to ache from smiling too much). As the heli gets nearer it gets very windy and there is a lot of snow blowing everywhere so a good huddle is essential. Kim put the helicopter down between Kris and us with our door about 4 or 5 feet away from us.

Waiting for the pickup at the bottom of "Christmas"

INCOMING!!

Once the helicopter had settled in the snow, Paul opened the door and we all clambered in one by one and we set off towards the top of our next run. This type of pickup is by far the most exhilarating and intense part of the whole heli experience, almost eclipsing the riding itself (almost). We flew low through the mountains passing by our first run, our tracks clearly visible in the snow below (in fact, the only tracks we saw all day were our own). By now we'd gone through all the usual (I expect) comments of first time heli skiers/boarders "That rocked" "That was better than sex" "I don't want to go home" "You've got the best job ever (To Kris,.he has BTW)".

Further discussion between Kim and Kris saw us descend towards our next run. Instead of getting out of the helicopter while it was running we waited until it shut down and all got out for a much deserved tea break (All the food and drink for the whole day was carried onboard the helicopter, as we didn't return to base until we'd finished). Our second run was called "Christmas", which again consisted of a large powder bowl with a flatter, less open creek/tree section just before the pickup site. During this run Kris skied down first with the video camera and filmed us all riding down. At the bottom of the run we waited briefly for Kris to chop down a few small trees which were impeding the pickup site before flying to the top of the Melody/Coppercrown runs, which was also to be our lunch stop (Later on, Kris told us that the small trees he chopped down at the landing site were not small trees, but in fact the top 2 feet of 10 foot trees!). Continued on next page.

The view from the back seat of the helicopter.

Tea Break (from left to right) Paul, Dave, Mark, Jacqui and myself