‘Crouch down to avoid the blades and when we say ‘go’ move fast,” says our guide. I’m not sure what the panic is but I obey as the small glass-bubble helicopter lands a few feet in front of us, in a suburban field overlooking the Italian resort of Sestriere and I clamber, doubled-over with air bag, ice-pick and electronic search-device strapped to my back, into the car-sized back seat with three others.
A perma-smile sets in to all four of us as we arc up high enough to get a bird’s perspective on the Milky Way mountain range – reclaimed and renamed by the resort as its native Vialattea – which calmly lays out its choppy contours beneath our noisy blades. Ten minutes later, as our feather- weight flying machine touches the snow lightly below a ridge we are again told to make haste, out onto the remote mountain top, and crouch. As we hunker into the icy slope, the blades spin wind our way, propelling snow chips into our bodies: and the helicopter flies off.
The silence of the isolated peak, the majestic eerines of the ice and snow and the heart-knocking height are usually the rewards of half a day’s climb – delayed gratification – yet here we suddenly sit by the sky, thrown into the sweet shop. It’s a bit overwhelming, as is the prospect of skiing down this wild side. Usually heliskiing involves being taken to powder snow out of a resort’s reach but we’re here in late spring when the snow has stopped falling and at this altitude the slope has been sunburnt and wind whacked to form a frozen rippled surface.
I follow our guides, who have given us a brief lesson in how to use the avalanche transceivers attached to our backpacks – which emit a beep and can also be switched to a search function to track down other transceivers – and which cord to pull to release our air bags: all conjuring visions of what can happen out here.
I shudder down off the rigid rippling ridge to a plateau, reverting to bad habits in the way we all do when confronted with difficulty – clinging onto outdated coping mechanisms. The journey off this mountain is going to involve them all – leaning back into the hill instead of forward down it, swinging shoulders, skis forced out of alignment by natural obstacles and at one tricky stage the guides actually beg us to do snowplough turns.
Yet after that nervous initial descent, the next part brings a huge sense of freedom. There are no lifts, nothing has been pisted, markers are non-existent and who’s to say what colour each run is: blue, black, red, no matter. You can ski anywhere albeit always on alert: that hillock could have a crevasse behind it, or there may only be a walk back from that detour (there’s certainly not a ski lift at the end of it). And whatever happens there is no going back so you have to get down any way you can (for one intermediate in our party that means a long stretch on his backside as the guide carries his skis).
And there’s a freedom in the lack of certainty, in relaxing and allowing yourself to make “mistakes”; if you need to cross a pile of icy rubble you’re not going to maintain the elegance mustered on a cruisy red run.
And so I give myself to the mountain: to its unpredictable contours, its gorgeous gullies, streams to leap over, fast wide slopes, low-hanging branches, short sheer drops (leaving my heart behind briefly at the top) and – “stop!” the person who got there before me shouts – a high cliff dropping to a river in the valley.
Spring throws up its own obstacles: we ski through a forest where the terrain comprises a thin icy crust above disintegrating, ash-like snow through which the heavier members of the party plummet to hip level on every turn.
And here we resort to snowplough, stepping our way through the forest that is preparing to bloom for summer. And below the trees the snow disappears so we have to sling our skis over our shoulders and stomp in ski boots throwing up sweet scents of the warming earth until we reach the snow again and softly glide through saplings and meadows until we arrive in a field on a valley floor where the helicopter picks us up.
It’s not the ideal heliskiing experience – which would involve a lot of powder – but it was an adventure, of hardship and joy, bringing a sense of achievement and lifelong memories.
The following day we go up again (it’s cheaper second time around) and the helicopter company is determined to give us snow all the way this time. We are dropped on a knife-edge-col slung between two peaks from which, it seems looking down either face, there is no safe way out.
“That’s the Argentera – or silver – valley,” says our guide holding his arm towards Sestriere. “And,” he says, turning the other way, “that is the Thuras valley.” “Bulls?” I ask (and later find out it’s not) but he’s started chatting to a colleague and I’m left wondering how we’ll get down from here: both valleys start with drops that seem unskiably steep.
It’s the bull run we rumble down, skiing cross a slope that disappears into mountain air – gripping our ski-edges because our lives depend on it – and turn down a weather-rippled night-iced run, into a valley. Here we cruise for nearly an hour down the silent, lift-free dale.
We stop periodically to appreciate the receding vale behind us, we watch two walkers on skins methodically padding down a mountainside towards us and an Ibex herd eating a precarious meal high above us before they charge carefree up a far-fetched peak. We follow a river that we eventually sit beside in the sun.
As the helicopter lands nearby there is no panic this time to clamber in and go; instead lunch is taken off it. It’s a picnic of hunks: hunks of mountain cheese, hunks of cured meat, hunks of bread, hunks of chocolate and hunks of staff one of whom ushers the cork out of a prosecco bottle with the side of his ski. We whirl holes in the snow with our fingers to keep the glasses of sparkling wine cool: needs must.
As cheese and meat rind hits the snow we are told that within seconds of our departure wild animals will eat the lot. We imagine marmottes hiding behind bushes and birds stealthy on tree branches watching the feast being laid out for them; waiting for us to fly out of their remote kingdom, back to resort life.
Emma was a guest of Crystal Ski (crystalski.ie and 01-433 1080 ) which offers week’s half board at the Hotel du Col in Sestriere from €821 including flights from Dublin and transfers.
HOW TO... HELISKI
The price for a heli skiing trip is €275 each and includes guide and equipment. For a second lift, the price is €190 each. A tour of Vialattea in a helicopter is €340 per person. See pureski-company. com
For more information on Sestriere infopack.crystalski. co.uk
