We split into two groups.  A friend of John Lane’s who lives in Geneva had come over to take one group on a very scenic ride through the (hilly) vineyards above Morges and Nyon.  A second group decided to take the even more scenic (and almost flat) route from Lausanne to Geneva along side the lake. 

Unsurprisingly, I was in the scenic (flat) group and we had a lovely ride along the lake.  It was slightly strange for me because all the towns like Lausanne, Morges, Nyon and Geneva all have people that I’ve seen professionally.  It turns out that the towns are lovely.  All the Swiss out in their finery in the sun, boating, promenading, just having a nice Sunday morning.

The ride was pretty flat and we took it pretty easy and finally rolled into Geneva and all met up at the Jet d’Eau.

That day was 62km and 349m of ascent (more than I expected).  Stats here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/92081564

So we were done.  A few beers and then we all packed up our bikes and got changed on the promenade in front of the lake.  I think the Genevoise were somewhat non plussed by a bunch of hairy men in lycra stripping off in the middle of the pavement and packing away the bikes.  JJ and I drove the van back to Cambridge (getting to Cambridge at 2:30am) and everybody else flew back.

So…

Another boys cycle trip is over.  The total distance covered in 3.5 days was 551km (342.5 miles) total climbing 5898m (19,351ft) and average speed of 21.1km/h (13.1mph)  (for me: much faster for others).  19,000 calories although the Garmin’s calorie algorithm sucks.

Like every other year it was a a true joy at times.  The cycling was tough and probably tougher than many of us expected but the joy came from the camaraderie, the running jokes, the witty, funny or plain interesting conversations that one has on these trips.  I for one am willing to put up with a lot of pain on the cycling because the company is just so good.

As always thanks to John Lane for doing the routing.  Literally days and days of work goes into arranging the routes and despite my comment at the top of one of the 22% hills (“I didn’t f*cking sign up for this!”) John judged it almost perfectly.  Right at the limit of what the whole group could manage although maybe a little less challenging for the elite cyclists.  It was a huge amount of work for him and we were all grateful. 

Mick drove the van again this year and we quite literally couldn’t have done it without him so the entire group is always grateful to Mick.

And John McNeil probably should get the biggest thanks for corralling 20 rather opinionated middle aged men into a coherent group, arranging hotels, flights, meals, coffee stops etc etc.  Every year it is a logistical tour de force and we’re all happy that it’s not us that has to do it. 

Will there be another year?  Who knows.  I think after the first two days there were a lot of people who didn’t think we’d ever do it again but, the exhilaration, joy and sheer pride in having cycled 550km in three days might maybe encourage another trip.  The WAGs reading this should be extremely proud of their “worse halves”.  This was a serious physical challenge and every one of us made it.

Photos coming soon.

We started out in two groups.  A “fast group” and “the rest”.  I was in “the rest” so can’t really comment much about the fast group.

It started badly with a big climb up some cobbles and just got worse.  We probably could have taken an easier route but we ended up going up *two* hills which at one point were 22% gradient.  Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of getting off the bike and walking (oh the shame!).  You know when things are bad when you’re walking up a hill and your heart rate is 140bpm.  It was just unpleasant and horrible.  After two of those hills and the “off road” cyclo-cross sections afterwards, the “slow group” had a bit of a mutiny and bailed out of the John Lane route which involved another hill of the same calibre.  We bought all the croissants and pain chocolats at a tiny bakery, stuffed out faces and then headed down a much easier route.  And then we ran out of water.  And food.  And motivation.

Around 140km, I lost the will to live.  There were knees popping all over the place, Achilles Tendons grumbling, sore bottoms, feet…the litany of woe just couldn’t get worse.  At least the last 50km was fairly flat and so at least it wasn’t too bad but after the brutality of the first half of the day, it just went on and on.  We stopped occasionally for

By the time we reached Lons (our stopping point), Christopher and I just bailed out because we couldn’t find the hotel.  We decided to have a beer at a local bar but sadly were accosted by the village idiot who made what should have been a quiet beer extremely unpleasant. 

So, finally made it to the hotel.  No energy to write any more.  I’m told that John, Godric and Ed managed to do all the hills without getting off (which is a huge achievement) but very few people are looking forward to another day of this. 

The stats: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/91408885

175km, 1724m of lift, average speed, 21.0km/h.  The average speed includes at least half an hour of walking!

After 190km yesterday, this was probably too hard a day (at least for the slow group).  Oh and we have the Alps to look forward to tomorrow when we go to Lausanne.  What joy.

No photos again.  No time to stop.  I’ll collate everybody’s photographs tomorrow and post a nice photo album.

Although we’d been told that the weather today was going to be a bad day but the gods smiled on us and there was a small break in the weather around the lodge so we got in the helicopter and flew up to the mountains.

The weather in the mountains wasn’t good and the pilot had real difficulty putting the helicopter down at the top of mountains in a 25 to 30 knot wind.  We had been a bit spoiled by the nice easy windless days before.

However scary it was in the helicopter, the payoff was amazing. There had been 40 to 50cm of snow overnight and that meant that in places in the trees it was more than 100cm deep.  This was what everybody tells you about powder skiing in Canada.  Light fluffy powder blowing up over your chest as you ski through the trees.  There’s a phrase here which is “b*lls deep in powder” and that was literally what it was like.  At times in the wide open bits it feels like flying.  You jump off rollers or tree stumps and the landing is like jumping into feathers.  It’s hard work too especially if you end up on your arse (which happened to me a couple of times…). 

On the top of the mountain it was often a blizzard with strong winds and cold blowing snow which added to the feeling of really being as far from civilisation as you can imagine.  We got a little bit of a wake up call when we avoided an avalanche by a few metres.  It looked pretty small but Urs pointed out that there was probably 20 or 30 tonnes of snow in it and if anybody had got caught then we would have been digging…

I took some film from the helmet camera but unfortunately it was pointing too far down so all you can see mostly is my ski tips but here’s a very short video clip which gives you a good idea of what it is like.  Karsten also took some video from the end of his pole (don’t ask…) which gives you another perspective on what it’s like.  It’s actually pretty good.

And so, finally at 3pm, it was all over.  The weather was just too dangerous, the winds picking up and so we flew home. 

Strangely, now that there’s no more skiing to do, I am utterly spent.  Totally knackered.  In a good way but still completely done in.  I feel like I need 48 hours of solid sleep. 

So a couple of down days out of the 6 days here but this has been a truly amazing experience.  As I said in the first entry, literally indescribable in places.  In many ways skiing will always be a different sport for me now.

The Bearclaw Lodge is beautiful and the staff in the lodge are incredibly helpful and friendly.  The three guides that we skied with (Jake, Urs and Shane) were great skiers and safety oriented guides who were fun to be with.  I would come back any time I could.  Maybe March 2012… We shall see.

I thought the two days in Whistler were great (and they were great) but heli skiing here with Skeena at Bearclaw Lodge has been….words fail me.

Finally, of course, I have to thank Karsten Schroeder who said to me 9 months ago “hey, fancy going heli skiing with me?” and I said “yeah, sure”.  Karsten researched everything, booked everything and I just turned up for the skiing holiday of a lifetime.  I can’t thank you enough mate.  Let’s do it again next year.

So the rest of the afternoon was doing more email, reading books and drinking a rather nice red wine.  Could be a lot worse.

However, all is not lost.  I was given a marvelous pair of ski goggles by my family which have a built in GPS unit.  And a little head up display too.  I managed to work out how to upload the track and stats to the ReconHQ website.  So here are the stats for the days that I managed to remember to switch the goggles on.

Place	Track Link
Whistler Blackcomb	First Day at Whistler Blackcomb
Whistler Blackcomb	Second Day at Whistler Blackcomb
First Day at Bearclaw	First Day Heli Skiing from Bearclaw Lodge
Third Day at Bearclaw	Third Day Heli Skiing from Bearclaw Lodge

Ok, this is a bit geeky but the novel I’m reading is truly execrable so really had nothing else to do.

Gee, I hope the weather clears.

Then the afternoon involved a cultural tour of Hazelton which is the nearest town (c 50km away!).  We drank coffee, saw the local cultural museum (which was actually pretty good!), saw some totem poles, drove back and saw a dead plane in a big hanger.  Then more pool, more red wine, more pool.  Met the local Kastle rep (called Lorraine) who arranges “Big Mountain Ski Camps” both here and in Europe.  They sound like fun so we arranged to do one of them in Europe next year.

Boy I hope the weather clears tomorrow.  However, still pretty enjoyable being here.

Random Shots VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The day dawned very clear and sunny but after maybe 10 lifts this morning the fog came in and there will be a storm tonight.  We stopped at lunchtime after another brilliant morning.    Only 6000m of vertical descent and 40km of skiing.  Jake who is the lead ski guide says that at Bearclaw they on average have only six days down time where there’s no skiing in an entire season.  Another reason to come here often.

There’s little point me banging on again about how amazing the whole thing is here.  So, since we had a forced downtime I spent some time editing together the hours and hours of helmet camera video into about four minutes which is what one typical lift is like.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did skiing it.  Be thankful I didn’t upload hours and hours of video.  I was tempted…

Oh and to make up for the fact we were a little disappointed not skiing in the afternoon, Craig did another one of his river level “attack runs” on the lodge.  This is worthwhile watching just to get an idea of how good a pilot Craig is.  Boy did it feel cool.  Once again Craig chose the music from Top Gun to accompany the flyby.  I wonder if he’s got a thing about Top Gun…

Just finished another serious session with the masseuse.  I’m sure it does you good but at the time, it’s painful.  Dinner and then a sleep and then another day of fun.  Enjoy the videos.  More tomorrow.

Weather great, skied four or five mountains today.  Every one different, every one covered with virgin powder snow.  Incredibly tired since there’s just no rest.  You ski down 1000, 1500m in deep powder snow, get to the bottom and then it’s a 3 minute lift back to the top again by helicopter.  Every muscle in my body below my neck is sore.

Will write something better tomorrow.  Maybe I’ll have edited the video down to something watchable by then too.

Rather strangely and surreally, the entire place is full of German speakers or rather Swiss German speakers. I’m the only native English speaker in the place.  There are two guides Jake and Urs who take groups of four people up on the hill piloted by Craig who is the stunningly good helicopter guy (of which more later).  Urs looks and sounds exactly like Felix Gasser (for those of you who know who Felix Gasser is).

Everybody was knackered so it was a relatively early night.

We woke at dawn and had a very lardy breakfast while Jake explained the kit.  We all wear ABS rucksacks which have a ripcord which blows out airbags if you’re in an avalanche.  (see picture left of one of the other guests and Jake demonstrating).  We also got some instruction on tranceivers from Urs and also how to get in and out of the helicopter without getting our heads chopped off.

And so, at 10am, we took off for the first ride.  We were dropped at the top of a mountain and off we went. 

It is quite literally indescribable.  Even if you’ve heli-skied in Europe it isn’t the same.  90% of the world’s heli-skiing happens in British Columbia and it’s easy to see why.  You don’t just have a mountain to yourself, you have an entire mountain range.  There are literally no other tracks.  Just mountains and mountains and mountains of virgin snow.  If you’ve skied before then it’s like that one time where you found a bit of powder which wasn’t tracked and skied down it for 100m…but you ski for literally kilometres in snow just like that.  If you haven’t skied ever then it actually is indescribable.

And after you’ve skied for 1000m of descent and maybe 5 or 6km of distance, you arrive at a valley bottom and there is Craig in the helicopter waiting to just take you back to the top again.  And each lift takes you up 1000m and takes about 3 minutes.  We must have done 10 lifts today.  Total descent 9,800m which is approximately the height of Mount Everest.  More than 80km of skiing.  Not a single track to be seen, different bowls and mountains every time.  The sun shone, the snow was simply beautiful.  Acres of virgin snow sparkling in the sunlight.

Half way through the day we stopped in the snow, dug some tables and chairs out of the snow and ate soup and sandwiches in the sun and everyone just beamed at each other with the sheer joy of it all.

Some high points of the day:

1) the first run when I realised I could do 5km of deep untracked snow and wasn’t going to make a tit of myself

2) Skiing over a totally untracked field of snow and the sun striking the snow and making it sparkle like diamonds or stars

3) Turning fast in deep snow sets off a little avalanche (called slough – pronounced “sluff”) which you then ski through when you turn back into it again and it all gets out of control and weird in a good way.

4) Realising that when we got back to the helicopter we just did it all again over and over and over again

The only problem is that this just makes all other skiing look like a waste of time.  It is truly truly amazing.  I have never had a better day of skiing in my life.  Here’s a little photo album with some more better quality photographs.  Too tired to really prune them properly.

First Day Heli-skiing VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Craig is a stunningly good helicopter pilot and literally puts the helicopter down within a foot of where he wants it every time.  He does have a rule though:  he’s allowed to play whatever music he likes at super high volume during each lift.  So here are two videos but please note that the music is nothing to do with me! 

The first is a typical lift.  2 mins 30 and gives a really good idea of the scenery.  The end is quite cool but if you’re only going to watch one movie, the second one is the one to watch.

The second is Craig ripping it up a bit as we come back to the lodge.  Unsurprisingly the music is from top gun and Craig is zooming up a river valley about 5m above the iced up river and we all felt pretty bloody cool when we got home.

So, that was my first day heli skiing.  An unforgettable and amazing experience.  Hard to express just how happy I am. 

No helmet cam movies today because I thought I couldn’t be arsed to fanny around with it while I was worried about doing all this off piste stuff.  There will be helmet movies tomorrow (so to speak).

The following morning, I was up at 4am and went out in search of coffee.  No luck but got some email done and at 6am we ready to go.  Showered, checked out and waiting in line for “Fresh Tracks”.  This is  a special lift pass that you can buy which allows you to get a lift at 7am up to the top of the mountain with a few other hardy dudes.  Up there you eat a gigantic breakfast (see picture) and then ski before everybody else.  The breakfast was an unlimited cholesterol and sugar extravaganza with gallons of coffee.

We duly ploughed our way through the mountains of breakfast and headed out on the slopes.  It was outstanding. Truly beautiful.  The sun rising over the hills, completely empty slopes which had been beautifully groomed during the night.  The low angle of incidence of the light meant that the ice crystals coming off the back of skis created little tiny rainbows.  It was honestly just magical.  Unfortunately there hadn’t been any fresh powder snow but even without it, it was stunning.

Suitably warmed up and happy, we headed back up to the top of the last “double black diamond” left in the resort that we hadn’t done.  We had looked at it yesterday but chickened out…no wait…”had made a sensible and mature decision to avoid doing a risky thing late in the day.  Unsurprisingly, after a blissful few early morning runs in the sun both Karsten and I were feeling full of beans and so it just had to be done.

If nothing else, this run made me realise that there is nothing left to be scared of in terms of ski runs.  Nothing steeper, nothing harder, nothing more scary.  One throws oneself over a lip to land on a slope which has a sustained steepness of between 45 and 50 degrees for about 200m.  The snow was difficult, there are rocks on either side and beneath you.  Much steeper than this and snow just doesn’t stick to the rocks.  The fear factor is multiply enhanced by watching other people catch a little edge (like Karsten did yesterday) and tumble down the slope absolutely completely out of control, and by chance miss the rocks and roll out somewhere near the bottom.  But…two testosterone fired blokes, at the top of a run like that, what do you think is going to happen?  So we did it.  No slips, no mistakes and I can finally say that there’s nothing harder to do on a ski run. 

After that we did a lot of “glade skiing”.  Now this is where you ski through the trees.  Karsten is nuts this whereas I’m a bit more “ho hum”.  It is nice but it’s like skiing through a very difficult steep mogul field where every mogul has a big effing tree on top of it.

Then as a final treat we went right up to the top of Blackcomb glacier (and in the process rode up on a “double black diamond” SKI LIFT!!) and skied down a really pleasant 6.5km run.  Brilliant stuff. 

Now some tech stuff and equipment stuff.  I hired some really nice twin tip freestyle skis called Salomon Lords.  They’re pretty fat but good all round skis.  Karsten has these totally bonkers skis which are 160mm wide.  He loves them (see picture) and they’re supposed to be great in powder but they really are shit everywhere else.  There’s a fair amount of ribbing going on about this.

Oh and we crossed from Whistler to Blackcomb on the Peak2Peak lift which is the longest and highest of it’s type in the world.  It’s like the one in Kitzbuhel but longer and higher.  In the middle, the lift is 1427 ft above the ground!  And a few of the cable cars have glass floors.  Oh what fun.

I was given a great present for my birthday.  A pair of goggles with GPS built in.  How amazingly cool is that.   It tracks progress, distance, height, altitude, temperature, speed and shows you it all in a little display mounted inside the goggles.

So, the stats from yesterday were 72km of skiing in total and 10,500 meters of descent in a single day.  Not bad for two jet lagged guys…  The stats for today will be available when I can download the data from the goggles.  No video today because neither of us could be arsed to bother with it.

So we finished at 1pm, quick change, jumped in car and drove back down Highway 99 to Vancouver.  It really is a beautiful road.  Vancouver looks a bit worse during the day than in the evening and since I’m going to be spending a weekend there next weekend, I’m hoping it isn’t too boring.  Guide book says it’s fun. 

I’m typing this on the quite long flight from Vancouver up to Smithers which is the nearest airport to where Karsten and I are staying for the heli skiing.  It’s quite a long transfer from Smithers to the lodge we are staying in but once we get there I’ll post this.

I’m extremely excited and a little apprehensive about tomorrow.  First day heli skiing.   Eekk