04 Nov Helicopter skiing in the Alps with Swisskisafari

Recently, a scene from the film Ordinary Angels reminded me of an incident which happened while Helicopter skiing in the Alps with Swisskisafari. In this scene a helicopter is trying to land in a snow blizzard so a person in the crowd puts a red shawl down on the ground to help guide the pilot. A good idea… sort of.

My similar incident was during an amazing helicopter skiing trip in the Alps with Swisskisafari. We started at the foot of the Matterhorn and heli-skied our way to the Mont Blanc with many spectacular heli-ski descents along the way. Boy, was it a blast.

Back to the red shawl story…

In the film the community tried using headlights of vehicles to light the landing zone. However, the whiteout meant landing was still very difficult for the pilot. So someone in the crowd placed a red shawl on the ground to help the pilot discern the distance, which he did. The problem with this scenario is that as the helicopter approaches the landing zone it creates a strong draught which causes any light fabric to take off, literally, which it did. The danger here is it getting caught up in the mechanics of the machine, which is not good.

During our helicopter skiing in the Alps…

we had a similar situation on the summit of a mountain. It had snowed and the pilot was having difficulty judging the distance to touchdown. We all had red backpacks so he asked one of us to open the door and throw out a backpack. It then gave him a reference point to know how deep the snow was, which helped him to land. A little risky because if we could not have landed the backpack and everything in it would have been lost. We were lucky that it worked out.

Professional eyes

What I found interesting about this story was the fact that even while watching a film I was unable to ignore the inaccuracies. The helicopter scene bothered me, especially because it was based on a true story. It just goes to show how hard, or even impossible, it is to turn off the reflexes that working with helicopters over 20 years in the Alps gives you. I am sure that many people share this sort of reaction in their professions. In French we call it professional deformation: the tendency to process the world through ones professional eyes rather than from a more balanced perspective.

So there you go: heli-skiing and working around helicopters has given me some automatic responses that perhaps will never leave me. Good for everyone who comes heli-skiing with us, not so good when I want to relax and watch a tear jerker.

Wishing you all a lovely autumn. Give us a call when you want to have a crazy heli-skiing trips in the Alps, it is just the sort of thing that we love.

Warm regards from the mountains,

Danielle