Donald's Blog

Donald's Blog: "The Alaskan heli glossary

• Bergschrund - a deep crevasse where mountain meets glacier. Often filled with snow and partially hidden, so skiers are advised to point over them without turning.

• Bluebird skies - the necessary clear conditions for flying helicopters in the treeless Chugach Mountains. Flat light prevents pilots from being able to land safely.

• Bombproof - snow conditions when nothing fresh has fallen in several days. In other words, it wouldn't avalanche even if you set off a bomb, which Alaskan outfits don't do because of the high cost of insurance for throwing explosives out of helicopters.

• Down days - when helicopters can't fly and skiers can't ski. Brace yourself for at least a few.

• Drink it blue - partying hard at night after several days of foul weather so that Murphy's Law will kick in, the skies will clear the next morning and you'll have to ski hung over.

• Heli-camp - Points North in Cordova offers a collegial, dorm-style experience in a remodeled cannery, complete with dining-hall-style meals and sea-kayaking and ice-climbing field trips on down days.

• LZ - landing zone for helicopters. They need to be almost perfectly flat, although they can be incredibly small, picnic-table-sized perches atop knife-edged peaks. They're marked for visibility by branches the guides carry, and you might be asked to help maintain them with shovels.

• No-fall zone - a steep pitch where falling might mean tumbling the length of the mountain to the glacier below.

• PZ - pickup zone. Same as an LZ, only lower down on the glaciers, where sometimes hungry mosquitoes and brown bears emerging from hibernation can be a problem.

• Safe zones - expect to ski one skier at time and sometimes the whole length of a slope without stopping (to minimize slide risks). Areas below rock outcroppings and on high points above gullies are considered safe zones.

• Ski cutting - testing a slope's stability by slowly traversing out across the top and sometimes carefully stomping up and down to see if it will slide.

• Slough - loose snow that's kicked up with each turn on steep, powdery slopes. It's not quite a slide, but enough of it (6 inches or more) can knock you off your skis and carry you down the slope.

• Slough management - pulling out of the fall line after a few turns to let your slough pass you by.


posted by Slim Pickens @ 5:06 PM
1 Comments:

At 10:30 AM, Slim Pickens said...

What a fool you are!


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