What it's like to go heliskiing

On a once-in-a-lifetime heliskiing adventure in February, die-hard skier Gordy Megroz tackles the steep razorbacks of the Alaskan wild (with some luxury thrown in for good measure).

I stepped out of the helicopter and sunk into the snow up to my waist. The white stuff had been falling for a week, finally giving way to a high-pressure system that brought temperatures in the teens and deep blue, nearly cloudless skies. From my perch high above sea level, I could see glaciers with huge windswept snowdrifts and giant chunks of blue ice, and the steep, craggy faces and pointy peaks of the Tordrillo Mountains. Beyond, I could faintly make out boats on the Cook Inlet.

“I knew it was gonna be deep,” said Tommy Moe, the Olympic gold medalist turned co-owner of the Tordrillo Mountain Lodge, a remote heli-ski operation in Southcentral Alaska. “I didn’t think it’d be this deep.”

Surrounded by a vertiginous sea of white, I pushed off and headed down a gentle slope, barely picking up enough speed to move through the seemingly bottomless powder. I reminded Moe of the reason I’d come to the Tordrillos—the same reason many skiing fanatics dream of coming here: 3,000-vertical-foot couloirs, spines, and massive powder bowls. The kind of terrain that only a helicopter can bring you to. “That was just a warm-up,” he assured me. “Now we’ll go do some real Alaskan heliskiing.”

We did. Over the course of just that day, we skied a 35-degree couloir and an open powder field with 2,000 feet of vertical drop, snow billowing up over our heads. When I got in the helicopter to head back to the lodge, I was exhausted, frozen cold, and unable to stop smiling.

I’d arrived at the lodge the previous afternoon, after boarding a small single-engine prop plane called a Beaver, which ferried me and five other guests from Anchorage and landed— on skis—on a frozen lake just outside the lodge. We walked inside to find a dining room with a long communal table and a bar, complete with beer on tap and a wide selection of whiskey, wines, and cocktails. There’s also a lounge with a wood-burning stove, leather couches, and a mounted moose head.

It’s the perfect set-up for what is, inherently, a social experience, a chance to bond with people who share the same passion. After skiing each day, I’d grab appetizers and beers and meet up in the lounge with the other guests, all diehard skiers who soon began to feel like family. Heli-skiing isn’t cheap, so the patrons it attracts are affluent. That said, everybody I met at TML was kind and grounded. They included a horseradish heiress, hedge fund managers, and a guy who made his fortune in online gambling. We’d swap stories over delicious dinners—rack of lamb one night, sushi served on two long skis another—and dare each other to run down to the frozen lake and take a quick “polar plunge” in the hole cut into the ice.

Over the course of two visits to the lodge, I became close with many of my fellow guests, swapping ski and life stories a few times a year. My favorites included Alberto, a Harvard economics professor who grew up in Italy and loved telling anecdotes about Italian skiing icon Alberto Tomba and his legendary partying. “It was rumored that he’d wake up in the morning for training with three women in his bed,” he told me once. One afternoon I shared a drink at the bar with Nancy, an older woman with shoulder-length graying hair and a perma-grin. She’d been coming to the lodge for ten years chiefly for the thrill of making first descents. Bad weather during one visit prevented her from skiing at all. “It actually wasn’t that bad,” she confided. “I cross-country skied and got to spend time catching up with other guests. We all love skiing, so we talked a lot about skiing. And that’s almost as much fun as actually skiing.”

Heliskiing Trips Worth the Splurge

Snowstorms or high wind can indeed ground helicopters (when that happens, cross-country skiing and fat biking keep guests happy), but I was lucky enough to fly into the mountains and ski five of my six days at Tordrillo. One day, I skied my first spine, crisscrossing the top of the 1,500-foot-long vertical ridgeline, simultaneously scaring myself and cranking out enough endorphins to keep me happy for months. Another time I skied a face so steep that slough came pouring down after me, nipping at my ankles and nearly taking me out. But my best run was my last: A sustained 40-degree, 5,000-foot descent, every turn in perfect waist-deep powder.

Heli-skiing is kind of like having floor seats at an NBA game. You’ll go back to the arena the next time and sit in the cheap seats—and it’ll be fun—but nothing about basketball will ever be quite that good again. I still love skiing off a chairlift or trekking into the backcountry to escape the crowds and find deep powder. But nothing measures up to riding in a helicopter, getting dropped off on the top of a remote mountain, and skiing a steep, long run without another soul around.

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