Heli boarding is a magical experience. Here you are with your crew stuffed into a tiny machine, flying off into the extreme backcountry, ready to explore and slash your way to euphoria. Its just that it is STRESSFUL as hell. Your dealing with machines not really meant to fly, avalanches, flat landings and people getting potentially hurt; really hurt, as far out as you ever want to be. As for shooting from the heli, your harnessed in, with the door off, sometimes hanging from a rope. It's exciting for sure, but when you consider there is no liability per se in New Zealand, you might say to yourself is this normal? Down here it is. It's rampant. Like Hawaii x 10. I've never seen so many helicopters flying around in the deep mountains before. Loading and unloading people onto the steep slope. So steep sometimes you wonder why it doesn't slide.
Anyway, we had a great first day of heli'ing. More to come. Some more weather, so maybe a few days off.
No worries though, we have bungy still to do.
In the hanger. The tube thing I am breathing is an AVALUNG. If I get buried in an avalanche, this device allows me to breathe almost for an hour while I am rescued. The harness, is well to stay in the chopper.
Scene form the heli. We fly out over lake Wanaka and straight into the alpine. Unbelievably beautiful.......!
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