Elite Traveler January-February 2015

INSPIRE HELISKIING

“Halfway through the first day it becomes clear why the Troll Peninsula has become heliskiing’s must- go destination”

moved to British Columbia, Canada, heliskiing’s traditional heartland, before eventually coming back to the farm to bring heliskiing to Iceland. “Everyone told me that I was nuts, that no-one would ever want to come up here,” he says. Half way through our first day, it becomes clear why the Troll Peninsula, far from being somewhere no one wants to go, has become heliskiing’s latest must-go destination. We have paused at the bottom of a sunny valley where the snow has begun to thaw, leaving islands of heather on which we sit to eat sandwiches. “Well boys, that was a pretty good first morning,” says JB. “Six first descents before lunch!” I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing – a first descent is the stuff of skiing fantasies, the equivalent of climbers being the first to stand on an unnamed peak. Make a first descent in the Alps and you dine out on it for the rest of your life. Here, you can do six in a morning. In truth, it’s not that the runs are so fearsome no-one has attempted them, just that so few skiers have been here. JB calls it “exploratory heliskiing”, and that sense of being a participant in a wilderness adventure, rather than another punter on holiday, underscores the whole trip. Back at the farm at the end of the day, we sit drinking beer in the sun, throwing a stick for Donna, the farm dog, to fetch. While Canada’s big “industrial” heliski companies run lodges catering for 40 or 50 people at once, all three operators on the Troll Peninsula are more boutique in scale – there are just eight guests on my visit. The food

The latter is the latest outpost from US-based Eleven Experience, a collection of no-expense-spared private holiday properties – from a country estate in Wiltshire to a colonial beach house in the Bahamas. They are owned by Chad Pike, the ski-mad vice-chairman of Blackstone Europe, the investment and advisory group. The fact that Pike, who already has lavish chalets in Colorado and the French Alps, is opening up on the Troll Peninsula is indicative of the buzz surrounding the place, but that anyone is heliskiing here at all is down to accident as much as design. One specific accident in fact. In 2001, JB was living in Chamonix, France, working as a guide, but when his grandfather was diagnosed with cancer, he returned to Iceland to be with him in his final weeks. JB spent three months living in the hospice, sleeping in a chair and “going completely mad basically”. Then, after his grandfather passed away, he was getting ready to return to his life in France, when he decided to go ice-climbing in the local hills one last time. He was hit by an avalanche that broke his back and neck. Doctors told the mountain-loving 25-year-old he would be a “wreck” for the rest of his life, unable to climb, ski or earn his living as a guide. “At the same time, I was super lucky,” he says, grinning. His grandfather’s nurse came to care for him and, while he spent four months flat on his back recovering, they fell in love – they are now married with two children. “I had a lot of time to think and began to really see the potential here,” he says. He decided not to go back to France. Instead he set about proving the doctors wrong and realising a new goal. JB trained for the top-level international guiding certification and

is local and delicious, eaten around the table in the farmhouse kitchen. There is goose shot by JB, lamb from the surrounding farms, jam made from the crowberries that carpet the hillsides all around. I struggle to recognise the dark purple sashimi – “It’s Minke whale,” says Sonja, the chef. And the tender smoked meat? “It’s...what’s the word in English? A baby horse – a foal.” There are surprises at every turn. One night the helicopter drops us for an après-ski swim at a nearby village pool, to the amazement of the school kids who watch us land in the car park. Another day, bad weather means we don’t start out until 5pm, but we continue until 9.30pm on snow turned pink by the setting sun. One more thing sets this place apart, perhaps the most important. When heliskiers gather at the plush bars of Canadian lodges, they often talk nostalgically of the early days of the sport, the late 1960s and 1970s. They laugh about the dangers. With a glint in their eyes they recall the friendships formed, the feeling of pushing back the boundaries. In Iceland, you don’t hear those conversations: the golden age is only just beginning.

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A four-day heliskiing trip with Arctic Heliskiing (arcticheliskiing.com) costs from $6,485. See also vikingheliskiing.com and elevenexperience.com

Photos: Mike Artz/thepublicworks.biz