We just returned from a great trip to
Revelstoke, British Columbia, and in particular the
Revelstoke Mountain Resort ski area. The purpose of the trip was to celebrate Dad's 60th birthday, and the planning started months ago. For years he has hinted how he wants to go heli skiing and we had to figure out how to make it happen. After a lot of research and some good organization/planning from Mom and Phil, we had a trip set to Revelstoke, which is known for snow, backcountry skiing, and heli skiing.
Once the details were planned it was time to leak the surprise to Dad. A few weeks ago on his birthday we set him off on a scavenger hunt to call family members to get clues for letters of the destination. Then he had to unscramble the letters to figure out the destination. We didn't tell him about heli skiing, and Dad never let on that he knew about it even if he did know.
So when the day came we had me and Diana traveling from Chicago, Phil and his girlfriend Erica traveling from Rochester, Mom, Dad, and Emma traveling from Albany, and Rob and his girlfriend traveling from Montana. Lots of travel, flights, connections, and potential for delays and problems... yikes. When Diana and I arrived at O'hare early in the morning we had to deal with an enormous security line and the problem of Diana having three L's in her last due to a typo when booking our flights and not noticing. The airline couldn't change the boarding pass and expedia was going to charge $200 to change the name, so we chanced it going through security anyway. For future reference, it is possible to get through security and travel internationally with your boarding pass not exactly matching your identification... it does make everyone look closer at you though.
With that hurdle out of the way, we were off! First to Seattle and then a short hop to Kelowna, BC.
 |
| Our small prop plane to Kelowna! |
Amazingly, when we arrived in Kelowna, everyone had arrived and we had word that Rob and Liza were almost to the resort. 8 flights from around the country and not one was delayed. From there we picked up a large rental van, made a quick stop at Costco for some essentials and started on the 2.5 hour drive from Kelowna to Revelstoke. The drive was on a small valley road that would have been brutal in any kind of weather, again fortunately there was no snow and we arrived safely at the resort.
We packed 9 people into a three bedroom condo with two in each room, two on the pull out couch, and one (sorry Emma) on the floor. It was cozy, but it was good company and we had a good supply of Flathead Lake beer (thanks Rob) and close access to the hot tub and hot pool (I swear the pool was as hot as the tub). We dropped the surprise of heli skiing on Dad and got ready for a week of skiing.
Revelstoke is an interesting resort, if you want to call it a resort. It is in the middle of nowhere and hard to get to without some effort. So other than locals, it really is a skiers mountain serious skiers are really the only ones interested in the time it takes to get there. The mountain is massive with 5,620 ft of vertical drop, which is the most in North America. It also has 3,121 acres of skiable terrain. Despite these statistics, the mountain is only served by three lifts and there were no lift lines.
The first day was cloudy at the base, but due to a temperature inversion the cloud line was around mid-mountain and we rode the chair lift through to clear blue skies and unbelievable views. Like being in an plane above the clouds. We explored the mountain, hiked the sub-peak, and had a great day.
 |
| Above the clouds |
 |
| Enjoying a break and the view |
 |
| Hiking the subpeak with Rob, Liza, Phil, and Emma |
 |
| View from the subpeak |
The next two days were less sunny and more snowy! The snow gods dumped many inches of nice powder on the mountain. Most of us were thrilled... Diana was terrified. Her beautiful groomers that she likes to cruise down were gone. All were now covered with inches of deep, loose powder. It took some coaxing, but Diana enjoyed her first powder and improved greatly. It's a big change from the little mole hills of Wisconsin.
 |
| Diana in the powder! |
 |
| A different day a different view |
Onto Thursday and it was Heli Ski day! The girls had a spa morning and the boys (oh and Emma) were off to the helicopter. We were set up with powder skis, given avalanche beacons, and then given a briefing on avalanche safety. After the briefing we practiced searching and finding buried beacons in a snowy field. While we are doing the training, it was hard to not look around and think "hmm so these are people who will be looking for me if I'm buried." It's comforting knowing we have the technology and it works, but a little discouraging seeing some of the people struggle. When the training was done, the helicopter flew in and we went over the basics of flying.
 |
| Getting dressed to fly |
 |
| Avalanche safety training |
 |
| Helicopter Training |
With all the training complete, we were ready to fly... except for the fog. Thick fog settled in along the Columbia River next to our staging area and the helicopter could not fly. We drove up the valley a ways to look for a break in the fog at a different staging area. It wasn't looking good, and we though that we might not get to ski, but then we heard the sweet sound of the chopper. It dropped in under the fog, we loaded up, took off, and skied. We got in four runs out of the planned five, which was a success given the fog delay.
It was quite the experience. On the first run, Emma had an encounter with a tree and Dad fell in powder deep enough he couldn't get up without some help. On the second run, I had an encounter with a cliff. On the third run, Phil had an encounter with a stream bed. And on the last run, no one had any problems. Rob skis the back country enough that he had no problems at all the whole time.
 |
| Fresh tracks in the powder and a stuck Dad getting helped out. |
 |
| View from the back country |
 |
| The heli ski group! |
We flew back, met up with the girls, and went out for one more night at the resort. The bar next to the condo had a basement with pool, Foosball, and jenga, and no people. We had the whole area to ourselves the entire time.
 |
| Private game room! |
 |
| Jenga! |
 |
| Moose! |
Friday was a short day of skiing, packing, and a drive back to Kelowna. A short night of sleep, early flights, and then back to the real world. It was a great trip and fun to have everyone together. Until the next vacation!
