this last march during my spring break, some of the boys and i got together to visit the tingeys in juneau, ak and to do a little heliboarding. the group consisted of ben case, paul nielsen, andrew dawes, brent tingey and myself. i flew up a few days before the rest of the group to work w/ brent at the dental clinic in juneau. it was a lot of fun doing dentistry w/ my longtime, high school friend. after one solid day of work, brent and i hit the local ski resort on a tues, which is one of the two days a week the resort is closed. since the lifts weren't running, we just hiked the park and hit a huge table over and over again. on wed, when the resort was up and running, we went the conventional route and rode the lifts. by this time, both dawes and paul had joined up w/ us. by thur, the last member, ben case, was w/ us so we all boarded the ferry to take the 2 1/2 hour ride to haines, ak, where our heli awaited us. we gave ourselves a small 3 day window w/ the hope of getting up in the helicopter for one solid day. when we arrived we were discouraged by the cloudy skies and the tales of nonstop snowfall that had grounded the helicopter for a couple of weeks. the area had gotten 9ft of snow in the previous two and a half weeks. the idea of all this snow around us not being ridden was killing us. we had to get up. the first couple of days were filled w/ fine-tuning our ability to find buried transmitters w/ our avalanche gear, eating hamburgers while watching march madness at the only restaurant within miles which luckily for us had such good food, as well as building kickers over the parking lot behind the heli shed. come friday evening we were faced w/ a big decision: do we accept the fact that the weather is not going to clear up and cut our losses by heading back to juneau and hitting the resort before having to leave ak? or do we try and do what we traveled all this way to do: get up in the helicopter? we discussed this and then took an informal vote. we all knew we had to exercise some faith and stick around. we came to heliboard. needless to say, on sat morning (our last day in haines) i woke up at the crack of dawn, went outside to relieve myself (that's right, our sleep shack did not have a bathroom) and much to my surprise was greeted by a beautiful clear sky (a "bluebird sky" as the local skiers call it). we knew we were going up.
we were able to get 6 runs in w/ the helicopter totaling over 20,000 vertical feet, which took most of the day. riding in the helicopter was so much fun, but the boarding was unreal. the snow was so light and fluffy and there was so much of it. the runs were steep and as wide as you would ever need them to be. it was heaven. of course just as we were being picked up after our last run, the clouds rolled in and the sunshine was gone. in fact, we raced to the airport to catch our short flight from haines back to juneau but it was too late. we were officially stuck in haines, but nobody cared. we were all floating still from the perfect day we had just experienced. we got a cheap motel, some fish and chips and rehashed the best runs of the day.
i eventually made it back to richmond one day late due to the snow-in. i even got to miss a day of my pedo rotation (but those sticklers made me make it up in may). it was one of the greatest trips of my life. a huge thank you to brent and amber for being such incredible hosts and making this happen. it was so fun riding w/ friends i hadn't ridden w/ in years. it was just 5 guys, past their prime, having a good time.
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