The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
The greatest adventure I never took
To heli-ski or not to heli-ski? That is the question – especially as you near 50. Simon Kelton lets the universe decide
AAs I drove, I found my eyes filling with tears. I had been chasing my last adrenaline shot
s I approached my 50th birthday, I found myself dreaming about life-changing adventures. To mark the big occasion I didn’t fancy going on safari or scuba diving: I wanted to bag a “premiere ski descent” in the legendary Chugach Range in Valdez, Alaska – home to arguably the greatest heli-skiing in the world.
Heli-skiing involves accessing remote, off-trail slopes by helicopter, and premiere descents are the Holy Grail for ambitious winter sports fans – a chance to put first tracks down a run before any other human being. Although ambitious, my goal wasn’t totally out-of-character. Over the previous two decades I had visited the Chugach to both ski and snowboard several times, during which I had completed more than 450 heli drops. But approaching 50 and with two small children to care for at home, doubts nagged at my mind.
My plans to travel halfway around the world to tackle some of the most dangerous terrain on Earth on a snowboard were met with an icy glare from my wife Heather, an ex-ski instructor, and I was left questioning my decision. Was this classic midlife madness brought about by hubris and a refusal to grow up? Or was it truly a last chance to experience the thrill of the best skiing I had ever done? I was hesitant to give up my dream – I’d learned to seize such opportunities and I wasn’t ready to quit the habit.
My misgivings increased on the plane though as I watched Chasing Mavericks, a film about the life of American surfer Jay Moriarity featuring Gerard Butler as his friend and mentor Frosty Hesson, a veteran surfer who battles the biggest, most dangerous wave in the world. Butler’s character was my age, had been surfing Mavericks in California for 20 years, and had two young children. I worried that he might die on the wave, but the conclusion was worse: he promised his wife he would give up hunting for big, dangerous waves – and he did.
Stopping over with friends in Los
Angeles was no more encouraging. They told me I was being selfish, irresponsible and just plain stupid risking life and limb for the glory of a few more powder turns. I brushed off their complaints as a layman’s lack of appreciation for the white stuff. Even an ironic stroke-of-fate meeting with Michael Apted, director of Chasing Mavericks, didn’t break my nerve. “It’s very simple, dear boy,” he told me. “You must not go. I am the sign.”
But I still wasn’t prepared to give it all up because of superstition. I was adamant: life’s milestones are there to be celebrated – I planned to do it in style.
After a seven-hour flight to Anchorage and a few hours’ sleep before crossing the Alaskan tundra past vast, ranging moose and swooping golden eagles, I pulled into the Tsaina Lodge car park and Valdez Heli Ski Guides’ base camp. After a quick safety briefing, I was in a chopper thundering up the first glacial valley into the icy wilderness. “Only lunatics listen to signs,” I reassured myself.
All thoughts of home were forced to the back of my mind – this could be my final ever premiere run, I’d need to be totally focused to enjoy and execute every turn. I might have aged since I first dropped in on a snowy face in Alaska 20 years earlier, but the buzz of heli-skiing – the thumping sound of the blades above you and the adrenaline rush as you are left abandoned at the top of an untracked slope – hadn’t got old.
My group was waiting at the bottom of a terrifying 3,000ft-high near vertical face. As we touched down at the top of the peak, surrounded by cliffs plunging hundreds of feet to the glacier below, the churning in my stomach told me my survival instincts were kicking in – and those irritating doubts in my head simply wouldn’t go away.
While I prepared my equipment, Jed Workman, my guide, filled me in on the first run. “It’s seriously steep: 45 degrees-plus all the way,” he said.
“There’s a big cornice at the top. It’s a 15ft drop, so you gotta stick it.”
I bent down to put on my snowboard bindings, only to discover the top strap was lying on the snow. For more than a decade I had never had an issue with my equipment, but now the entire back plate had mysteriously cracked in half. The effect on the face would have been deadly. My rear boot would have pulled free leaving me with only my front foot locked onto the board – I’d have fallen catastrophically, cartwheeling hundreds of feet, almost certainly to my death. Instead the helicopter was called to turn around immediately and return me to base camp.
As I drove back along the Tsaina River the next morning, I found my eyes filling with tears. Valdez had been the most extraordinary 20 years of my life. I had always assumed my Alaskan adventure would come to a suitably thrilling conclusion; I never imagined
that it would simply fizzle out with a whimper. But the message from the universe became clear as I drove back across the wilderness.
I had been chasing my last adrenaline shot, the milestone birthday looming in my mind, when I clearly should have been home taking care of my wife and children. Had my latest trip to Valdez turned out to be spectacular, there was a good chance I would have returned the following year.
Instead it was time to begin a whole new chapter as a father, sharing my passion for skiing with my children. I haven’t returned to Valdez since and now we all ski together as a family, with me taking as much excitement, delight and pride out of seeing my children complete a black run as I used to get from bagging a premiere. Life might move on, but the mountains remain with their appeal unfaulted – it’s how you enjoy them that changes.