Build My Own FeedVIDEO: BD athletes Zack Giffin and Callum Pettit heli ski in British Columbia
In January 2010, Black Diamond athletes Zack Giffin and Callum Pettit teamed up with photographer Grant Gunderson for a quick heli-skiing mission up to Nelson, British Columbia. Below is Zach's report from the trip, Gunderson's photos and a great POV video that captures all of the action.
Life can change real fast when your hanging out with photographer Grant Gunderson, just as it did for Callum Pettit and myself this past January, when we were invited to spend four days on a photo shoot at Snowwater Heli near Nelson, BC. One day I am ski-bumming around Revelstoke, sleeping on floors, begging for tickets, and the next I’m kicking back in a bathrobe, warming up with a Caesar salad and a bowl of soup after a hard day of skiing pow from a heli.
Owned and operated by Patric Maloney and his wife Maria, Snowwater is what everyone always hopes their heli skiing experience will be: a pimp, all-inclusive lodge, tucked up in the mountains, only accessible by heli or cat; with all the amenities anyone could ask for, including private detached cabins with internet, satellite TV, cell reception, Ipod jacks, a 115-degree hot tub, the best food you’ve ever had, a full time bartender, and a helicopter waiting each morning to take you wherever you want to ski. If the weather won’t let you fly, a short cat ride takes you to gladed pillow runs that empty right back at the lodge. Fortunately for Callum and I, only once were we forced to endure the noticeably less-rad act of skiing from a cat.
However fun it was, we were there to work—and work we did. First Callum set the tone by demonstrating his mastery of a move that has come to be known as “the Treadway”. This particular trick allows a person to get banger shots in almost any circumstance regardless of light. So, I counterattacked the only way I know how… by backflipping over a fence in the pitch black to an upslope landing. That worked well to impress the staff, but being in Canada, Callum’s surmountable mustache gives him an undeniable photo advantage and he uses it with calculated accuracy while performing his “concentration-face” one turns. Feeling slightly out-gunned, I know I have to step it up if I want to stay in the game. My smear turn for some reason is feeling a little off, so I resort to the old reliable “Mosley Mute”. The mute works quite well and I almost have everyone thoroughly out-gnared, until the last day when Grant takes things too far and burns Patrick’s snowmobile to the ground.
Everything was going so well up to that point. It’s just a good thing that it happened on the last day after we were done flying and waiting to leave. That way we just packed our things in the heli and headed to the truck. Never even got an infraction. Never even heard how they got the pile of molten steel off the cat road. Oh well, when you’re in heli skiing dream world, you don’t worry about things like that. I hope Patrick is not still pissed!
— Zack Giffin
Great Britain / English 
