Not too long ago a bunch of friends and I all decided that we wanted to do a heli drop before the end of the season. We all couldn’t afford to pay $1000 for a day of heli boarding with some of the other heli companies, so we decided to take a different route.
We had heard from some friends that Blackcomb Heli offered single heli drops at the top of Rainbow mountain for $420. Found a group of 6 friends together and set a date to drop into some sick back country lines on Rainbow Mountain.
When the day came we all packed our bags for a day in the back country and drove off to the heli pad for 8am to start off the sunny day of back country adventures.
When we all boarded the heli everyone was so pumped. It was everyone first heli ride (besides Nev who rode in one for an Mountain Dew ad a few years prior in New Zealand). so we where just ecstatic.
On our way up to the mountain the pilot asked us where we wanted to get dropped off at, and Nev picked a great peak to start off at.
Once the chopper landed we all got out and grabbed our boards for a day of riding shouts and hitting back country jumps.
Right away we rode a steep pow section and found an awesome wind lip to ride. At this time in the morning the skiers where blue and the sun was shinning. So I had the camera ready in hand and the guys started dropping in.
Nev was the first one to gini pig the jump and landed a solid 540 grab to the freshest back country pow landing and the rest of the guys followed suit.
As the day progressed we continued down the mountain doing pow slashes and boarding down big powder slopes until we found a nice cornus drop that Nev wanted to check out.
The cornus was pretty huge so it took awhile for everyone to hike up to the top and take a look. While everyone was hiking the cornus Simon was hiking his own line.
Simon spotted a cool icy slope that he could drop into and do some pow slashes.
Nev finished hiking up to the top of the cornus and it looked a lot bigger from the top. He decided to take a smaller line on the way down that originally anticipated.
Once Simon reached the top of his hike on top of some icy looking cliffs he was pumped to drop in. Simon dropped a small section into a high speed pow slash down the untouched slope of powder.
With out wasting any time once Simon finished his line we where on the move again to find the next spot to ride.
After a few more steep slopes we found a nice spot to build a jump.
It took everyone a little under an hour to build the jump, and we jumped right into a session the back country booter.
By this time it had clouded over but everyone was still excited that they where in the back country hitting jumps that it didn’t phase us.
I believe Nev was the first one to hit this jump with some sort of corked rotation 900 and then moved into some flipping combination.
Ryan was trying some huge grab 180 tricks while Simon’s legs couldn’t handle the steep take off which resulted in him flying off the jump and landing flat on his face (making a nice big howl in the landing).
After the jump session was finished we had to start moving because we had to get off this mountain before it got dark.
One dis advantage of a Heli drop is that they drop you off at the top of the mountain and you have to find your way off the mountain.
We had already planned how to get off the mountain the previous night. It was a pretty simple route, all we had to do was follow the valley that the mountain funnels into and we would end up in Alpine community and not too far from Meadow Park.
The problem was our route out required about an 1 and a 1/2 hours of hiking and skating out before we where able to strap in at the cat track which allowed us to snowboard for the last 7km of the mountain which fed us out to the road in Alpine.
When we where back on the road all we had to do was take a short hike to Meadow Park where we had left a truck to transport us back home.
It was a beautiful day in the back country.
