Getting the drop

Southern Lakes Heliski choppers ferry competitors, film-makers and support crew to various points...
Southern Lakes Heliski choppers ferry competitors, film-makers and support crew to various points on Mt Turner as part of the World Heli Challenge. Photos by Shane Gilchrist.
Wanaka professional skier Sam Smoothy surveys a chute before allowing gravity - and his skills -...
Wanaka professional skier Sam Smoothy surveys a chute before allowing gravity - and his skills - to do the rest.
Taylor Rapley
Taylor Rapley
Will Jackways
Will Jackways
Lachlan Humphreys
Lachlan Humphreys
Antti Autti
Antti Autti
Avalanche dog Rocket ignores a  spectacular backdrop.
Avalanche dog Rocket ignores a spectacular backdrop.
A cameraman attempts to find a good vantage point from which to capture the action.
A cameraman attempts to find a good vantage point from which to capture the action.

On the back-country slopes of the Southern Alps, a select group of skiers and snowboarders are seeking both adventure and exposure. Shane Gilchrist bears witness to the World Heli Challenge.

It has gone quiet on the upper slopes of Mt Turner. The rotors of the helicopters negotiating the airspace more than 2000m above the Wilkin River, near Makarora, have stilled.

There is little wind to speak of. Rocket, the avalanche dog, sits relaxed in his red jacket. Even the excited chatter of 22 skiers and snowboarders has died away.

However, it's a brief silence, soon broken by the harsh, staccato burst of a walkie-talkie: ''We're getting ready now ...''

The announcement floats on the air and immediately renders forgotten the rounds of hacky-sack, cricket (which seemed to baffle the Americans within the contingent) and Frisbee-throwing that dominated a Monday morning during which entrants and organisers of the World Heli Challenge often looked to the sky.

Add the time lost while waiting and hoping (in vain) for the weather to clear the previous Friday and it's clear that patience is as important as favourable conditions for this event which, as its title suggests, employs helicopters to lift athletes, guides, judges, media, film-makers and support crew to back-country terrain in the Southern Alps.

There are no chairlift queues on Mt Turner, no warm cafeterias in which to rest limbs and/or massage bruised egos.

Lunch is fruit and a sandwich, doled out on the valley floor where all involved have been given a safety briefing and reminded to check their avalanche transceivers, all of which suggests this event is not for the average snow bunny. Confirmation comes by way of event organiser Tony Harrington, who set up the annual World Heli Challenge in Wanaka in 1995 when he was living in the town.

(Although the event took a hiatus in 2001, it was resurrected in 2009.)

''These athletes know what they are doing,'' Harrington says, adding: ''We certainly wouldn't let athletes into the event if we thought they were a liability. We get a lot of people from around the world apply and we do research on each athlete; we speak to their coaches, peers and/or sponsors.''

In an effort to ensure optimum conditions, organisers set aside a two-week window for just two days of competition, which comprise a ''freestyle'' day and a ''big-mountain, extreme'' competition. Harrington says such an approach highlights a key aspect of the World Heli Challenge: ''It's about fun.''

The freestyle day, held on Mt Turner on Monday, aims to showcase an athlete's acrobatic and aerial skills. As Harrington explains: ''Basically, the athletes put on show things they might have learned at a terrain park - but they do it in mother nature's terrain, which means they can go as big as they want to, pushing the boundaries of what's possible.''

The extreme day, scheduled to be held today (although that is dependent on weather conditions), requires athletes to ride even steeper slopes; they drop off cliffs, riding hard and fast but in control, selecting certain features of the terrain in an attempt to separate themselves from the rest of the pack.

The scores from both days are combined to decide four categories (men's ski, men's snowboard, women's ski and women's snowboard), judges then selecting an overall winner whose prize includes a week being filmed on the slopes near Cordova, Alaska.

Will Jackways took that overall prize last year and headed to Alaska this year.

The 30-year-old Wanaka man is a professional snowboarder, one of a handful in this country, though he points out he still does some building work in the off-season, ''to keep my hand in swinging a hammer or to help out a friend''.''

I'm really fortunate to be paid full-time,'' Jackways says.''

The key to that is making good connections overseas. I don't do a lot of the slope-style park events like they have at the Olympics. Because I've grown up riding in the back country, these events interest me more.''

Like Jackways, 27-year-old fellow Wanaka professional Sam Smoothy hides his determination behind an easy smile.

Smoothy may joke about ''tumbling like a four-by-two, end over end'' but, make no mistake, this skier breathes rarefied air: he finished fourth overall in the 2012 Freeride World Tour and has finished first, second and third in the World Heli Challenge in recent years.

And though a spill on his second freestyle run on Monday leaves him slightly deflated (''I got spanked, but that's nature ...'')., Smoothy readily joins in when his peers congratulate others with a series of whoops, a chorus accompanied by an oft-repeated lyric: ''That was sick, man''.

Queenstown skier Taylor Rapley is here, too. The 22-year-old, the winner of the 2011 Winter Games Super G title and overall national ski champion the same year, has decided to focus less on structured racing and more on free-skiing. In her first World Heli Challenge, she's just happy to get two runs under her belt, even if the muscles in her legs are hurting from the experience.

Likewise, Briar Peters is content to have survived the day without major injury. The 22-year-old skier, who took time off her nursing job at Waikato Hospital to make the event, is wearing a brace having recently injured her knee.

She's suffered worse. In 2001, she broke her back in three places; in a brace for two months, she still feels the effects of that crash: ''It hurts every day and doctors have told me it'll be sore for the rest of my life.''

Raised on the edge of the Arctic Circle, Finnish snowboarder Antti Autti boasts a long list of achievements, including finishing fifth in the halfpipe competition at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Italy and claiming two golds at the 2005 Snowboarding World Championships. More recently, Autti has been focusing on back-country films.

His latest is called Approach and Attack. As if to confirm his adventurous ethos, Autti scans the upper slopes of Mt Turner in search of suitable points from which to launch himself and suggests, ''Maybe those pointy rocks in the middle ...''

There is another important component to the World Heli Challenge. It's called exposure. And it has nothing to do with the lowering of body temperature.

Launched in 2011, the Canon Shootout attracts an international line-up of film-makers and photographers (five in each category), who capture the competition as well as athletes' personal stories and also document other activities that take place in conjunction with the challenge, including free-riding at Cardrona and Treble Cone, surfing (on the south coast this week), paintball and fly-fishing.

Harrington, whose competitive background includes skiing in the 1995 World Extreme Championships in Alaska, has plenty of experience of attempting to perform in conditions that are ''less than ideal''.

The elite-level skier turned international snow and surf photographer is thus well aware of the importance of light to competitors and those behind cameras.''

Good visibility is required for obvious safety reasons, both for the helicopter pilots and those on the slopes, yet good light also enables the best images.''

Harrington says that although his event might be ''under-rated'' in New Zealand, it's well-regarded overseas, pointing out the World Heli Challenge generates significant media coverage internationally.

In recent years this has included: a 22-minute show on United States network NBC in 2012; featured in-flight movie on both Emirates Airlines and Virgin Airlines in 2012; DVD distribution on the cover of Japanese snowboarding magazine Freerun and a six-page feature in UK newspaper Daily Mail's Ski & Snowboard magazine in 2012; Channel 9, Channel 7 and Fox Sports news and sports coverage in Australia; and a 12-minute feature in the popular 2010 Warren Miller movie Wintervention.

Auckland film-maker Lachlan Humphreys, an entrant in the Shootout, says competitors are well aware of the commercial potential of images that best capture their daredevil manoeuvres.

''Athletes realise what shots work. They are very much aware of light and conditions and where the camera operator needs to be. Quite often, you'll find they are directing you,'' Humphrey says.''

They will also often set up a photo, then use Instagram, hash-tag it [for Twitter purposes] with the name of their sponsors and the event, et cetera, and that goes out immediately. It's cross-promotion.''

Having established good relationships with a lot of the Kiwi guys, I can provide them with good representation in regards footage.''

Humphreys is drawn to the event for the same reasons as those tearing, and sometimes tumbling, down the slopes.

''I love this extreme stuff,'' he says.''

I'm probably too old to make it as a competitor but I think I can make it as a cameraman. I love snowboarding and I love filming, so here I am.''

Hours later, as the light begins to fade and the air rapidly cools, another adventure begins.

Helicopters ferry people and equipment off the mountain. Clearly, it's the turn of the pilots to have a little fun on the descent.

There are whoops and screams, grins and grimaces. Adrenaline comes in many forms.

The challenge
The World Heli Challenge culminates in the iON Showcase Awards and Canon Shootout at the Lake Wanaka Centre on Thursday when an overall winner will be announced. The shootout winner will also be decided, films will be screened and photographs exhibited. Tickets are available at The Board House and Racers Edge, Wanaka.

 

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