GEORGIA ON MY MIND
Mighty peaks, fresh powder and a helicopter that thinks it's a private taxi. Ski Club Member Nigel Fawkes enjoys a heliski trip to the Caucasus
Heliskiing in the Caucasus was, for Will Pedder and me, unfinished business. In February 2008 we had travelled to the then little-known Russian resort of Sochi, for a heliski trip based at Krasnaya Polyana.
Before the 2014 Olympics, the resort was still wild and remote, although development work had started. Unfortunately our trip coincided with one of the heaviest snowfalls of the century, and the helicopter remained just a mound of snow with blades sticking out of it all week. With absolutely no chance of heliskiing, we had to content ourselves with the local ski lifts, which curiously meant us having a morning skiing with Vladimir Putin! Or rather, keeping out of the way of his orange-clad security detail.
Roll forward 12 years and Will asked if I was up for another go – but this time over the main ridge of the Caucasus, in Georgia. He had heard good things about a German heliski operation, Flory Kern Ski Adventures, who were operating out of Mestia, a small town at 1,500m and regional centre of Svanetia, eight miles south of the Russian border. Flory Kern accessed the vast terrain in the Khulo Valley, with lines high above tree line and in coniferous forests.
My son Richard, formerly Combined Services’ ski champion and captain of the Kandahar Ski Club, took little persuading to join us. We were told to get ourselves to Batumi airport on the Black Sea coast on 29 February to meet the minibus transfer and the rest of the group of 12, who were coming from Germany.
The 250km drive north took seven hours, winding up narrow mountain roads, littered with rockfall in the rain. We arrived at Mestia in falling snow at half past midnight to a warm welcome, and our first taste of Georgian wine.
The Mountain Mestia hotel was new, simple and on the hillside at the edge of town. Its car park had been taken over by our Austrian Wucher six-seater helicopter, which was parked just 10 paces from the front door.
We brought our own ski equipment, but Flory Kern supplied each guest with a harness, avalanche backpack, Pieps, shovel and probe.
The first day was spent on the local Hatsvali slopes (serviced by four ski lifts), getting our ski legs and practising avalanche rescue in a foot of overnight powder. The mountain cloud cleared, and for the rest of the week we had glorious sun and still air every day.
The sleet is forgotten as perfect sun and powder beckon on the glacier bowl
PERFECT SUN AND POWDER
The mountains all around us had 40cm of fresh powder, but the guides explained that the base was unstable, following a thaw at the start of the season, which put steep slopes out of bounds. We would therefore use the heli to access the extensive glacier bowls both north and south of the town.
We were glad of the guides’ caution when news came in of an avalanche in the nearby village of Tetnuldi. This left three Italians dead, and one badly injured in a party of six. Our helicopter rushed off to give assistance and had the grim task of bringing the bodies down in the ski basket.
Our group was 12, split into three groups of four, so we had one honorary Brit join us from among the remaining Germans. Isabell, a Lufthansa cabin crew, and Dominic, a trauma surgeon from Hamburg took it in turns.
Monday, our first day with the helicopter, nearly finished me off. The plan was to access the shorter, lower slopes first, as these would lose the powder soonest. Good thinking, but it meant we never stopped for a minute, as the heli was always waiting to reload us, and two minutes later we were stumbling round in the deep snow putting skis on again at the top.
But with an extraordinary 20 or so flights in the day, we soon became a well-drilled team at slotting across the back seat and sorting out each other’s seat belts among the welter of harness and backpacks.
Our three UIAGM-certified guides were highly experienced, although each found the other’s German mutually risible. Marcel, in charge, was Swiss and also a helicopter mechanic; Felix was German and looked like a wiry bearded Reinhold Messner, and lanky Christoph was Austrian and a serious climber, who told a cautionary tale of being unable to get through passport control where there was fingerprint ID, because he had worn all the tread off his finger tips.
Soaring above Mestia are the twin peaks of Mt Ushba, which at 4,710m still falls outside the 10 highest mountains of the Causasus. Its dominating twin peaks lie on the Russian border, just north of Mestia, and provided us with glorious glacier skiing from one of its ridges at 3,900m – about the flight ceiling of the powerful Wucher helicopter.
Avoiding the crevasses, we were able to ski 1,500m-long pitches, all the way round the miles of glacier bowl in perfect sun and powder snow. Glorious.
WHOOP, CHARGE… AND WIPEOUT
Christoph, whose 25th birthday it was, declared he had never dropped from a helicopter on skis before. So, one day, during our lunch break on the ridge, he persuaded the pilot to let him have a go right in front of us. Fortunately he landed cleanly, and with a big grin!
The group get a taste of the Georgian climate
Speaking of lunch, it was a picnic affair, with large bread roll sandwiches that we made at the breakfast buffet each morning. Dinners, both at the hotel and at restaurants in Mestia town, were plentiful, tasty and offered a wide variety of meat, fish and vegetable dishes, with a hint of the Middle East about them.
As for beverages, the Georgians are very proud of their wines – indeed they will have you know they invented it thousands of years ago. The traditional technique is to make it in clay amphora buried in the ground, and the result is not to everyone’s taste. However the beer is good and at a couple of pounds, very inexpensive.
South of the town lies the Leila range, offering a mix of varied slopes and glacier. To get there economically, the first group flew up from the hotel, while the other two (including us) were minibussed some miles down the valley, and there, from a random field above the road, we were lifted directly into the range. The two horses watching us just carried on grazing.
As the week progressed and the sun played on the snow, conditions got heavier and more testing, with occasional patches of breakable crust to negotiate.
Richard’s technique was to whoop and charge, while Will and I sought self-preservation, and although I managed a no-fall record, Richard blotted his with a spectacular wipeout at the end of the very last slope! Captured on camera – of course.
With perfect weather, we skied through our total allotted 14 airborne hours, and even bought another half day, but that still left us a free day at the end to relax and explore the extraordinary local architecture and culture.
Mestia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, dominated by the scores of medieval defensive towers scattered thickly through the town and beyond. We found one open and manned by a 10-year-old girl with wonderful English and a great sense of humour, who for a pound or two sent us off up inside her parent’s tower on a series of rickety ladders and in pitch darkness (there are no windows until the top – five floors up). Probably the most dangerous thing we did in all of Georgia – but it certainly added to a most unusual and memorable ski trip, which I would thoroughly recommend.
Factfile
Turkish Airlines (turkishairlines.com) flies from London Heathrow to Batumi, via Istanbul, from £390 return. Flory Kern Ski Adventures (flory-kern.de) offers a seven-night heliskiing package from €6,700 per person, including accommodation, all meals, six days of guided skiing, 14 hours of flight time (or approx. 30,000 vertical metres), a lift pass for down days, hire of safety equipment and airport transfers. December, January, and February normally offer perfect powder conditions.