Falling In

One of the nearby mountains is named "Holy Mountain". It has several large bowl depressions that look like God took his fingers and pressed down to make the bowls. These bowls also are great to ski. Most years there is enough snow cover to take snow-machines to the top of the mountain, but this years extremely low snow fall made it impossible to even get to the mountain on snowmachine. That is where a ski-plane comes in handy, plenty of snow on top (or so we thought), plenty of adventure to get there.
The plan was to pile all three of us in the plane, fly up to Lake Kontrashibuna, drop our extra gas and one person. The remaining skier would ride to the top and bail out, Leo (the pilot) would then go check the landing zone for pickup and finally go back, get the last skier and drop them off at the top. The plan ended up working great. I was beginning to wonder if maybe we should have checked out the pickup spot before being abandoned on the top of the mountain, but as it turned out, there was nothing to worry about. We got two good runs in, one from each side of the bowl, watched the plane trigger several small avalanches while taking off, and enjoyed some awesome scenery.
Upon returning home I was informed that my youngest daughter was quite distraught about her Papa skiing Holy Mountain, "I don't want Papa to fall in the holes!"

The Mountain




The Bowls


The Top


Making Tracks


Leo and I on the way up


Getting Dropped Off


Our "Lift Ticket"


At the Top


Waiting for a Lift


Headed Home, Holy Mountain in the background