KILIAN JORNET BORN TO RUN - Amer Sports

To glacier with Pilatus Porter
F & t Jimmy Petterson
Winter is still three months away, but one can easily get a jumpstart on the
ski season on a glacier. In New Zealand, skiing is possible during the entire
Northern Hemisphere in summer and until the end of September on the
Tasman Glacier.
When Hans Gmoser invented the concept of heliskiing in the mid-1960s,
he was actually a few years behind the New Zealanders with regard to
accessing ski terrain by air; but in the Southern Hemisphere, it all started
with ski planes landing on the Tasman Glacier way back in 1955. Five
decades later small Cessna 185s and Pilatus Porters are still offering
skiers the opportunity to ski amidst some of the most spectacular scenery
in the world.
The Tasman has not changed much since those early beginnings, but
the ski world has. Since the advent of heliskiing two generations ago,
skiers have regularly been dropped onto much more difficult slopes than
those where a ski plane can deposit them.
The rather flat skiing of the Tasman, an experience for the ski elite of
50 years ago, is now far too tame to attract today’s generation of thrill
seekers. Nevertheless, it is still a spectacular destination where one
can ski powder amidst gigantic fields of blue seracs, ice caves and yawning
crevasses in the shadow of Mt. Cook, Mt. Tasman, and a host of New
Zealand’s highest peaks.
For more information, see skithetasman.co.nz
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