Ugly Faces and Alaska Movie

[3PinGrin]

I send my check to Greenpeace.

I bet you love Paul Watson don't you?

How is that diesel loader treating your driveway these days? You never responded on teletips.

Face it Matt, you are a hypocrite of epic proportions. Flying people to Alaska to hike the stash and then denigrating heli's, largely under the guise, not of local impacts, but global warming.... nice.

As I have said before, your trip reports and pictures are awe inspiring, but I think you need a better mirror.

[tele.skier]

MY POINT,...... is always that unless you are a primitive homesteader, growing your own food and hunting with hand made weapons, YOU are always involved in the modern culture of fuel consumption to some degree.


...... Thats the reason that pointing the finger at the other guy, without pointing it at YOURSELF TOO, is BULL$HIT....


SO Matt,.... if you wanted to start a thread about wasteful energy use, you should do that, but you shouldn't piss on the pretty faces thread with your finger pointing and lecturing,..... then post YOUR CLIENTS video with heliskiing and BACKPEDDEL by saying that your clients didn't think the heli was worth the money anyways...

Do you drive a vehicle? Do you eat food that is shipped in to alaska? Do you heat your house? Use a chainsaw to cut wood? Wear store bought shoes, Use plastic ski boots? Ski on modern skis?..... Shall I go on ad infinitum?


I have no trouble with matt's position on wasteful energy usage, nor pointing out that heli's are wasteful, but his being a BC mountain guide makes it HUGELY SELF SERVING to point the finger at heliskiing operations. This seems to be something he is clueless to understand....


When al gore was lecturing everyone about global warming and all of our glutonous energy use, he was living in this house. It kind of undermines his ability to point the finger at anyone in spite of the fact that we all waste energy in one way or another...



That's the problem with pointing the finger at the pretty faces thread. You should be pointing the finger at your clients too who flew from "god know's where" to hire you as a guide..... I supose their fuel use is ok with you Matt, but if you would have told them to stay home, you would have saved many barrels of precious crude oil, and contributed less to global warming yourself, by hosting these foriegn energy wasters....

It's bad enough Dostie wasted the planet's energy flying up there.... he's such an energy pig that guy....

AGAIN, so you get my point... Your pointing out heliskiing as wasteful of energy is self serving, since probably most of your clients probably fly in a plane to get to your location... and I don't see you bitching at them....

[twopass]

I wore socks once.

[aqua toque]

...your stance on heli skiing appears to be that heli skiing is really, really bad except when it isn't and you get to decide when it is and when it isn't.

Yes, from someone in socks, a casual observer if you will, that is indeed the perception.

[James]

Matt, I would say almost everything you post I really appreciate. For what ever reason your post on the other thread really pissed me off but that is my problem. I think to other people your stance on heli skiing appears to be that heli skiing is really, really bad except when it isn't and you get to decide when it is and when it isn't. I think most people are not going to understand this stance very well at best and are going to give you a lot of **** for it.

[chamonix]

Well I was interested to crunch the numbers (as a pilot) on how much fuel a ski run/passenger in a helicopter takes. For actual flight time, I would think that recurrent maintenance is more expensive than the fuel.

These helicopters burn Jet fuel, Jet A-1 (?) basically Kerosene with anti-static additives, a less refined product than AvGas.

[Valdez Telehead]

In a moment of true sincerity….

VT said this…
"FWIW I actually encourage many of my clients to give helisking a try "once" in their life for a day while they tour Alaska. Yes I have actually skied with dozens of heliskiers and I don't berate them all day while skinning for that. I probably won't motor ski cause I think we all have a responsibility as skiers to do everything we can to not pump more pollution into the air as we pursue untracked space."

As far the fuel thing you have to actually calculate how much avgas will produce on hour of helicopter Hobbs time….

It takes a barrel of crude oil to produce a a few gallons of avgas. So if you bunch that into your calculations you get a pretty low return off a barrel of oil compared to regular gas or diesel. This inefficiency is what makes so expensive, not withstanding the end product and the environmental effects. You were just measuring avgas volume. I am talking crude oil to refined avgas.

[cesare]

I was thinking back to teletips days and didn't see that thread. Sorry for my misstatement.

[Valdez Telehead]

It would be sexism if I didn't.

[chamonix]

Ok Point taken

I have met a good number of ski guides, and most of them have at one point in their career guided heli skiing. It goes with the territory. You may be the exception.
The Guide who taught our Avy 1 course in Revelstoke had heli-guided for Mica.
Greg Hill who guided us for the day of Heli skiing has certainly contributed an enormous amount to ski mountaineering in Canada. As you know he skined up and skied 2 million vertical feet in 2010.

I don't mean to start a war, I just thought you were tough on the women who did the Pretty Faces ski movie..

[Valdez Telehead]

I send my check to Greenpeace.

[chamonix]

cesare
this is what VT wrote on the Pretty Faces thread

Seems like just another heliski and resort flick by skiers who fail to comprehend global warming and its relationship to declining snow around the world. The ski industry seems to be contributing to its own demise. No instrument of winter access pollutes more than a helicopters at 1 barrel of crude oil an hour.

Get real, ditch the chopper and help save the planet and our snows. It's not about pretty faces. It's about everyone.

emphasis mine..I should have responded on this other thread..

ASTAR in Revelstoke

[cesare]

I do not recall Matt ever saying he opposed helo skiing in the Chugach because he is opposed to all uses of fossil fuels. His opposition has always been because of the noise and the change in usage patterns in the Tompson Pass region. If you're gonna try to pick a fight with him, fight fair. Attributing something to him that he has never said as a reason to call him hypocritical for receiving his dividend check is a straw man and a low blow.

[chamonix]

Great short movie, but my Russian isn't very good.. The video quality of the Go Pro for POV video has really improved.

BTW, isn't there a lot of drilling for oil going on in Alaska? Drilling for oil in ANWAR? Seems a little hypocrtical for an Alaskan resident who gets an annual check for oil drilling royalities to complain about a day of heli skiing.

Just saying..

some data on fuel consumption for an ASTAR B2 45 gallons /hour

http://www.wwheli.com/astarspecifications.htm

AS350 B2 specs here

http://airbushelicoptersinc.com/products/AS350B2-specifications.asp

So a quick 6 minute hop with 5 passengers works out to 4.5 gallons of fuel. 6 minutes is a typical flight time from a pick up spot, to ski say 1500 vertical.

That works out to 4.5 divided by 5 (passengers) = .9 gallons per passenger for each run.
Obviously the empty helicopter has to fly back down empty to the pick up pad, so that should be factored in.

confession; I did a day of heli skiing last winter. There were two groups of skiers , and one ASTAR, So while one group skiied down with their guide, the other group was being picked up for another run.

[dschane]

Enjoyed the short film quite a bit -- they brought good energy to their travels.