Turkey Heliski Trip

Turkey Heliski Road Trip 09

In the beginning of March, me, my two best friends, a big bandog Buzi and my 17 yaers old Jeep Cherokee, we started a trip to very east of Turkey.

A beautiful sunset on our way

First we spended couple days in Bulgaria, which is on the road. We had some very nice riding there, especialy Rilski lakes was great like all the years before. ( I am coming to Rila mountains almost every winter for already 7 years). We did a lot of footage and filming here in cooperation with Moab production. But after visit of Turkish embassy in Sofia, where we realized, that there should be no problems on the road, we left Bulgaria, crossed Bosporus channel and kept on direction east.

Bosporus

After many many kilometres we finaly reached under first big mountainchain with biggest skiresort called Mt.Palandoken. It is a very nice resort with a lot of lifts and almost nobody is riding off-piste here so you don´t have to hurry up for first lines. An ancient university town Erzurum is the capital of this part of Turkey. You can take a bus or cab from the center and in ten minutes you are at the bottomliftstation.

Erzurum

We got good news from helibase, there is snowing as hell and it should be clearing up tomorrow.
We have to leave imediately Erzurum, cause of there is another five hundred kms through deep valleys and over mountain passes waiting us.

Many of the passes were closed cause of avalanches, so we had to find out new roads. The travel around the Kacskarmountains took us two days and we boiled the engine threetimes.
When we saw the coast of Black sea and the city Trabzon, we were very happy, there is only next hundred kms left.

Kacskar Mountains

Snowshoe Hiking is pretty exhausting!!

There are lot´s of faces like this one.

Ayder helibase is a center of Turkeyheliski( Check for www.Turkeyheliski.com)- a Swiss company providing heliskiing on the highest level. The boss Nicolas Clerk was very kind to us and gave us some flights for free. We have got one of the most experienced pilots of the world, guy from New Zealand with 34 seazons of heliskiflights. The drop-offs were just exact and perfect. We had so much fun enjoying our runs.

Drop Off

On the way back we visited the northest point of Turkey- peinsula Sinop, Istanbul- city of Islam culture and on the way to Greek we made a stop on lonely coast. We were riding with my jeep next to the sea and pulling each other on a rope behind it. Surfing the sea with my Prophets130 was one of the greatest adventure of this trip. I had no clue before , that you can ride the sea with normal skis so easily.

Prophets, also good as sandskis

It was spring time in its full power, when we came back to Bulgaria, so my friend invited us to his boat. Rafting in Bulgaria on the Struma river was the final goal of our trip. We made five thousands kms in eighteen days. Heavy days, theese ones.

I hope you liked the story!
Have a great summer!

Jirka Lausecker