Tag Archive for: article

What’s It Like Helibiking Revelstoke, BC?

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“Leonardo da Vinci sketched the first helicopter design in the late 1400s. Three hundred years later Comte Mede de Sivrac of France invented the celerifere, the precursor to the modern-day bicycle. Then, in July 2015, a Revelstoke-based company threw the two vehicles together and brought heli-biking to the masses.

Selkirk-Tangiers has spent almost 40 years taking people heli-skiing and boarding in the West Kootenay but this month marks its first foray into summer offerings: from July to September the company has access to a 50,000-acre tenure (its winter tenure is over 500,000) in which to guide its new heli-biking excursions.

Granted, air-lifting bicycles to the top of a mountain via helicopter is an activity that’s been around for years but it usually involves tossing bikes into a heap, lashing them together and then long-lining them to the summit. After reaching the top, you then replace all the bike parts that broke mid-flight.”

So begins my article for the Kootenay Mountain Culture Group website about the new tourist attraction that’s being offered by Selkirk-Tangiers: helibiking Revelstoke, specifically 2,600-metre-high Mount Cartier, located just outside of town. To read the story in its entirety and to find out what its like to careen down a 760-metre long steel cable at 90-kilometres an hour, log on to the Mountain Culture Group website.

I Saw a Dinosaur Then Wrote This Story

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“Big fish do weird things to people. And by big fish I mean really big fish. They affect some part of our limbic brain and account for the bordering on manic popularity of Shark Week, River Monsters and Jaws(not so sure about this one, how about how people google giant catfish wrangling (magazines or movies?). This prehistoric connection overrides rational thought and amps up our cortisol levels

I’ve never given a second thought to swimming in Kootenay Lake (unless it’s February) but when Nelson-based fish biologist Sarah Stephenson showed me a photo of the dinosaur she hauled up from the depths last April near Creston, I froze: ‘That monster lives in the lake?’ She told me not to worry, as it was harmless to humans. But this fish was important – in fact, it could impact the future of its species.”

So begins my article for the Summer 2015 issue of Kootenay Mountain Culture magazine about the struggles of a unique fish species. To read the story in its entirety and see a map of where “Big Bertha” travelled last year, check out the Mountain Culture Group website.

The Ugliest Story Ever

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My fiancé is a fish biologist and I have to admit there are occasions when it’s difficult for me to keep up with her day-to-day activities, which could include “ion regulation,” “Parr-Smolt transformation,” or “Leptocephali.” (I think that’s how it’s spelled.)

One day, though, she started describing a local sustainability movement to save this ugly looking fish called the burbot and it definitely made sense to my scientifically challenged brain. The story was incredible! Ice fishing in frigid February temperatures; orgy balls of breeding fish; and a myriad of government agencies in two countries all trying to bring back the population of a creature that is definitely not as endearing as a baby spotted owl.

I pitched the idea to Kootenay Mountain Culture magazine (which just won Western Canada’s Magazine of the Year award) and they too were smitten with the story of the ugliest fish in BC and its return from the brink of extinction. And so was born this latest piece, which just came out in the recent KMC.

Don’t let appearances fool you: this one may be the ugliest ever, but it’s pretty good reading. (If I do say so myself.) Long live the Kootenay burbot!

Read the entire story here: KMC 26 Burbot.