• • The Monday morning after a sick ski trip is always a tough one, but the bigger the adventure the more challenging the re-entry. So after 10 days in Iceland, three days of spectacular lines at Arctic Heli Skiing and a forced Friday night layover in Reykjavik due to the re-eruption of Eyjafjallajokull volcano, I still feel stuck back on that volcanic island even though my ski bag and my skeleton made it back safely to Seattle.

  • Like most adventures of magnitude, the trip was incredible. When we finally slowed to the rural rhythm of Iceland’s north coast, the clouds cleared out and afforded us three perfect day sof flying in peaks that rose directly and dramatically from deeply carved fjords. And at 66 degrees of latitude the sun barely set leving us only four hours of dusky alpenglow to get some sleep before waking up for breakfast at a traditional Icelandic farmhouse with guide’s office downstairs and a heli out back.

  • Day three’s flying forecast called for overcast, but our luck held and we burned the remainder of our heli time finding new lines in the ancestral peaks of ACMG guide Jokull Bergmann’s family land at the end of the Ski Valley. In Iceland, farm families own the peaks behind their pastures with claims often dating back to early settlement. But few climb to or ski from their summits-especially with a black helicopter that parks behind the barn. JB’s heli-ski operation is the first in Iceland, a pioneering effort that may just allow his family to keep its tie to their Skioadalur land.

  • So excuse me if it seems like I’m somewhere else this morning-as I’m suffering recurring daydreams and inspiring delusions-but my head and heart are still stuck in Iceland, reliving what was one unforgettable place and one unbelievable trip.

  
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