From Russia with Love….

Heli skiing Russia style, Krasnaya Polyana (KP)

Interesting meeting format in Moscow airport pre heliskiing

I set off for Sochi one January Friday afternoon after my business duties in Moscow with two aims in mind. One to check out Krasnaya Polyana, the Russian ski resort hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. The other, to go heli skiing Russia- style with the French- owned Russia heliski operator I represent with Total Heliski. I achieved one of the two- you can guess which one.

Sochi is actually a seaside resort on the black sea, on the border of Georgia, a 2hr flight south of Moscow. I disembarked from the dubious sounding airline called ‘S7’ to a temperature about 15 degrees warmer than Moscow. S7 is actually Siberian airlines rebranded, and was surprisingly a very good airline experience going by the crew, interior and food. I was to meet my French guide and another 6 French clients for the weekend.

S7 ‘Siberian’ Airlines on a cold winters night enroute for Sochi

Sochi is actually a seaside resort on the black sea, on the border of Georgia, a 2hr flight south of Moscow. I disembarked from the dubious sounding airline called ‘S7’ to a temperature about 15 degrees warmer than Moscow. S7 is actually Siberian airlines rebranded, and was surprisingly a very good airline experience going by the crew, interior and food. I was to meet my French guide and another 6 French clients for the weekend.

The French group it turned out was an eclectic mix of ski instructors, bankers, chalet builders and (unsurprisingly) a wine maker who it turns out, take a heliski trip somewhere in the world each year. (future clientele I am thinking). They were off to Abkhazia (Georgia on the Sunday) to heli ski for 5 days. We were staying at the Peaks Hotel, pretty swish in a Russian bling-bling sort of way.

We made acquaintances easily that night at the town of Krasnaya’s main bar ‘Tikuli’ – Russian Style- by consuming vodka straight with apple juice ‘chasers’. Let me tell you, I never drink vodka straight, so this stuff must have been remarkable, it almost tasted nice.

Not surprisingly, good vodka, meant no hangover, and the next morning when we woke to very dreary conditions it quickly became apparent we weren’t going to heliski that day.

We met the guide, a local called Sacha. He was cool, spoke French, English and who knows what else. He took us up to the new resort in KP- one of 4 being built for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

There are 4 resorts in Sochi- none interconnected though. Two of them are owned by Gazprom (govt owned gas company). The one we went to that day (forget the name) was the newest one. Only one week old. It was a series of three consecutive brand new French ‘Poma’ gondolas. Nice, but someone forgot to tell them that you need to fill them up and drive them at full speed to avoid hour long queues.