MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Fall / Winter 2017

FALL/WINTER 2017 MLCM 49 Bushy bought his first plane, a Cessna 172, in 2008 while living in Squamish with Sarah. He’d spent the previous year recovering from knee surgery, studying for his pilot’s license, and financ- ing flight time by selling hot dogs outside ‘The Griz,’ a rough-and-reputed Squamish nightclub. “Sarah would go to bed and I’d study until midnight then sneak out with my dog cart,” he says. “At 1:00 a.m., I’d start cooking my onions, with a fan sending that onion smell onto the balcony where the smokers were. At 2:00 a.m., I would kill it. I put all that hot dog money into flying. Those onions got me a lot flights.” His original goal was to fly around and discover new places to ski. “I’d been in so many helis where I’d see something and want to go take a look, but you can’t, it’s too expensive,” Bushy says. “With the plane, I could really explore.” There’s a big difference, however, between seeing new lines and skiing them. “I always dreamed of landing and skiing from the plane ever since I first started flying,” says Bushy. “They do it in Alaska, why not here?” Digging deeper, he learened that Alaskan pilots have the luxury of landing on glaciers that have formed at relatively low elevations; around 2,000 feet. Here in the Coast Mountains, Bushy’s ideal landing spots were over a mile above sea level (5,300+ feet) and covered with warmer, heavier snow. Still, blow it if you got it and push that comfort zone, right? Bushy up- graded his plane to a Cessna 180 that came with a ski-kit for the landing gear (that attaches with bungee cords), and dropped in… “Ian and I got totally stuck on that first landing. There was no way… we had to unload all our stuff and step a runway out in knee-deep snow. It took four hours, it was so soft and flat, we got so sunburnt. Then I tried to take off, bounced a bit off some fresh snow, but with no weight in the plane I made it.” After a number of passes, touching down in an attempt to pack a better runway, approaching darkness forced Bushy to make a decision. “I was almost out of fuel and I didn’t know if we could take off fully loaded. Ian is a big dude and we both had all our ski gear. Every pound counts and, all in it was likely 400 extra pounds. I thought about leaving him and just going home, then sending a heli back for him and the stuff. We made it though. It was scary and not smooth at all, but I learned a lot.” “I LOVE RIDING WITH SNOWBOARDERS. IT’S LIKE A WHOLE NEW SET OF EYES ON THE TERRAIN.”