TRIPS WE WOULD NOT DO, AND WHY

Why not build a ski trip around a big resort?

Dan rode Whistler and Blackcomb for years, and when he lived there it was the cheapest way to get laps in with mates. As the basis of a trip somebody flies from Australia for, he would not do it.

The reasoning is about what you actually get for the money:

• It is expensive and crowded relative to the riding.
• The peak chair on a powder day is roughly three hundred people in a line. The first lap down is riders sending cliffs into somebody else's bomb hole, meeting themselves in the chin, and taking themselves out for the rest of the trip.
• If the goal is park laps, it is not the place for that either.

What we would do instead: one day, maybe two, at the start. Get the skis on, go for a rip, find your ski legs, have a beer at the top of the mountain, get the waffles or a spicy coffee, ride the glacier. There are spots up there that still produce nice turns. Then the trip proper happens in the backcountry.

The resort is a warm-up, not the product. That is the whole argument for sled access, cat and heli.

Is a helicopter really the expensive option?

Most people have this backwards, and it is worth stating plainly.

Once you have paid for flights, accommodation, transfers and time off work, a few thousand dollars on a helicopter, a snowmobile or a cat is a small proportion of the trip cost - and it is the part that actually determines what you ride. A heli operation might have half a million acres to choose from on any given day. Spending on access rather than on more nights is usually the better trade.

Cat skiing is the underrated version of this. It is the cost effective way to get fresh runs, and it sits between sled access and heli on both price and terrain.

What is wrong with Japan drift at the famous track?

Nothing is wrong with the famous track and it stays on our platform. But if you are picturing the real Japanese drift scene, that is not where it is.

• The big events have become heavily westernised. Everybody knows where to go, so that is who you find there.
• The genuine scene is away from those tracks, on niche circuits in the mountains that Westerners generally do not reach.
• Access is by vetting, not by money. Westerners have repeatedly disrespected those spaces, and the communities are now closed unless you arrive as a vetted contact and are invited in.

That is the honest version of what we offer and it is not something a booking engine replicates. Dan can get people into rooms that cannot be bought into, because he was there, he knows the people, and he can vouch for who he brings.

It also comes with an obligation that runs the other way: anyone we take into those spaces represents us and represents every Westerner who comes after. We vet who we bring as seriously as we were vetted ourselves. If that sounds like a barrier, it is, and it is the reason the door still opens.

What actually goes wrong on unprepared four wheel drive trips?

Dan now spends weeks preparing a vehicle before a trip. These are the reasons why, and every one of them cost him something.

### The modification that nearly ended a six week trip in the first hour

Loaded for six weeks, partner in the passenger seat, an hour north of Adelaide: burning oil across the engine bay and smoke coming through the cabin. They thought the trip was over before it had started.

The cause was an oil catch can. Blow-by blocked the filter, which over-pressurised the crankcase, then the head and the rocker cover, and blew the rocker cover seal.

He had fitted it believing he was doing the right thing. Everybody raves about them, and they were standard on the drift cars. They were not good enough for a loaded four wheel drive on a long trip. He limped to Fraser Island, fixed it there using contacts, and the trip continued.

The lesson is broader than catch cans: a modification that works on one kind of vehicle under one kind of load can fail badly on another, and the failure will find you at the worst possible moment.

### Rushing a repair and not testing it

Knowing he had damaged a front diff on a previous trip, he rushed a replacement in before the next one and left no time to test it. The seller said the ratio matched. It did not.

The result was the entire trip in rear wheel drive - Fraser Island, the Creb Track and the whole Old Telegraph Track - because the front wheels wanted to turn faster than the rears. Four wheel drive was only usable when all four wheels were already spinning.

Never fit something significant without time to test it under load.

### Overloading, and electronics where they drown

An early Cape trip was overloaded. It bent the rear diff and leaked all the oil out of it, and that nearly ended that trip too. Payload is not a paperwork problem, it is a structural one.

Separately: do not take a heavily electronic vehicle to Cape York or anywhere with serious water crossings. That is where they die.

### Going remote and banking on other people being there

Cape York, the Old Telegraph Track. Dan and his partner were in a genuinely capable, well equipped vehicle with plenty of tools, food and water.

At Gunshot they damaged the rear doors and could not get into the vehicle.

The food and the water were all still there. They simply could not reach any of it. What they had was whatever sat in the front, and when that ran out they were dependent on other members of the public running the same route the next day.

Two lessons come out of that, and the second is the one people miss.

First, this is why we set minimum vehicle numbers on four wheel drive trips. A single vehicle in remote country has no redundancy. Every self-sufficiency calculation quietly assumes the vehicle keeps working as a container as well as a machine, and the moment that assumption fails, a well prepared party becomes a party waiting to be found. They were helped by strangers travelling the same track. That is not a plan, that is luck.

Second, carrying supplies is not the same as being able to reach them. All the food and water in the world is worthless behind a door that will not open. Split water and emergency food across the vehicle so no single failure - a jammed door, a rollover, a fire, a submerged rear - takes out the whole supply. Some of it rides in the cab. Some of it rides on a person.

When should you turn around in the mountains?

This is the closest Dan has come to an unplanned night out, and he is normally the one pushing people to commit.

A friend wanted to keep dropping for fresh turns, into steeper terrain and thicker trees, in country neither of them knew. They cliffed out at the bottom. The only way home was back up, with nightfall arriving and a serious storm arriving with it. Inside five minutes their own tracks were snowed in and there was no visible line back, so in thick timber the only choice was straight up and out.

What that became: both machines nearly out of fuel, pull after pull, and the friend eventually too fatigued to ride at all. Dan leapfrogged the sleds out one at a time - riding one until it trenched, walking back for the other, digging both free, repeating. When a sled is not running the stator is not charging, so the headlights die. Their head torches were already flat. The last hours were spent digging machines out of deep snow in complete darkness. They cleared it just before sunrise.

What made it survivable was not skill alone: food and water, two riders who had trained seriously in the gym for years, real sledding experience, and it happening early in the trip while they still had reserves. Change one of those, or add an injury, and it ends differently.

Dan's own verdict is that they should have called it, built a snow cave, stayed the night and ridden out in daylight. That is the whole point. Knowing when to call it is the skill. An unplanned night in a shelter you chose to build is an experience. A night fighting terrain with no fuel and no light is a rescue that has not happened yet.

Where should you learn a new trick?

Dan learned new tricks on dirt, because at the time there was nothing else. He carries injuries from it that have not gone away.

He moved to learning into a hay pit after that, which worked surprisingly well for what it was. But both the technology and the standard of progression have moved so far since that neither is defensible now. He would not learn a new trick today into anything other than a foam pit.

The line worth taking from that, if you are weighing up whether a facility day is worth the drive: the people who learned the hard way do not recommend the hard way.

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