Why we will not fly you to the ice

There is a helicopter available in Karakol that will put a party on the Petrov glacier in forty minutes. It costs less than you would think. It is flown by people who are very good at it, into a landing zone they use weekly, and using it would remove four days from an eighteen-day expedition.

We have been asked for it on every single Ak-Shyirak departure since 2018 and we have said no every single time.

The argument we are not making

This is not about authenticity. I have no interest in telling anyone that their mountain experience is less real because a machine was involved, and I say that as someone who books a helicopter into Saqqaq on the Greenland crossing when the sea ice will not take a boat. A helicopter is a tool. Sometimes it is the only tool.

The distinction we draw is simple and it is not philosophical: we will fly you to a start line. We will not fly you past one.

Why the approach is the point

On Ak-Shyirak the four days from the road to base camp take you from 1,700 metres to 3,650 metres over eighty kilometres, with two nights at 3,000. That is not travel. That is the acclimatisation programme, and it is the reason we can put a party at 4,450 on day thirteen with a reasonable expectation that they will be well there.

Fly it, and you arrive at 3,650 in the afternoon having slept at 1,700. Everything downstream then has to be rebuilt: more rest days at base, a slower carry schedule, a later high camp. The four days you saved come back, in worse places, and you feel considerably rougher collecting them.

The same thing in Lyngen, and why it is different

In Lyngen the helicopter does not skip an approach, it skips the climb. You are landed near a summit and you ski down. That is a legitimate and very enjoyable activity, it employs people we like, and it has essentially nothing in common with what we sell. When someone asks us for it, we give them a name and a number. Two of our travellers have gone and done it after a Lyngen week and both told us afterwards it was excellent and nothing like the traverse. Correct on both counts.

Where we do fly

• Saqqaq, Greenland. There is no road. When the ice will not take Pele’s boat, it is a helicopter or the expedition does not happen.
• Goose Bay to Nain. Ninety minutes of aircraft replacing two days of coastal boat that does not run on a schedule anyone can book against.
• An evacuation. Immediately, without a conversation about cost, which is why we read your insurance document before you come.

The practical upshot

If a shorter version of one of these routes is what you want, it exists, it is good, and we are happy to point you at whoever runs it best. What we will not do is sell you our itinerary with the middle removed and let you find out on day thirteen at 4,450 metres what the middle was for.