A Spanish Army Chinook helicopter shows its ability to operate in the snow

The Boeing Boeing CH-47 Chinook is the largest and heaviest of the helicopters used by the Spanish Armed Forces.

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This two-rotor giant is used by the Transport Helicopter Battalion V (BHELTRA V) of the Spanish Army Airmobile Forces (FAMET), based in Colmenar Viejo (Madrid). This helicopter can not only land on an asphalt or dirt runway, but also on water (as has been seen on some occasions in amphibious exercises in Spain) and on mud, sand and snow surfaces, for which For years, the Spanish CH-47s have had skis that are attached to their four landing gears, some skis that we already saw here.

Today the Spanish Army has published a spectacular video of the Infierno Blanco (White Infierno) exercise, the most important training event of the Army's Mountain Troop Command, which takes place annually in Benasque (Huesca), in the Aragonese Pyrenees. This objective is intended to certify the ability to generate a Mountain Tactical Group. the first of the new Spanish CH-47F Chinook, the HT.17-20A / ET-420, equipped with skis, in addition to NH-90 helicopters from the III Maneuver Helicopter Battalion (BHELMA III), based in Agoncillo (La Rioja). The video has been recorded by soldier Ivan Morin Rogado:

You can see here some screenshots and enlargements of the video that show some details:

The Chinook HT.17-20A in the Aragonese Pyrenees. The skis are red. In the US, Chinooks often use them in the same color as the helicopter's fuselage.

An image that allows us to better observe the skis. Apparently they are of the type Airglas P/N L44000-11 (the front ones) and P/NL 44000-13 (the rear ones). The manufacturer calls them penetration skis.

The CH-47F perched on its rear wheels on the side of a mountain. The Chinook's two counter-rotating rotors in tandem give it great stability in this type of maneuvers. It is one of the reasons why this helicopter model is, today, irreplaceable.

The two NH-90s of BHELMA III descending over the mountain.

The NH-90s do not have skis, which causes their landing gear to sink into the snow, as we see in this screenshot.

Another image of an NH-90 with its landing gear partially sunk in the snow. As a curiosity, either these NH-90s have very dirty fuselage in the section behind the engine exhausts, or their cockades and numerals have been erased. It is almost impossible to distinguish them. It's a detail in the video that intrigues me a lot.

A splendid image of two NH-90s perched on the mountain. As in the previous images, their cockades cannot be distinguished. For a moment I thought if they were French NH-90s, until I saw that they have the St. Andrew's cross on their tail, which indicates that they are Spanish.