Sky’s the limit if heli-skiing

I’m airborne. Powder swirls around my body. I dart through the spaces between giant spruce trees. Somehow, my brain calculates the pitch of the slope and my balance holds. Seconds after hurtling off a small cliff deep in the Canadian backcountry, I land, carve a few turns and come to a dramatic stop.

“J’ai la patate!” I exclaim, heart racing, adrenaline surging. “I have the potato!”

This is my new motto, bestowed upon me by my two new Frenchmen friends at Galena Lodge, Fabrice and Sebastian, who told me I had the potato (a French idiom that means being in top form) after our first run.

I’ve come to British Columbia in early January for a week of helicopter skiing — a seven-day reprieve from reality doing run after adrenaline-packed run down 3,000-foot slopes with an aircraft as my ski lift.

There’s a saying, famous among a certain type of skier and snowboarder: No friends on a powder day. These types of skiers (for better or worse, I consider myself one of them) don’t wait for their friends when the conditions are deep and light, because skiing powder is as close as you can get to flying. Resort lift lines stack up after a big dump. Powder hounds guard their stashes of untracked, deep snow as if they were state secrets.

Imagine, then, a world where there is not a mad rush to the top of a run and a frenetic charge down the slope.

This is helicopter skiing at its essence.

Here, there are friends on a powder day because every day is a powder day. There is an unlimited supply of “cold smoke,” the type of snow known to change life trajectories. Add in the helicopter to whisk you to the top and suddenly the only limitation to skiing the best snow known to mankind all day long is your physical endurance.

CMH Heli-Skiing offers the oldest helicopter-skiing operation in the world. Founded in 1965 by the late Hans Gmoser with headquarters in Banff, Alberta, it has exclusive permits to fly helicopters and guide skiers in 11 backcountry areas which, combined, encompass more than 3 million acres of British Columbia, an area roughly one-third the size of Switzerland. Heli-skiing is essentially Alpine skiing in remote, mountainous areas, minus the chair lift. Helicopters ferry groups of skiers and their highly trained, avalanche-savvy, extremely athletic guides to the tops of runs. After dropping everyone off, the pilot meets the skiers at the bottom of the descent, loads them up and does it all again.

Each territory includes a lodge owned by CMH, and each lodge has its own personality. Galena, where I stayed, is considered “rustic,” which translates as intimate and down-to-earth. There’s a dining room and bar, a game room with billiards, darts and ping-pong, a ski shop (guests can use company skis at no additional cost), and a spa area with massage rooms, a sauna, a steam room and a hot tub. Compared to some of the tents I’ve slept in during winter-camping excursions, Galena was luxurious.

I expected the sublime skiing and the scenic mountain vistas — why else would anyone shell out thousands of dollars to heli-ski? What surprised me were the connections I made. Come with your friends and of course you’ll have a bonding experience.