A guided tour through the Selkirk Mountains.

Endless Journey, CMH’s longest run (7,217 feet), in the Monashees.

Slicing through the Chivas Regal run – an oasis of powder in the Monashees.

Navigating the Cariboo Mountains.

Canadian Mountain Holidays Banff, Alberta, Canada Rates, approximately $2,962 to $6,987 per week, depending on the season (CMH operates from mid-December through mid-May), lodge and accommodation (single or double). Prices include room, meals, snacks, nonalcoholic beverages, transportation to and from Calgary International Airport, guides, heli-skis, a guaranteed 30,500 vertical meters, use of all CMH facilities (sauna, whirlpool, etc.), use of avalanche transceivers and taxes, including GST rebates for nonresidents of Canada. 800.661.0252 www.canadianmountainholidays.com www.intrawest.com

I’ve shot rapids on the Colorado River, sped around a track at race-car driving school and trekked through the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, but nothing is as exhilarating as chopper hopping from peak to peak in the boonies of British Columbia, stepping into your skis and dancing through feet-deep powder on glaciers that drop out of the sky.

The first time I went heli-skiing with Canadian Mountain Holidays (CMH) was about 20 years ago. I was an editor at a fashion magazine in New York (not exactly the profile of your average heli-skier at that time), and I hadn’t even been near a slope in a few years. My friends weren’t skiers — they were mostly magazine editors, too, and their idea of an outdoor adventure was opening a window in their Fifth Avenue apartments and surveying Central Park. The thought of going to a ski resort by myself was none too appealing when I considered the après-ski scenario.

A heli-ski vacation where I’d stay in a lodge with 43 other people seemed like the perfect solution (plus I’d always wanted to try the deep powder). I’d ski all day and, afterwards, I wouldn’t have to go to a bar or restaurant by myself. No matter that I’d never skied powder in my life.

I signed up for the Bugaboo Lodge in the Bugaboo Mountains because that was the only one of the six CMH areas I’d heard of. Since then, the number of ski areas has doubled and now covers 15,765 square kilometers, which is more than one third the size of Switzerland, making CMH the largest heli-skiing operation in the world. It was also the first. The singular vision of Austrian immigrant Hans Gmoser, who began taking powder enthusiasts skiing in the Bugaboo Mountains with a two-person helicopter in 1965, CMH is now wholly owned by Alpine Helicopters of Kelowna, British Columbia, in which leading resort developer Intrawest (based in Vancouver) has a 45-percent stake.

CMH is the only heli-ski operator that has built lodges especially for heli-skiing. Which means: They are so remote they’re accessible only by helicopter in winter. From Calgary, where you spend the night at the airport hotel, you travel to the nearest heli-pad by bus, barge or plane — or any combination of the three — and the trip can take anywhere from 4 to 14 hours, depending on your destination.

The Bugaboos is the shortest journey. From the airport hotel, you pack up and pile onto a chartered bus with the rest of the group and head to a farmer’s field some four hours away. I couldn’t help noticing that there were only two other women, and that the guys were big, bigger or biggest. In any other situation, I would have considered this a plus.

Not long after unloading in the middle of the field, you hear the chopper. Equal parts people, luggage and the week’s supplies are ferried over a mountain range, down a long valley, across a frozen river, towards the spectacular granite Bugaboo spires (great for climbing in summer) to the heli-pad in front of the lodge. On my first trip, the bedrooms were shared and the bathrooms were communal. Not to worry. The $3 million of improvements since then have added 35 percent more space, mostly for guest rooms with private baths. And, while the charm of the original living and dining rooms has been preserved, new amenities include a rooftop Jacuzzi and a Relaxation Room with views of the Bugaboo glacier. (The other areas are equally luxurious in the mountain-lodge manner, and this is coming from someone whose general motto is: Never go anywhere your blow-dryer can’t go.)

The next morning, after a mountain-man breakfast (the food — and wine — is fantastic, thanks to superb chefs and pastry chefs in every lodge), you are put through a safety exercise to learn how to use an avalanche transceiver. Then you’re assigned to 1 of 4 groups of 11, depending on your ability and experience. One by one, each group and its guide are dropped by the helicopter on top of a perfect-powder ski slope some 10 to 20 minutes away — a mile-wide glacier, an open glade or a steep, tight forest, a bowl or a snowfield. As the fourth group is landing on top of the run, the first group is making its way to the helicopter pickup at the bottom, anywhere from 800 to 2,200 vertical meters down. The ferrying continues all day, typically 8 to 15 times, until daylight or your energy runs out. You never take the same line twice so you never have to ski in anybody else’s tracks.

The first day of my first trip to the Bugaboos was, to say euphemistically, quite a challenge. I must have fallen and struggled up out of the deep snow a hundred times, and I know the guide and guys in my group were wondering, “What in the world is this girl doing here?” (I could see their point.) But thanks to the advice of one empathetic veteran, I switched from my own skis to CMH powder skis during lunch. (Usually you picnic on the mountain, but that morning brought snow, and a flight back to lodge – and to the ski shop – at midday.) I also learned that rather than down unweighting when you turn, you keep your weight evenly over both skis in powder, and that you must not fall or you’ll wear yourself out trying to get up.

That afternoon, as I stood on top of the world with ten mega-skiers, I was eager but nervous. A few of the guys started right after the guide, and I watched them slither down the mountain making perfect ess turns, spraying great wakes of powder and glee behind them. When it was my turn I pushed off the ridge and sunk to my hips. I could already feel the difference in the skis. Instead of landing with a thud, I sprang back up, perfectly poised to make my first turn. I kept my weight evenly balanced and, expecting to fall, didn’t. I went into my next turn, and the next, up and down in the snow, tentatively at first, but after the eighth, ninth turn, building a rhythm so that I, too, was floating effortlessly through the heavenly powder. Some call it a religious experience. Others
say it’s better than sex.

Nowadays, no one ever has to struggle. CMH can accommodate many levels of skiers — as long as you are a strong intermediate with a go-for-it attitude you can do it. In fact, there’s Powder Introduction for beginning heli-skiers: Instead of the usual one guide, this group has two, each specially trained to provide instruction and encouragement. Additionally, there’s Powder Masters for older heli-skiers for whom quality of skiing is more important than quantity of vertical. This group was specifically designed for guests who have returned many times over the past decades (once you’ve tried heli-skiing, it becomes a necessity, not a luxury) and who are now, in many cases, well over 70 years old. Seventy percent of CMH’s guests are repeat clients — 3,500 clients have skied one million vertical feet or more, which is at least nine or ten trips apiece.

Another big change over the years is a much more genteel atmosphere than the macho competitiveness (how many vertical did you ski?) I first encountered along with a pervasive locker-room logic (the more push-ups you do before breakfast the higher the cliffs you’ll be able to jump before lunch). Most of the guys used to turn women into a stereotype who associated powder more with makeup than skiing. No more. While women made up only 3 percent of the guest list 20 years ago, now they’re 36 percent. Couples go. Single women go. And, longtime heli-skiers bring their wives and daughters. One 24-year-old woman who started going with her Dad when she was 14 reached her million-foot mark last year.

During my trips, I’ve skied with European royalty (the King of Spain, the King and Queen of Norway and Prince Albert of Monaco are all regulars); members of the Guinness and Coors families; CEOs of Wall Street firms; lots of physicians, one of whom found heli-skiing so compelling he moved his wife and three children from Florida where he had a thriving cardiac-surgery practice to the mountains of Montana; a champion rodeo rider and the first man to go over 80 mph on water skis, who spent 19 consecutive weeks every winter for four winters amongst the lodges (a total of 217 weeks, nearly 4 1/2 years of his life); twentysomethings who saved every penny they’d ever made to make the trip; and a bigamist who flew to New York to ask if I’d become one of his wives.

Part of the passion of these ski weeks is the camaraderie — you make friends for life. Another part is where you are: hundreds of miles from the nearest town, TV or phone (there is radio-phone communication, and some lodges have Internet connections). Plus, there are no lift lines, no parking hassles, no reservations to make, no decisions about anything except whether to fly back to the lodge for a Jacuzzi and massage before dinner or to stay out for a few more runs. You can’t help but relax, no matter what you’ve left behind.

Every time I’ve gone heli-skiing I’ve expected some of the thrill to dissipate, but the last run of my last trip is always as moving as that first run on my first trip to the Bugaboos when I actually started skiing without falling. You get out of the helicopter and, when the powder settles, all you can see are mountains that stretch as far as forever. You step into your skis and look down a run with a vertical view. Adrenaline flowing, you push off the lip, catch a bit of air and sink thigh-high into snow that slows your momentum for a split second so you can start to turn. You begin free-falling from one turn to the next, sinking deeper, rising higher, dancing down terrain you can’t see, only feel, as the mountainside slips away behind you. It takes your breath — and your heart — away.