MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Fall 2017

FALL 2017 ML BLUE 77 words :: Bill Shelley Three million acres. That’s the size of Canadian Mountain Holiday’s (CMH) heli-skiing tenure. That’s roughly half the size of Vermont. One-third the size of Switzerland. That’s beyond huge for a single tenure. That’s insane. Over 50 years ago, CMH founder Hans Gmoser took a small group on a two-day trip to the remote Bugaboo Glacier. (In the 1800s, gold prospectors named the Bugaboos using a slang term meaning “dead end.” What these mountains may lack in the precious mineral, they more than make up for in pure and inexhaustible white gold.) Inspired by a day he called “one of the most impressive in all my years of skiing in the mountains,” the Austrian-born Gmoser was determined to open it up to guests of the operation he had founded in 1959. By the start of the 1965 ski season, he was using helicopters—for the first time ever—to whisk skiers deep into the Purcell Range spires. (That’s right: CMH invented heli-skiing.) A few years later, he built Bugaboo Lodge next to an abandoned logging camp. CMH has continued to expand its tenure and bases ever since. Southeastern BC’s mountain ranges are distant enough from the warmth of the Pacific, and protected enough from the coldest Arctic air, that temps stay consistent and in mid-winter the snow is usually 3-4 metres deep and often deeper. CMH offers a lot of options including intro-to-powder programs, family weeks, heli-assisted touring, Ambassador trips with the industry’s finest athletes, freeride options, and more. COURTESY CRAIG MCGEE / CMH HELI SKIING