I knew they skied hard at Snowwater Heli Skiing, but it didn’t sink in until I got passed like I was standing still. Our foursome had been burning up vertical all morning in BC’s Bonnington range. Unlike traditional heli trips, where tame terrain is the rule, ours had a guide who charged steep tree shots at a speed well beyond the normal commercial limit.
Even so, it surprised me when another group’s guide cut me off and rocketed through the slide alder on his way to snake our pickup. But this wasn’t some renegade guide about to be scolded; it was Patric Maloney—Snowwater’s owner— showing his clients how to ski his home turf.
But the second backcountry land rush of 1997 more than doubled the number of heli and cat operators in BC; it also challenged the paradigms of an industry that had been skiing the same way for three decades. A schism emerged between the new operators and the old guard.
The flash point was the response to newer and younger customers who had been raised on open gates, twin tips, and TGR. The new operators recognized these customers’ needs and
began offering smaller groups and more aggressive line selection. They also recruited guides with a similar ski philosophy. Many of these guides were, and continue to be, certified by the Canadian Ski Guide Association, an upstart organization founded in 1989 by Mike Wiegele’s heli-skiing outfit and a handful of other ops to train guides solely for mechanized skiing.
While the ACMG remains neutral, many operators are keen for a black-and-white resolution to a gray-area issue that has been a source of friction for more than five years. But two seasons after the membership splintered, the biggest question remains: Will HeliCat ever unconditionally accept the CSGA guides who make up around 35 percent of all guides employed in BC? Operators who backed their CSGA guides but remained inside HeliCat due to special variancesor creative staffing solutions—such as Great Canadian Heli-Skiing and Retallack—have argued strongly for official industry-wide recognition of the CSGA ticket. For now, resolution hinges on a positive audit of the CSGA Level3 exam, scheduled for April 2010.
As our group got the green light to rip a steep, 2,000-foot line on our last run at Snowwater— the opposite of farming turns on a 25-degree slope with stoic German tourists—I realized where my allegiance in this debate lies.
