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All the days of storm and stress we bore together, with all the anxieties, hardships and risks, all the glorious long climbs and brilliant sunny days, all the hours of merry singing and savage cursing welded us into an ever closer band of friends.

And we shall remain brothers forever: brothers in life, brothers in work, brothers of the snow.

One second we’re turning through downy early season fluff spread over Galena’s undulating terrain, lost in the reverie of the bouncy rhythm and the hissing of crystals pouring past our ears; the next second the spell is broken by a piercing scream: “Somebody help! We’ve had an avalanche!” Just below us, a man is buried up to his armpits in the snow. His delirious voice continues even after he sees us. “Somebody! Help us!”

His head lolls back, arms flailing at the snow around him, goggles half-torn from his head, eyes glazed with fear and desperation. The tail of a snowboard sticks out of the snow below him at an awkward angle, and past him the outline of an avalanche spreads onto a frozen lake below.

We gather at the top of the slide path, quickly forming a search team. One man grabs a radio and alerts the Galena lodge and the rest of the guides before turning to the group. His job as lodge baker has been transformed into rescue leader. “Everyone, turn your Barryvoxes to ‘search’ and let me check them!”

One skier, whose housekeeping job now includes conducting a hasty search for avalanche victims, continues down the slope to quickly cover the rest of the avalanche path. The bartender kicks off her skis to uncover the delirious man, who was working in the ski shop just hours earlier and is still yelling at the top of his lungs while the rescue team spreads out across the slope. Two other housekeepers have found a signal near a small tree and are digging like possessed badgers, one with a shovel and the other with her snowboard.

Within a minute, the maintenance man has located another signal and found the victim with a probe. Snow is flying from frenzied digging and the air is thick with the sound of heavy breathing from the effort punctuated by the life-saving chirps of the transceivers – the double beeps, as well as their purpose, eerily similar to the sound of a heart-rate monitor. Another minute passes and the rest of the staff is spread out on the lake near the end of the path in small groups digging or wallowing through the deep snow looking for the remaining signals. Everyone is working as hard as they ever have. One girl collapses from the effort. The girls near the tree are pulling a ski suit from the deep hole at their feet. The arm is bent in half and the head flops lifelessly.

Even though it is merely a one-piece ski suit stuffed with snow, a beacon zipped into a pocket, and buried by the guides for the purpose of training the staff to respond to an avalanche scenario, the intensity and urgency of the rescuers is entirely realistic. The guides stand at the perimeter of the slide path, watching the rescue for anything the staff could do to improve. They have done everything they could to simulate a difficult scenario. Some victims are placed close together, others against trees, some shallow, others deep, and they even buried a transceiver away from a suit, as if the transceiver had separated from the skier, so that after the staff uncovers the transceiver they must form a probe line to find the suit. This year, the snowpack is quite stable, so the slide path is an area stomped by feet and skis into a debris-like alluvium, but in other seasons the guides drop a bomb to release an actual avalanche and make the exercise even more realistic. After all the suits are recovered, everyone gets one more ski run – this time on Freefall, a run with so many cliff bands running its entire width that from below it looks like it would be impossible to ski.

While the season will open with banner conditions just days later and continue with record-breaking snowfall for the next couple of months, no group that year has more fun on Freefall than the appreciative staff. Kids in a candy store is an understatement – they’re more like ravers on ecstasy. Hooting and hollering, giggling and squealing maniacally, they pour over the mandatory drops, some fearless and fast and others slower and nervous, but all with face-cramping grins plowing through the choker face shots. Back at the lodge everyone gathers to watch a video of the exercise, the nature of their winter job changed forever.

With deep powder skiing an unwritten element of the job description, smiles are part of the uniform. TOPHER DONAHUE.

Working in a remote ski lodge is an employment experience unlike any other. Much has changed, but for everything that has gotten easier other things have become more complex. Skiing is where it began, and skiing is what it’s all about, but turning a remote lodge into a comfortable resort for the world’s most pampered skiers did not exactly come naturally to the ski bums who joined Hans Gmoser in order to live the skier’s dream. There wasn’t always a specific maintenance man with professional-grade skills. Putting skiers in charge of the chemical balance in the Jacuzzi resulted in a period where the staff’s chest hair turned blue. There wasn’t always fresh food flown into the lodges every week. When Lynne Grillmair was first hired as cook in the Bugaboos, following the interview in Hans’s hospital room where he was so battered from a crevasse fall that he could hardly talk, all the food was brought in at the beginning of the season before the road drifted closed, and only a case of apples and oranges was brought in fresh with each group of skiers.

Lynne not only cooked but also managed the lodge and did the housekeeping. While there are more staff today to help with the load, there are still more jobs than people. Everyone has to wear multiple hats, and the area managers have one of the most unique skill sets in the modern world. During the day, they are lead ski guides dealing with snowpack evaluation, route-finding and helicopter logistics. One journalist wrote in SKI magazine, “The man who does the helicopter scheduling has to be an Einstein, getting all five groups to different areas – depending on their ski skills – and time it so it’s waiting at the end of the run? Fantastique.”

The moment the managers walk into the lodges and take off their ski boots, their role changes to hotel manager dealing with personnel issues, guest needs and whims, lodge maintenance and the details of a remote and self-sufficient building. Kris Newman, one-time manager of the Bugaboo lodge, was known to ski while wearing his work clothes under his ski suit so he could more quickly make the transition.

Today, fresh food is flown in weekly, but expectations and standards have changed, so the kitchen is still constantly scrambling to deal with operating in such a remote location. Chantal Gainer, a pastry chef, explains: “Since there is no supermarket, and supplies aren’t replenished until the following Saturday, there can be some pretty stressful moments when you realize that you are short on things. The ‘oh my god!’ mantra is used often in times such as these: the case of meat in the freezer that you thought was beef tenderloin is actually breakfast sausage, or no milk or dairy came in on the order, or it is Monday and there is almost no fruit in the house. Being in this remote lodge setting requires you to think quickly on your feet and, mostly, be extremely adaptable.”

Greg Gauld, the maintenance man at the Bobbie Burns lodge, describes his job as mechanic, carpenter, electrician, plumber and expert in water and waste treatment, occupational health and safety and environment issues management, shipping and receiving, landscaping, snow safety and avalanche blasting in the winter, and part-time hiking guide in the summer.

He didn’t even include rescue team member on the list. Every other staff member tells a similar story. It is a job more like an expedition, where everyone must be ready to do whatever needs to be done. The staff is the fire department and rescue team, and most of the time there is no way to leave without a helicopter and help is a long way away. The isolation breeds a much higher level of responsibility than in similar jobs in civilization, more akin to working on a boat in the Arctic than at a ski resort.

Yet somehow everyone finds a bit of time for enough irresponsibility to balance out the stress and expectations of delivering the ultimate mountain holiday. In the seventies, the ski shop manager, Peter “Lusti” Lustenberger, got drunk one night and was talking with the lodge manager about how badly the Bugaboo lodge needed a new window. “I got a chainsaw and started faking like I was cutting a hole in the wall. The other guys were telling me to fire up the saw. I turned it on . . . ”

Within minutes the new window was cut. At the year-end party that year, Hans presented Lusti with an award for cutting the new window. “Hans always recognized motivation,” remembers Lusti, “even if sometimes it was misdirected.”

The first heli-skiers bar in the world hosts après ski, 1960S style, in the original Bugaboo Lodge. CMH ARCHIVES.

All the skiers, hikers and climbers who visit the lodges are on vacation for a short time and likely one of the most cherished experiences of their lives. Anyone with a penchant for drink usually rolls up to the bar after a dreamy day in the mountains and tips the first of many cocktails. Every winter evening during heli-ski season since 1965 has melded into one huge après ski party in the collective experience of the staff.

In the beginning, CMH had no liquor licence and guests brought their own booze into the lodge. Some groups found skiing made them so thirsty they needed an entire helicopter load to transport their week’s liquor and beer. Since space was limited in the lodge, guests lined the baseboard with fine wines and top-shelf liquors. Hans enforced a ten o’clock curfew, but with the short winter days and the tendency of skiers to disregard rules, they found plenty of time to party.

In Europe, responsible drinking is considered reasonable even while skiing. To this day in the Alps, where schnapps and mountaineering are inseparable parts of the culture, there are slope-side bars in ski areas where you can sip a schnapps without even taking off your skis, and beer and wine are a perfectly accepted accompaniment to lunch.

In the early days of heli-skiing, guides sometimes carried a bottle of champagne all day and then popped the cork to celebrate at the very moment a guest reached so many million feet of heli-skiing. One skier built a custom ski pole fashioned into a flask, with a cap on top of the handle that could be unscrewed to fill the pole with his liquor of choice. Passing around his ski pole became a tradition, and a few skiers remember tipping the ski pole a few too many times, resulting in wobbly turns and close calls in the trees. During the early seventies, two bottles of wine for lunch was the allowance for each group. Eventually an American lawyer ended the fun, and maybe saved the business, by informing Hans that if there were an accident following a bit of lunchtime tippling, the courts could end the whole show. From then on, the booze stayed in the lodge, except for one occasion when an Austrian guide discovered the tasty apple cider in the kitchen and didn’t realize it contained alcohol. For months, if the ski groups came into the lodge for lunch, he pounded a glass of cider – and then wondered why he felt so low energy while skiing all afternoon. Eventually he looked closely at the label and saw the alcohol content, and the reason for his afternoon doldrums became clear.

One of the first heli-skiers, Brooks Dodge, has a video, black and white and grainy, of skiers racing along a track around the Bugaboo sawmill camp. At the end of each lap, the racers ski up to the camera, grab a beer and sway back and forth on their skis as they drink, then take off again, heavily weighting their ski poles and charging towards a victory – or at least a hangover.

With the intimate atmosphere of the lodges and the festive state of most of the skiers, it is impossible for any of the staff with a penchant for drink not to get involved.

One day, guide Bob Geber was too hung over to ski. At the guide meeting, Hans said, “Where’s Bob?”

“He was drinking last night!” said Hans. “If he is well enough to drink he is well enough to ski!”

Geber was rousted from bed and went to work. That was where the line was drawn – partying was fine so long as you could ski or work the next day. Worldwide, celebrating is a part of the culture of skiing, but at the isolated lodges the intimacy adds a new flavour. The atmosphere is so memorable that one Australian skier had an exact replica of the Galena bar built in his own home.

Luckily, the demands of skiing temper the drinking to some degree, and Hans had a surefire way to handle a group of heavy drinkers. When a group of them arrived and immediately got into the booze, Hans let them imbibe on the first night, and then skied them into the ground the next day. The second night, the booze bags were in bed by seven and took it a bit easier on the sauce for the rest of the week.

A New Year’s Eve party culminates with a Burning Man celebration of the Cariboos variety. TOPHER DONAHUE.

The après ski party has adjusted with the times to a more responsible level, but it still is the stuff of legend. Take the Gothics winter party, for example. The staff has been known to create a full dance club outside in the deep snow complete with a disco ball hanging from the trees, a full-service bar with benches carved out of the huge snowbanks and a dance floor packed by snowmobile. Chris Geber, jack of all trades CMH employee, Bob’s nephew, and one of the instigators behind the Gothics hoedown, explains one of the unspoken rules of working for CMH: “We go out of our way to make things fun!”

Staff parties are legendary – and necessary. It offers a chance to have a small piece of life outside of work. One party was on the birthday of one of the pilots. For his cake, the staff put him blindfolded and nearly naked on a table and spread icing all over his body. The women proceeded to lick off the icing, but stepped back and the men surrounded the pilot before tearing off his blindfold so he would think they did the licking. The giggling and messy faces of the women in the room blew their cover. Someone said, “Isn’t it great to have a workplace where you can put something sticky and sweet on a co-worker and lick it off – and not get fired for it!”

Pranks escalate. Once, a group raided the staff women’s rooms and built a piñata stuffed with their underwear. The women discovered the theft, but couldn’t figure out where their undergarments went until later when the piñata party climaxed with their underwear and lingerie flying through the air. To get even, the girls whipped up a heinous concoction of leftover food, blended it and spread it around the boys’ bathrooms to look as if someone had gotten sick.

Rumour has it there is a small shack hidden in the woods near each of the lodges where staff can go to blow off steam after a hard day’s work. In the shack there is supposedly a dance pole, disco lights, cases of beer stashed in the snowbank and skis mounted on the ceiling so if anyone is late to the party they are hung in their ski boots from the binding. With 30 staff in constant contact with each other, working hard in the confines of the lodge to meet the high and sometimes unrealistic expectations of heli-skiers and hikers, finding small pieces of personal space is essential.

The contrast of wilderness and hospitality were inspired by Lizzie von Rummel and are still practised by the staff 50 years later. TOPHER DONAHUE.

In the winter, a bit of cross-country skiing is an ideal escape. In the summer, running or mountain biking serves the same purpose but also has the adrenaline element inspired by the possibility of running into toothy wildlife. Once, chef Chantal Gainer was riding her bike on the logging road near the Bobbie Burns and noticed a strong smell as she pedalled along. She didn’t think much of it until she rounded a corner and saw a tiny grizzly cub standing in the road. While seeing the chubby little fur ball from so close was a rare opportunity, Gainer didn’t take time to enjoy the little animal; the strong smell was surely momma bear, somewhere all too close. Without hesitation she wheeled the bike around and raced like Lance Armstrong all the way back to the lodge.

And there is the ultimate escape: the mountains. When a guest gets hurt skiing, the staff are genuinely sorry for the injured, but they can’t help but look at the bright side when someone gets tired and comes in early – another seat open on the helicopter! The staff rotate through the ski opportunities, and when it’s ski time, even the parties lose importance. Mike Welch, the Galena manager, enjoys watching the staff’s enthusiasm for skiing. He says, “They get it figured out and when their (ski) day is up they’ll not party the night before, wax their boards and leave their ski pants tucked into their boots like firemen.”

This way, when they get the word that the helicopter is coming in for fuel and there is a staff seat, they can be ready before the machine even lands. René Clark, the Galena lodge manager, says, “As with any job, there is a lot of bullshit, but the thing that keeps me coming back is the friends, the silliness and of course the skiing.”

One of CMH’s longest-standing employees until she retired in 2007, Marion Kingsbury, has as much experience as anyone with the scene and says, “I don’t know of anywhere else where people work so hard and are so lovely silly at the same time.”

The party atmosphere is not pub-like, not student drink-until-you-get-falling-down-drunk style. It is more a celebration of everyone, staff and skiers, simultaneously having the time of their lives, more common pleasure than alcoholic madness, and often alcohol isn’t involved at all.

The atmosphere inspired two staff women to volunteer to serve lunch to the skiers. They were flown out with lunch in the small 407 helicopter and stepped out wearing one-piece fluorescent skin-tight suits with feather boas. During lunch, they dusted the helicopter, striking alluring poses every chance they could, and skied the rest of the afternoon in costume.

Hans and his Zither, Battle Abbey 2006. TOPHER DONAHUE.

A family-style dinner is the symbolic core of the Hans Gmoser way, learned from Lizzie Rummel at Mt. Assiniboine. Guests and staff eat together, and guides and housekeepers alike serve dinner to their respective tables. At the beginning of the week, it is done as formally as it can be in a remote mountain lodge, but after that, as people begin to get caught up in the irreverent nature of the ski holiday, and depending on the group, the atmosphere can become more like a family reunion than a catered vacation.

Even the most stoic employee eventually gets caught up in the atmosphere of close dinnertime interaction among people who are having the time of their lives together. One manager was going for the record of carrying the most desserts at one time by putting four plates on each arm, one on his head and one in his mouth. As he left the kitchen he stumbled, wiped out, and sent ceramic and cream in every direction.

Most weeks, a dress-up night is in order late in the week when everyone is familiar enough with each other to dress as silly as possible. Some skiers, like Shirley Bridges, make dress-up night a primary focus of the trip, with suitcases full of clothes. Everything from edgy and sexy to the utterly ridiculous is fair game. The lodges have closets full of costumes left by skiers and creative staff.

Dress-up night gets a bit wild sometimes… HANS GMOSER COLLECTION.

There is a strange relationship between skiing and nudity. Perhaps it is the contrast to the heavily clothed nature of the sport and the striking difference between cold snow and hot skin. The resort of Crested Butte in southern Colorado became famous for a naked ski day on the last day of the season, and in many areas, from the backcountry to the resorts, the pale flash of a skier’s bum, free at last from a long winter in polypropylene, is not an uncommon sight. Skiing naked has hardly caught on in the cold of heli-ski season, but it is nevertheless inseparably part of the culture. While everyone is out skiing, female staff sometimes go out on the deck and flash pilots as they fly over the lodge on the way to refuel. Legend has it that dinner was served to one group by staff wearing nothing but paper bags over their heads. An area manager went naked to meet a helicopter full of returning guests, and while he knew everyone on the helicopter, he didn’t know that Hans was also on board. When the manager opened the door to see his boss staring at his birthday suit, he probably wanted to disappear. In typical Gmoser leadership style, Hans didn’t do a thing or even mention it afterwards, placing full trust in his team’s judgment and letting the manager carry on with his antics.

Most of the time, things are not so wild. Heather Lyon, a ski shop guru, says one of her favourite thing about the lodges is “watching people sitting around entertaining each other telling stories or playing guitar.”

Most of the time, the small skeleton crew is working like mad to keep the experience as nice as possible for everyone. House managers treat their lodges like their own home. The more legendary house managers, like Nicole Laliberté, who poured her heart and soul into the Cariboos, left a legacy of a polishing-wood-against-the-grain and shining-metal-in-the-toilets sort of perfection. Hans inspired managers by trusting them absolutely, and they reciprocated by leading their teams as if their lives depended on it. Just as nudity provides some balance to the heavy clothing of skiing, random silliness by night provides a balance to the high standards instituted by Hans and demanded by the calculated and serious world of heli-skiing.

Across the heli-ski industry there is a lot of talk about where the snow is deeper, the slopes steeper, the pace faster or the mountains bigger, but it would be hard to find a ski experience where skiers have a better time on and off the snow.

Shirley Bridges in one of her many elaborate costumes during dress-up night. CMH ARCHIVES.

Heather Lyon explains the magic of working for CMH: “When I walk into a coffee shop, I feel like I have a little secret about how fun work can be. I’d rather be staff than one of the guests. The lodges are their own entity and when you’re there it is your whole world. People say it is a great thing for the guests, but they forget how great it is for the staff. The guests miss half the fun!”

It’s not just employment in the remote lodges that makes for an all-consuming lifestyle. Hans’s leadership encouraged a die-hard work ethic while working with him in any role. Even the office staff ended up skiing and getting caught up in the buzz of heli-skiing, then returning to work with newfound motivation. “Hans always wanted us to experience what he was selling,” says Marion Kingsbury.

Linda Haywood, Hans’s secretary during the seventies and eighties, explains how the state of the business motivated everyone: “It was teetering on the brink all the way through and the things Hans would get done in a day – he could get more done in a day than anyone I ever knew. I would try to keep up and just wear myself ragged and not even come close.”

The people who worked in the office with Hans remember his style with a mixture of awe and fear. “It’s a miracle I ever started working there,” says Haywood, shaking her head. “I still remember my first time walking into the CMH office. It was about the size of a small bedroom and when I walked in Hans was roaring at his secretary with the most amazing verbosity. It still makes my stomach seize up in knots just thinking about it! But he was the best boss I ever had. When times were tight he always took care of his people. He’d tell me when I was paying bills to ‘pay the little guys first; the big guys can wait until later.’”

A mixture of leading by formidable example, and by ferocious expletive when dealing with issues, delegating with utter confidence in everyone, and caring for the team as family, made Hans a leader who inspired people to devote their lives to the project. Marion Kingsbury explains that “deep down inside you knew you were part of something really special.”

A springtime barbecue with old friends is a great chance to show off tan lines after a long winter in the Columbias. TOPHER DONAHUE.

Working for Hans Gmoser was a chance to live a mountain fantasy, but it came at a price. The first European guides were tradesmen, like Hans and Leo, and the business couldn’t afford to hire anyone else, so when it came time to build lodges and make things happen besides the skiing, the guides did the work. Guiding legend Rudi Krannebitter remembers those guides with respect. “In the beginning, you were the company,” he says. “Those guys worked all the time, putting in all kinds of time for free. If they’d been paid for everything they did, CMH wouldn’t have worked.”

Kiwi Gallagher remembers the guides helping with the construction of the Cariboo lodge. “It was miserable work,” he says. “It was like being in prison camp, except there were more mosquitoes.”

When the skiing began, the guides worked nine weeks straight, then later it was four weeks on and one off. They were paid $69 per day, even the week off, until the guides revolted against their wages because they were lower than European ski guide standards, and threatened to quit if they didn’t get a raise. Hans’s reaction was typically considerate: “If we raise you, we have to raise the girls.” The guides got their raise and so did the lodge staff, but the paid week off disappeared.

Some of the original Bugaboo guides in 2005. Leo Grillmair, Lloyd “Kiwi” Gallagher, Hans Gmoser, Rudi Gertsch, Peter Schlunegger, Sepp Renner and Ernst Buehler. TOPHER DONAHUE.

The original guides and staff committed their entire lives to the project. Bob Geber’s plan was to spend a year in Canada to learn English and have a bit of adventure rock climbing and skiing. After two years, he wrote a letter to his father explaining why he was staying longer: “My English is not so good.”

Dad believed him, but after a third year and another letter with the same excuse, he wrote back, “Are you really so stupid to not learn English after three years?”

Canada was becoming a big part of Geber’s life. After five years he went home briefly, but by then the wilds of western Canada had snuck under his skin. He’d found a mountain range and a country full of emptiness and wildness long gone from his homeland of Bavaria in southern Germany. He began taking people heli-skiing in the Bugaboos with Hans Gmoser and sealed his fate as a Canadian. What could be better than making the ultimate mountain vacation into your career?

In Geber’s case, the “year to learn English” turned into the rest of his life. He is now 72 years old and is still leading skiers down the glades and glaciers of the Columbias. Not everyone can claim to have given their life to the world of heli-skiing, nor does everyone want to, but the business takes a piece of everyone who works to make it happen.

The snow, the mountains, the chemistry of personalities in the skiers and staff, the stresses of running a complex operation, the remoteness of the lodges and the potential seriousness of the endeavour conspire to keep the staff absorbed for weeks, months, years and eventually decades. To work at a remote lodge, be it for one season or 40, demands a hefty toll from the rest of the staff’s world of family, friends and career ambitions.

Living and working in isolation, with a new group of excited skiers calling the lodge home each week, keeps the energy at a manic level. Pastry chef Chantal Gainer sees the effect, both good and bad, of working in the desert-island remoteness of the lodges:

It is not unusual for people to forge lifelong friendships at the lodge. You get to know someone in hyperspeed fast-forward up there. Everyone eats, lives, plays and works together for weeks at a time, and you sure get to know a great deal about someone in that situation awfully quickly! Occasionally, you make such deep friendships with people that it can be frightening how much fun you can have together. The end of the season when everyone goes their own ways can be a tearful parting and a tumultuous separation!

I won’t lie, work is work in whatever job one does and eventually some of the glamour wears off. Aside from all of the perks, there are definitely some drawbacks to the job. Lodge life is not a life for everyone, and I can honestly say, after eight years of working for CMH, that if you are a person who does not have a generally happy, easygoing disposition, then this place is not for you. There is such closeness of quarters at the lodge that it is imperative that you are able to live and breathe the mantra “water off a duck’s back,” or your ship will sink – hard and fast. Slacking off will not make you any friends, and cutting corners will only make your day even longer tomorrow. One of the greatest challenges that exist in the lodge is having to tough out an entire season with a co-worker you really don’t jive with. In all of the CMH kitchens, the chefs work so closely to each other that I assure you, the long days can be hell when you don’t get along with your co-worker, and unfortunately, it happens.

For everyone involved, the environment is ultimately stimulating, but at the end of the week, most guests go home, leaving the staff to do it all over again. Week after week, year after year this cycle continues. Within it, the dramas of a soap opera, the surprises of a reality TV show, the epics of an expedition, the education of a university, and the political issues of a parliament make for a world unto its own. Margaret Gmoser calls the show As the Rotor Turns, after the soap opera As the World Turns, and it is now running into its fifth decade. She explains the drama: “Some women guests would come and expect to ‘have’ a guide as part of their week. One woman must have ‘had’ three guides in one week!”

The promiscuity is no worse than at any resort or vacation destination where fit young people party with uninhibited holiday revellers, but temptations are distilled by isolation and small numbers of people, so affairs are transparent and secrets hard to keep. After a couple of glasses of wine, and with great mirth, Lynne Grillmair remembers episodes of As the Rotor Turns.

“The Euro guides were so aggressive. They felt like they could do whatever they wanted. It was kind of a shocker. Once you were attached to someone there was no trespassing, but if you weren’t tied up it was all fair game. It was kind of a culture clash for a while.”

It didn’t help that Hans decided it would enhance the Alpine atmosphere of the lodge if the staff women wore dirndls in the push-up, cleavage-enhancing Bavarian tradition that squeezes even average bodies into curvy, buxom sex symbols. Margaret Gmoser recalls the dirndls as being “not only dirndls – mini-dirndls. We used to pour ourselves into them.”

And if things did get a bit intimate, which they occasionally did regardless of attire, it always seemed like a good idea at the time. Lynne continues, “Things are so intense and you’re your own little community, so of course there is energy between people. Then you get out into the real world and you’re like ‘oh my god, what have I done?’”

Abigail Elvy, Mark Kingsbury’s daughter, recounted one of the most outrageous affairs. The Kingsburys were at home having dinner when the CMH phone rang. As president of the company, Mark had a CMH line directly into his house that could interrupt the family at any time for anything from accidents to personnel issues. Whenever the CMH phone rang, there would be a moment of tension as everyone in the house would fear there had been an accident. This time, though, it was a wife and husband with a baby, the wife staying at the lodge to take care of the baby while dad skied powder. She managed to get involved with one of the European guides, and the husband returned early from skiing to catch them in the act. A full-speed chase around the lodge ensued, with the guest stopping once at the bar to reassure the bartender, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill him, just beat him up!”

The family was flown out early, too stressed to enjoy the rest of their vacation, and the guide returned to Europe with two black eyes. Mark returned to dinner and shared the madness with his family at the table. Abigail remembers him shaking his head and saying, “Jesus, what’s next?!”

Even legitimate trysts were hard to keep private, especially in the early days of eight-person bunkrooms. Lynne describes their efforts at privacy: “We used to hang green towels on the doorknobs of our bunkrooms, and everyone knew that meant we were not to be disturbed. Then there were other places. The laundry chute, the laundry table and the old sawmill camp. Then later there was the heli-shack and the generator shack. The sauna was the best place, but you had to make reservations.”

Valerie Legault, a 21-year-old housekeeper at the Gothics, explains, “When you’re working so close, everyone has some story about affinity with people. We live at the rhythm of the season and the weather. The rest of the world disappears.”

For the young, single and adventurous, working at a remote ski lodge is an ideal seasonal job. However, lodge staff average eight years with CMH and guides stay with the company for an average of over 12 years. This means most find it a profession rather than a one-season affair with the world of heli-skiing. To have a life outside of work while committing a decade or more to an all-consuming job is a difficult task and often relationships pay the price.

Guide Colani Bezzola describes the marital issues simply: “It’s gotten better, but in the early days there was not one who was married who stayed married.”

Today the work shifts are shorter to give people more time off, but the profession is still hard. One guide, only partly joking, said, “I’d be divorced too if I could find time to do the paperwork.”

Maya Geber, former wife of guide Bob Geber, says of the remote world of the lodges, “That life is an artificial life.” Bob shared a different perspective from a pub in Banff. Waving his hand at the street full of cars, shops and materialism, he says, “What’s so real about this life anyway?” In the end, the difference was too much for their marriage, and like many other CMH relationships, they went their separate ways. Unlike many, they remain close friends and share a beautiful duplex overlooking Banff and the surrounding Rockies.

As a guest of CMH, it is easy to forget that the very people who make the magic of the lodge happen also have families and lives away from the world of powder, tundra and alpine isolation.

Skiers and helicopter trade places in Revelstoke. TOPHER DONAHUE.

For the guides and staff to have a life outside of work, they essentially learn to live in two different worlds: the world of heli-skiing and the world of home. Some deal with the two by having very little life outside of work, others by having extremely full lives away from the lodges, complete with families and other career ambitions. Either way, most are constantly walking a tightrope between the two worlds. CMH Revelstoke, where the operation is based in town and anyone who lives in town can go home to their families at night, has a waiting list of guides wanting to work there.

While all the fun, skiing, hard work and camaraderie are happening in the backcountry, families are growing up, wives and husbands are doing chores and life goes on. It is the secret cost of the remote heli-skiing project. The lodge staff is a relatively transient crew, coming and going with the seasons. A few stay on to eventually become managers or guides. While the reasons for leaving are many and varied, the most common is family. The lifers in the heli-ski world see the problems clearly. Marion Kingsbury speaks with the knowledge of a mother who raised three children while both parents worked for CMH: “All month I’d be working on certain things with the children and then Mark would come home and blow the whole thing out of the water. The whole system would be disrupted. I guess the kids took the brunt of it in the end.”

Just about the time the family gets used to having two parents again, it’s time for one to leave. Ular Wiatzka was five years old and tired of his dad, Bernie, a Galena guide, being away from home. One day as Bernie was packing his bags, Ular asked pleadingly, “Dad, why do you have to leave all the time?”

Before Bernie could respond, Ular’s mother, Cindy, jumped in. She replied, “We need to be able to buy food.” Ular had the perfect answer to keep dad home. He ran to the refrigerator and opened the door. Pointing to the stocked fridge, he said excitedly, “Look! There’s lots of food!”

After working in the wilderness for weeks on end, the staff try to make up for lost time at home. Marion continues, “Mark would come home Saturday night after four weeks of guiding and on Sunday morning we’d be skiing with the kids at Norquay.”

“Dad said to go get an education, get a job and then go into the mountains for fun,” says Aita Bezzola, a 19-year-old working at the Bobbie Burns lodge during summers between semesters at McGill University. She cleans rooms, works in the kitchen and does whatever is needed to keep the lodge functioning. She plans to do one more year of school before taking a winter off to work at the lodge and taste a bit more of the legendary skiing. Aita is taking her first careful steps onto the CMH tightrope: more than one well-meaning student has worked in a remote lodge for a season and ended up there a decade later wondering what happened but knowing that whatever it was involved a whole lot of good skiing.

Aita, however, is also a second-generation CMH employee who knows all about the failed marriages, dropped careers and sordid affairs that go along with living and working in a remote ski area. Her father, Colani Bezzola, is the current mountain safety manager and a 33-year veteran guide for CMH. Colani was the manager of the Bobbie Burns lodge during Aita’s first years of life, and she saw first-hand the world of heli-skiing. Before entering public school Aita’s home was the Bobbie Burns lodge. Her playmates were adult skiers and hikers and her sisters Madlaina and Martina.

One of the first children to grow up around heli-skiing: Robson Gmoser, ski touring in the Bugaboos. HANS GMOSER COLLECTION.

When Aita’s older sister Martina reached school age and moved with her family to Parson, a small town at the beginning of the logging road leading to the Bobbie Burns, Colani saw a need to change his job to be able to spend time with his family. He approached Hans with his dilemma. At the same time, Hans felt the network of guides between the areas needed a common eye and perspective to make sure the snowpack evaluation was being done in a similar way. Colani moved into his current job, which allows him to work in the alpine wonderland he loves and also be with the family he loves even more.

Still, Colani is away from home most of the winter, travelling between lodges and keeping up with the various guiding teams. While many daughters with a father who was away so much would feel cheated of the father figure in their lives, Aita has a perspective only someone who knows other CMH families could have. She says, “Dad was only away in the winters; he was around all summer. That’s pretty good for a CMH kid!”

Many of Aita’s friends had parents who worked at the remote lodges. “A lot of us had the same behaviour patterns while growing up.” When asked for examples she explains, somewhat cryptically, “Like dreams and sleep patterns and similar issues at the same time.”

Aita noticed the same disruption of the family system as Marion did: “When he came home he had no idea what was going on. It made for rough going when he came home in the spring, because we had this dynamic going.”

Even with the chaos it caused at home, most of the children of CMH are somewhat fascinated by it. Troy Kingsbury is a full-time CMH employee. His first time heli-skiing was when he was 18 months old, in a backpack on his father’s back. “He would tilt the pack sideways so I could see forward.” He remembers, then adds, “I don’t think they’d let you do that now.”

Today, Troy works various jobs for the lodges and is training to be a heli-ski pilot. He says proudly, “I was born because of it, into it, and haven’t really left it.” Then, taking a page from his father’s book, he adds, “I love it. Mostly for the people.”

Aita shares Troy’s fondness for the business but also clearly sees the difficulty the profession causes families: “You hear the stories of the outrageous parties they used to have, and as an eight-year-old you really don’t know what to think of it. Now I think we’re all kind of intrigued by the CMH thing. I think the only ones who have sour views of it are the ones whose parents got divorced because of it.”

It appears that there are far too many. Some have managed the balancing act successfully, but none without difficulty. Former shop manager Peter Lustenberger now runs the ski shop at Panorama. He explained his reason for seeking different work simply: “If I didn’t leave CMH I would come home and my kids would say, ‘Who is that?’”

Bobbie Burns manager Bruce Howatt describes the difficulty with brutal honesty: “It’s not just while we’re away. When we’re home we’re always useless recovering or useless getting ready to leave.”

More often than not, family was the driving force that brought guides into roles in the administration of CMH. Marion Kingsbury explained Mark’s reason for stepping into the office where he would eventually become president: “When our children were very small, he realized that the lifestyle of a mountain guide did not enable him to care for his family the way he wanted, and he made an agonizing decision to leave the guiding profession which he absolutely loved and threw himself into the unknown territory of an office environment. It was a decision he did not regret.”

Lunch in the Bobbie Burns. TOPHER DONAHUE.

Even for management, the world of heli-skiing is demanding. Mark Kingsbury’s youngest daughter, Lydia, explains her perspective on her father’s business with respect, but her opinion of her parents’ demanding business is not far below the surface: “I know it was something my parents had of lot of pride in, but even when he was home his mind was on it all the time.” Mark’s death made making up for lost time impossible and solidified her view of work and family time: “I always wanted him around more, but I was more upset and mad after he died. Needless to say, I was happy to see my mom (Marion) retire last year.” While Lydia’s siblings are both involved with CMH, she prefers to keep her distance, teaching school in Calgary and mostly avoiding the heli-ski business. By the spring of 2008, she had given birth to Mark and Marion Kingsbury’s first grandchild. True to the profound learning she received from her parents’ lifestyle, she plans to split her maternity leave with her husband, Andrew. Time will tell how much time she and Andrew mange to devote to their family, but it seems family will be first priority. She concludes, “He (Mark) did a lot of things to make up for his time away, and I really appreciated it, but I think it’s just hard being the child of a guide and mountain man.”

A Slice of Life