I was honoured to spend a week with the Selkirk Tangiers Heli Skiing (STHS) team to experience what they do firsthand. We spent the week in Revelstoke, BC, their home base of operations and I even got to experience a fresh powder day that the locals had been waiting patiently for.

This was an experience that is going to stick with me for a long time. The flights, the landscapes, the skiing, the snowboarding, and most importantly the people, made this an experience of a lifetime and I have a better understanding of why people seek out STHS to live out their heliskiing dreams. I would do this every day if I could!

Day 1: Arriving In Revelstoke And Jumping Right In

After a bit smooth clear view flight unit Kelowna with views of Valley clouds and inversions throughout most of the Rocky Mountain valleys I hopped into my Turo and cruised a beautiful blue sky drive along the 97a from Kelowna through Vernon and into Revelstoke where the town was entrenched in the valley clouds I saw on my flight in. I immediately went to the Coast Hillcrest to meet up with Dave P from Selkirk Tangiers Heli Skiing (STHS) and finalize plans for the week ahead and sign my waivers and paperwork to get out in the bird.

After taking care of the specifics I connected with my first ski guide of the week, Evian. Overall we’d seen some great improvements throughout her pre-season training block but we needed to dive in on a specific hip issue that seemed to be lingering. After a detailed assessment of the hip, we decided on a path forward to try to clear things up. We discussed the opportunities to improve the program moving into 2025/2026.

Day 2: Heli Skiing With The French

The day started off with a socked in valley fog. Arriving at The Coast Hillcrest the day skiers and I sat together for a gourmet warm breakfast looking out across Columbia river valley. After breakfast we gathered our ski kits, bundled up, and piled into the 12 seater passenger van to head up the iconic Roger’s pass towards the day heli staging area. Despite the valley fog, as we drove up highway 1 towards the pass we began seeing glimpses of sky up the drainages. The energy in the 12 seater van was palpable as we rolled up the highway amongst the giants of Roger’s pass. Upon arriving at the Albert canyon staging area for STHS, the guides split up and went through standard helicopter and avalanche training with the guests ensuring a smooth day and preparedness for all eventualities.

I was with a group of 7 friends from France who had spent the past 3 days heli skiing with STHS. Given the lack of snow over the past 3 weeks it was absolutely insane the snow quality we experienced. With blue bird skies and a relatively windless day, they took us to the depths of their tenure flying out of Albert Canyon where we skied the hallowed grounds of the Charity bowl bordering on the National Park. I couldn’t believe the quality of skiing. Light boot top facets over playful moraine features and windlips.

After several laps in the bowl we set up for a glorious lunch on the flats with the rock faces of the cirque all around us while we looked across at the wild depths of Revelstoke National Park. After lunch we hopped down drainage towards Albert Canyon into a steeper more featured area known as Fortitude. We skied several more laps in this area experiencing only a small pocket of variable snow and wind board before getting back into the goods. By the end of the day we had skied a total of nearly 7000m of primo powder and “What a day”! Tangiers delivered. During Apres the skiers shared stories in the afterglow of the kind of ski day you can only dream of.

Day 3: Tour De Caffeine

Thursday was a planned “down” day or rather it was a planned day of meetings. I started the day by connecting with Liam Kuipers at Revelstokes newest coffee shop, Holm. What a rad spot! Great ambience, a very obvious community vibe, and spectacular coffee to boot. Despite having already had an espresso prior to the meeting, I had to go with the tasting flight where you were served a blend espresso, a single origin espresso, and a pour over single origin of the Barista / owners choice. I’m a bit of a coffee snob and I’ll tell you this place is on point. But after receiving our drip, Liam and I set up in a couple of cozy chairs and had a chat about his athletic history, his aspirations towards guiding, and his relationship with his identity as an athlete and how that has influenced his recovery over the past year from a traumatic knee injury and subsequent bilateral ACL repairs 3 months apart. Biggest takeaway is that your mindset matters and challenging the way you view yourself can be a powerful tool.

After finishing up our chat, I dropped Liam at work and swung by Terravita Kitchen to grab a quick bite. I happened to run into a couple of other guests from Wednesdyas ski day who happened to be on a down day as well so we went for a quick hike up to the old Revelstoke ski jump. A couple things I always love about Revy is that it’s a town that motivates you to move and a place where you very often casually bump into friends. It feels like a mountain town equivalent to Dundas, Ontario where I work out of. Active, motivated health conscious people in a tight interwoven community.

I finished my day Thursday with a couple more guide assessments with Alex Nadeau and the legendary Andrew McNab. While I was chatting with Andrew it was clear how much value he’d taken from his fall training and how motivated he is to continue to integrate things. I wanted to learn more about his history so I set up a time to chat and get to know him a bit better. After my meeting with the guides, some friends form back home had a spot near RMR for the week and had invited me for dinner. During dinner the forecasted storm hit and it began snowing 1cm per hour so we made plans to meet in the morning for some storm skiing on the resort.

Day 4: The Locals Got Their Fresh Powder Day

I woke up Friday morning to 6” of powder on my car and I knew it was gonna be a banger day at Revelstoke Mountain Resort. That said, after several weeks without snow, the locals were hungry for powder and the lines were sizeable. Luckily my friends had decided to book a private lesson for the morning and they squeezed me into the group for a few hours of hot laps on the stoke chair! Winds were high but so were the vibes and we got no shortage of powder shots and shared ear to ear smiles with the other riders on the hill. Despite the conditions, I had to cut my day early as I had a post guide meeting presentation with the STHS team on in-season training and planning for the coming year.

The presentation went really well and there were some great discussions around the challenges and barriers to bit the pre-seasons and in-season training. Afterwards I connected with Kursten Smith where he went into detail around the wins he has seen over the past 9 months of working with Ibex Project. We finished up the session deep diving on a long standing hip issue that, while improved, is still poking up here and there.

Day 5: Dam This Was An Epic Day

One thing that jumps out to me about STHS from my prior trips, and again on this trip, is how the whole team seems to be so close knit, trusting and respectful of one another. What this creates is an environment where they can deal with the severity of decisions that need to be made on a daily basis but also have fun while doing it. This was really apparent on Saturday when I sat in on the morning and evening guide meetings on the first clear day after a fresh load of snow on top of several persistent weak layers. The tight environment allowed all voices to be heard and for differing opinions to be shared and challenged in a respectful way.

It was clear after the morning meeting that we’d be approaching the tenure’s vast terrain very differently than we had on Wednesday where snow stability and quality made for a fairly open playing field.

Shortly after 8am, I met my guide Bren Mackenzie and a small group that I’d be skiing with that day on A-star day program. We went through our snow safety, beacon search, probing and shoveling scenario and proceeded to our safety training for the A-star B3. Given my marginally greater experience with heli-skiing, I got the role of managing the door as we got in and out of the machine - more of this later.

We started our day with a drive up the highway towards Mica where you access the staging area for the North zone of the STHS tenure. It was a beautiful drive along the Dam-formed Lake Revelstoke.

We were picked up and taken to the top of the La Forme drainage where we were treated to true bottomless pow. Given the recent heavy snow loading, it was almost “too deep” for the terrain we initially dipped our toes into. That said, the final pitch of tight tree skiing delivered the goods with perfectly spaced trees, alleys, and natural features to pop and play on. After getting to the bottom it’s always hard to believe that you’ll get to hit repeat on this all day long.

Over the next couple runs we worked our way along this drainage, skiing several classic lines - Caribou, April Chute, and April Burn - each providing deep turns and natural playful features. Later in the morning, after a guest decided to be flown out due to the deep conditions, there was a scary moment. After landing on the top, I stepped out and stood near the heli to assist as needed and manage the door. The first guest got out of the plane and began walking away from the A-star up a gradual slope away from the machine. I fairly quickly assessed that this was a dangerous situation and due to the noise of the engine would have to make a physical move to right the situation. I left the door and more or less tackled the guest to the ground apologizing profusely for the physicality of it. After the bird took off and looking at the terrain slope, it was clear that I’d made the right decision.

We finished off our final run before lunch, soaking up some more open terrain that lead us to our lunch spot in the valley. Can we talk about the lunch for a minute - tomato soup that I was inclined to drink by the bowl full and chicken/sweet potato wraps providing the perfect balance of carbs and protein.

After lunch we transitioned to our next drainage where we did multiple laps of an area known as the goldmine where it was clear their guiding duty manager and tree glader had worked his magic - perfectly spaced trees on rolling terrain that provided a mix of steeper and more moderate pitches. All in all a glorious day of powder skiing in the Selkirks. Thank you STHS!

After that evenings guide meeting, I met with two more guides whom I worked with through the fall - Kenton Lambert and Quinn Castillo - who both had minor issues to dive into. Both minor issues created great opportunity to discuss the key principles in a coach - athlete relationship - clear communication and the role of training in maintaining a buffer against uncommon stressors.

Day 6: No Friends, Just Legends

I wasn’t sure how it would feel to transition to a resort ski day after a day of heli-skiing like Saturday but it turns out that sliding on snow in any capacity brings cheek-to-cheek sore smiles. It helped that Sunday turned out to be the kind of resort day you can only wish for. Short lines, new terrain opening after a storm, and lucky timing with lifts that put you on position to be the front of the pack for rope drops. It didn’t hurt that we were first coil of the AM gondola line. After hammering several laps on Stoke chair we caught rope drop in Separate Reality and after several laps on SR, I ended up being one of the first 15-20 people on the SubPeak boot pack.

Getting to the top there was only a handful of lines down the north bowl so I pulled the no friends on powder day and dropped into a glorious steep pitch of untouched pow and finished the run off through steep tree features into the far reaches of the resort. Back at the lift it was clear I’d been split up from my Ontario pals but I only had one lap left before a meeting with McNab. Luckily I ran into a local ski tech at STHS who recognized me from the last few days and we went for a dad lap of the White Tiger trees - perfect pitch and untouched lines - gnarly for snowboarders - traverse back into the resort along the catchers mitt.

I dropped my board back to STHS, changed, and met Andrew McNab at his craftsman home near downtown. Andrew’s skimo past and ski history was subtly on display in his workshop where he keeps himself busy tinkering on wood projects when he’s not guiding guests, slaying steep lines with Lusti and Vos, or crushing mega-endurance projects with GHill. We then had an espresso inside before heading down into his basement turned gear organization and pain cave - read gym - for a chat.

We had a great chat about his athletic upbringing, chasing medals in skimo, his somewhat unlikely transition into guiding, and his experiences beginning to integrate strength and conditioning principles into his annual plan. After interviewing Andrew, I finally had the chance to get caught up with a couple legends of the pass, Joey Vosburgh - a super well respected guide and co-owner of Wolverine Snowproducts and his fiancée Danyelle Magnan, or as I refer to her, “Keeper of the Pass”.

When I got home I organized my gear for departure and a day ski touring in the pass.

Day 7: Making The Most Of My Last Day

I woke in good time to get my kit organized and shake out the legs to get motivated for a cold day. Before heading up the highway to the Roger’s Pass Discovery Center, I grabbed a quick-ish espresso and breakfast at La Baguette. The visitor Center is the epicenter of backcountry skiing in the pass. A place to buy your day passes and complete restricted access forms. To learn more check out The Pass. Inside the visitor center, members can relax in cozy leather chairs near a wood burning fireplace in classic lodge fashion, and change into your ski boots in the warmth of the Center.

Shortly after I arrived, Ibex athlete Dave of Golden Powder Guiding arrived and we quickly kitted up for the cold - forecasted -20C plus gusting winds to -30C. In the end we made a good route selection and climbed 1000m along Grizzly Shoulder, sheltered from the wind and getting doses of sun along the way. After broaching the upper flank of the shoulder, the wind made its appearance and the cold temps became apparent. That said we were mostly finished our ascent and we soon transitioned for a descent of a classic Roger’s pass gem called Puff Daddy. Generally a top to bottom pow run with pillows, we got suckered into one of the tighter drainages and had to billygoat our way through a couple cliffsbands, but overall we had a great, albeit shorter-than-expected for Roger’s Pass, day out.

On returning to the visitor Center I set up the mics and had a great chat with Dave about his professional transition, balancing a business/training/family, his mentorship into guiding, and his training over the past two years with Ibex Project. Given the unexpectedly early finish I was able to drop in to the Wolverine Den to catch up with Joey on a rare mid season off day where we chatted about his childhood, the influence of his parents on how he lives, guiding, running a business, and how intentional movement practice has changed his life. Giving this dude a big hug, I pushed off from Revy and headed Kelowna way to make the journey home. Feeling fulfilled, refreshed, and productive after a spectacular week in one of the more magical mountain towns in a North America.

Can’t wait to see you again Revy!

Heliskiing With The Selkirk Tangiers In Revelstoke