I recently joined a group of friends up at CMH Valemount, to heli-ski in the Cariboos of British Columbia for a week. It was a good time.

There’s a lot to love about skinning and the earn-your-turns days. But I have to admit, and I guess not surprisingly, the heli-ski experience is really something. You don’t burn as many calories or appreciate each turn quite as much as when you climb the mountain yourself, but when you can ski 30,000 vertical feet of untracked snow each day, it’s hard to view it as anything other than really fun.

We had one completely clear and calm day which allowed us to ski the high glaciers. Steep trees and powder (the usual offering) can be really exciting, but the runs we got in the high alpine, though somewhat lower-angled, were some of the most memorable of the whole week. Here are some photos and a video from the day-