CANADA
lodges (three are open in summer) hidden among Western Canada’s high peaks. For all its comforts, the Bugaboo’s ambiance is more homey ski lodge than swanky resort. A bell signals breakfast, served family style in front of picture windows that provide postcard-perfect views of the famed Bugaboo spires from the lodge’s 4,900-foot-high perch. Then it’s off to the awaiting helicopter to take you even higher. On a typical “multidrop day” you’ll hike from point A to an awaiting helicopter at point B, then repeat in another area, and maybe repeat again, depending on the group’s preferences. It all feels a bit like cheating — until you realize you’ve hiked for hours, logging several thousand vertical feet. But
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GO ESCAPE | SUMMER 2019
then the heli reappears to escort you back to the lodge, in time to sip a cold beer on the deck and watch the evening light dance across the cirque. It’s a monumental view, yet just a microcosm of the 393-square-mile permit area that CMH holds in the Bugaboos. CMH offers heli-hiking trips June to August. Threeday trips at Bugaboo lodge start at $3,345 (Canadian), including meals, guides and helicopter transport. The cost in U.S. currency will vary based on exchange rates.
“FLIGHTSEEING” TOURS With a whump whump whump, the red Bell helicopter lurches to life, levitating away from the Alpine Helicopters base in Canmore, 16 miles southeast of Banff in Alberta. As three
passengers points out the fiddle with wildlife on the their earmuff move with the Find more headsets and warming spring information eagerly peer out weather. Only then and book tours the windows, do you realize that by visiting pilot Pete Beets the brown stain in cmhheli.com and deftly swings the valley below is alpinehelicopter. the helicopter actually a herd of com southwest across elk. the TransBut mostly, the Canada Highway. It crosses drama is right outside the the braided Bow River as it window, seeming close climbs, then crests a snowy enough to touch. There’s an saddle in the Goat Range. audible gasp in the headset Gone are any signs of as the chopper sidles up civilization, replaced by to the pyramid peak of a pincushion of jagged 11,870-foot Mt. Assiniboine, peaks in every direction. crusted with a coating For the next 30 minutes, of iridescent blue ice. If the helicopter skims over there’s a better mountain knife-edged ridges, past view, it probably involves stiff cornices sculpted a trip halfway around the like waves and through world and a Sherpa. alarmingly narrow notches Alpine Helicopters in the granite. offers sightseeing tours Then again, it’s all so year-round. Opt for the grand, you lose any sense 30-minute Mt. Assiniboine of scale. The headset and Glaciers Tour, which crackles to life, and Beets costs $330 (Canadian). l
ALPINE HELICOPTERS
Lake Gloria in Banff National Park