Heli-Ski Nation

In May 1963, the mountain guide Hans Gmoser chartered a Bell 47G-3 from Alpine Helicopters to fly a group of skiers up Mount Sir Wilfrid Laurier, a high peak in British Columbia’s Cariboo Mountains. It wasn’t the first recorded instance of heli-skiing: that occurred back in 1948, when the Canadian commercial helicopter operator Skyways Services Ltd. Trialed the concept. Neither was it Gmoser’s first attempt, as he had experimented with heli-skiing a few months earlier. Nevertheless, that May expedition was a watershed event for heli-skiing; a successful test run that suggested the sport could have real commercial potential. Within a few years, Gmoser had established the company Canadian Mountain Holidays, and the heli-ski business was born.

Half a century after Gmoser pioneered commercial heliskiing in the mountains of British Columbia, the practice has developed into one of the most visible and outwardly glamorous segments of the helicopter industry. Moreover, despite the proliferation of heli-ski companies in Alaska and the contiguous United States – and the emergence of new markets in places like Iceland and Greenland – Canada retains the lion’s share of the world’s heli-ski business, and a reputation for excellence in the field.

Yet the sector is a challenging one for Canadian helicopter operators. Heli-ski operations can be extraordinarily tough on both pilots and machines – factors that would normally dictate premium fees, particularly in the presence of an affluent clientele. In recent years, however, the business in Canada has opened up to more guide companies and helicopter operators, putting extreme downward pressure on hourly rates. A boon for consumers? Not necessarily. Heli-skiing is a high-stakes, safety-sensitive business, which means that lower rates aren’t always in the customer’s best interest. For operators trying to do things right, heli-skiing can be a difficult balancing act between the demands of safety, and those of the market.

There’s a short explanation for heli-skiing’s popularity: it’s awesome.

“Heli-skiing is one of the best things ever,” said Matt Hansen, an editor at large for the ski magazine Powder. “For people who haven’t done it, it’s hard to explain how awesome it is.”

For skiers, Hansen said, the lure of heli-skiing is the opportunity to get away from crowded slopes; to ski fresh powder from top to bottom without crossing a single track. The ski experience drives demand for heli-skiing as much as the helicopter experience, and developments in the ski world have done much to shape the heli-ski business as it exists today. Perhaps the most significant of these developments has been the introduction of better gear: “I think equipment has gotten so much better over the past few years that it’s much easier to ski steeper, more advanced terrain,” Hansen said. That has encouraged more skiers to consider heli-skiing, which is now marketed toward anyone who can confidently ski intermediate terrain.

The growth and diversification of the heli-ski customer base have contributed to new demand for more personalized heli-ski experiences. Heli-skiing became a production flying enterprise in the 1970s, with medium-class helicopters such as Bell 212s and 205s being used to ferry multiple parties of skiers at a time. “The economics of it were very favourable,” noted Ian Tomm, executive director of the helicopter and snowcat skiing industry association, HeliCat Canada. “That production heli-skiing environment lasted into the late ’90s.”

Recently, however, an increasing number of heli-skiers have been seeking small-group experiences with their friends and peers. Expert skiers don’t want to be held up by the slower members in a large group, and less capable skiers don’t want the pressure. Some of this demand has been organic; the natural consequence of opening heli-skiing to a wider variety of skiers. But it has also been pushed by newer heli-ski companies, many of whom gained entry into the market with the release of additional tenures by B.C.’s provincial government, and had to find new ways to compete. “Since that time, I think what we’ve seen is that the marketers have taken over,” suggested Tomm, commenting on the rise of “boutique” heli-skiing across the industry.

Regardless of the driving forces behind the small-group trend, Canadian heli-ski operators have had to adjust their fleets accordingly, and the heli-ski landscape looks different today than it did one or two decades ago. Bell 212 and 205 helicopters remain staples of the Canadian heli-ski industry, thanks to their unbeatable economics, and are likely to retain a presence in the market for the foreseeable future. Today, however, a heli-skier in Canada is as likely to ride on a light helicopter as on one of the classic Bell mediums.

Valemount, B.C.-based Yellowhead Helicopters — which in early 2013 acquired VIH Group’s heli-ski business supporting Mike Wiegele Helicopter Skiing — will be flying 212, 407 and AS350 helicopters this season, including a newly acquired AS350 B3e. “The three aircraft [types] we’re using this year are the workhorses of the industry, and with good reason,” said Yellowhead general manager Jacob Forman. Although Yellowhead has experimented with other aircraft types in the past, Forman said, it has gravitated toward the AS350 AStar and 407 among the light helicopters for their performance, reliability and parts availability.

Versatility is another advantage shared by the AStar and 407, which are as sought-after in the general utility market as they are in heli-skiing. That’s important, as skiing may only yield 150 to 250 hours of revenue time per helicopter per year. Gordie Carr, operations manager for Kelowna, B.C.-based Skyline Helicopters, said his company has been challenged in finding summertime work for its AgustaWestland AW119Ke Koala, an aircraft it introduced to the Canadian heli-ski market in 2006. “The skiers love it,” he said (a claim echoed by Ian Tomm, who has worked with the Koala as a ski guide at Northern Escape Heli Skiing near Terrace, B.C.). However, the Koala has been harder to place in utility operations. This year, Skyline will continue to operate one AW119Ke for heli-skiing, but it will also be conducting ski operations with a slightly smaller 407, which has replaced the second Koala it owned previously.

While the general trend in the heli-ski business has been toward modern, high-performance aircraft, Vernon, B.C.- based Coldstream Helicopters has found a niche in the market for an older Bell 204C+, which it will be operating this season, along with three AS350 B2s and two 212s. The 204 is a throwback to the early days of heli-ski operations, although Coldstream’s has been equipped with a BLR Aerospace Fast Fin and Tailboom Strakes to improve its performance at higher altitudes. According to company president Rob Gallagher, this aircraft is also a nod to the small-group trend. “We can operate it between five and eight skiers, adding one to three additional skiers depending on client demand, thus allowing our ski client the best flexibility to meet a dynamic and variable day skiing market, without compromising the small-group feel,” he said.

In a 1994 interview with the historian Robert Petite, the geologist and avid skier Art Patterson, who introduced Hans Gmoser to heli-skiing, recalled a trial that he and Gmoser did with a Bell 47G-2 and 20 enthusiastic skiers in early 1963. Petite recalled Patterson remarking, “We were rather horrified about the amount of flying needed with a two-passenger helicopter to get all the people up the mountain!” After a second attempt was foiled by rain, Patterson said, “I could see that if you wanted to go broke, this was probably the way.”

Today, with the move to smaller aircraft, the heli-ski industry is losing much of the efficiency it gained when Bell medium helicopters became the industry standard. However, it’s also true that heli-skiing – with its high number of takeoffs and landings – is inherently inefficient when compared with many other forms of helicopter flying. This is particularly worrisome from a maintenance perspective, as most turbine helicopters simply aren’t designed for high cycle counts. “We take a great penalty when we’re skiing,” said Yellowhead Helicopters’ Jacob Forman, who noted that life-limited parts on ski helicopters often reach their cycle limits before they reach their hour limits. That requires more frequent overhauls, he said, “and helicopter operators can’t afford to eat those costs – they must be passed on to the heli-ski [companies] and, ultimately, the heli-skiers.”

Heli-skiing isn’t just hard on aircraft: it can also be punishing for pilots. The frequent takeoffs and landings that tax turbine engines also demand a pilot’s utmost concentration; contending with unprepared landing surfaces, flat light and blowing snow is very different from flying laps around a traffic pattern. “There’s no job that I can think of where you make as many takeoffs and landings in heinous spots, in heinous weather, as heli-skiing,” said Len Martin, a veteran helicopter pilot who has spent many of his 26 heli-ski seasons flying customers at Selkirk-Tangiers Heli-Skiing in Revelstoke, B.C. Operating off airport in rugged mountains is demanding in the best of conditions, but Martin said the most challenging part of heli-skiing is the weather: “That is the part that nobody can change.” All of that fresh powder has to come from somewhere, and heavy clouds and questionable visibility are facts of life for heli-ski pilots.

So what are Canadian heli-ski operators getting for their trouble? Probably not as much as they should be. “It’s a pretty lean world out there,” Martin said, expressing a sentiment that was echoed by heli-ski operators who spoke with Canadian Skies both on and off the record. Competition in the Canadian heli-ski market can be cutthroat; as one operator put it, “There’s always someone talking to your client, and promising to do what you’re doing for less money.” With guide companies themselves feeling the pinch of foreign and domestic competition – and helicopter fees accounting for a huge portion of their costs – many of them are, indeed, opting for the lowest bidder. Another helicopter operator told Skies, “We’re starting to see rates that are slightly less than where they were nine years ago.”

This state of affairs can be explained, in part, by the overall weakness of the Canadian helicopter industry, which has yet to recover from the beating it took in the global financial crisis of 2008. In October of this year, Helicopter Association of Canada (HAC) president Fred Jones told Vertical magazine, “With the economic climate where it is, and everybody cutting back on exploration, the resource sector has not been doing very well. Even the fire season has been pretty lacklustre during the last few years.” With summertime revenues down, the prospect of making up some of that work with heli-skiing has been luring more operators to the sector, which has seen a relatively strong recovery. “Our members are coming out of the recession, and they’re stronger,” said HeliCat Canada’s Ian Tomm, noting that skier days for heli-skiing operations are starting to rise again after dipping in 2008.

However, there are also subtler dynamics at work. A Canadian aviation insurance broker who spoke with Skies explained that liability insurance is hugely important for Canadian heli-ski operators: not only because the skiers in the back tend to be wealthy, but also because many of them are Americans. One brokerage estimates liability exposure for wrongful death damages in Canada at around $1 million, but it estimates the same exposure in America at $7 to $8 million (as American courts and juries are usually more generous toward plaintiffs). Historically, underwriters were nervous about insuring heli-ski operators, as heliskiing was perceived as being a risky and extreme sport. As a result, they tended to impose high rates and significant operational restrictions on heli-skiing, which discouraged many helicopter operators from taking part in the sector.

Now, the broker said, the insurance-related barriers to entering the heli-ski business are much lower than they used to be, which has tempted more operators to try their hand at it. A variety of factors have led to this shift, including the general softening of the aviation insurance market that has been particularly pronounced over the past five years. “There’s just so much capacity in the market,” the broker said, adding that underwriters have been further encouraged by examples of the British Columbia heli-ski industry’s standard liability waiver holding up in court.

The broker pointed out, however, that underwriters’ new warmth toward heli-skiing “is probably a reflection of the overall safety of the industry as well.” Many Canadian heli-ski operators have been implementing higher training standards, best practices and safety management systems, and those are beginning to be reflected in lower loss ratios. With less stigma attached to heli-skiing, insurance rates for it now owe more to an operator’s size, accident history, and safety and training programs – just as they do for other types of helicopter work.

“I think in the early days of heli-skiing . . . some tough lessons hadn’t been learned yet,” said Jacob Forman. Today, he said, “I think it’s as safe as it’s ever been to go heli-skiing.”

Len Martin agreed that the safety culture of the Canadian heli-ski industry has changed dramatically since its early days. When he began working as a heli-ski pilot, he said, morning briefings were “a five-minute affair – the pilots would maybe stumble over to the guides’ meeting in the morning and then go off and have breakfast.” Now, with both operators and guide companies taking a more proactive approach to safety, each day of heli-skiing begins with a thorough discussion of weather forecasts, routes and ways to mitigate risk.

Many of the actions that can be taken to improve the safety of heli-skiing are, like a commitment to morning briefings, the responsibility of individual operators and guide companies. On the aviation side, these include better training and maintenance, and more conservative weather and performance limitations – practices that vary by operator. However, the industry is also keenly aware that every heli-ski accident impacts the business as a whole, a fact that has encouraged significant cooperation on safety issues.

One of the earliest cooperative efforts was the creation of HeliCat Canada, an organization that was founded in the late 1970s specifically to address safety concerns related to backcountry skiing. According to Ian Tomm, 17 of the 21 heli-ski guide companies are now members of the voluntary association, which remains focused on safety activities and auditing. Although guide companies are the primary target of the organization, HeliCat Canada also works closely with helicopter operators who are associate members.

More recently, an HAC committee led by Andrew Bradley, vice president of operations for Blackcomb Aviation, developed a list of guidelines for heli-ski operators, which have now been submitted to HAC for approval. (The draft guidelines can be found on the HAC website, www.h-a-c.ca.) According to Bradley, the goal of the guidelines is to identify “best practices” for the heli-ski industry, “so we can all be training to the same standard.”

Blackcomb Aviation – which has six helicopters dedicated to heli-skiing this season – is also spearheading a new information sharing system for Canadian heli-ski operators, modeled on the Canadian Avalanche Association’s daily “InfoEx” exchange of snow, weather and avalanche information between ski guides. Using an online portal on the HeliCat Canada website, the system will allow operators to share information about potential hazards they have identified, such as hardware issues on helicopter ski baskets. “If we’ve already learned from it, we want to share it with the rest of the industry so that they can learn from it, too,” Bradley said. “If we take the bull by the horns as an industry, we can make it a safer place.”

The overall safety trend in the Canadian heli-ski industry is clearly a positive one. The question is, does today’s ultra-competitive business environment threaten to derail it? One helicopter pilot who spoke to Canadian Skies off the record indicated that many heli-ski pilots – especially newer pilots who are less experienced or less familiar with a particular operating area — are still under enormous pressure to fly in marginal weather conditions. They’re also pressured to keep flight time to an absolute minimum once they’re in the air, potentially resulting in rushed approaches and landings. “It all comes back to what the client wants,” the pilot said. “No one’s going to admit to it, but the pressure is there.”

The problem is a common one for the helicopter industry: how to keep external pressures from translating into poor safety choices, especially when those pressures aren’t obvious, or take the appearance of pilot self-pressure. One piece of the puzzle is customer education with constant communication — explaining to guide companies why it may be worth it to invest in better equipment, or necessary to make an extra recce pass to accomplish a difficult mountain landing. “I think we’ve done better over the last 10 or 15 years working with the client to help them better understand our challenges,” remarked Andrew Bradley. Gordie Carr of Skyline Helicopters added, “It’s all about educating them on what we do and why we do things. . . . I think that only comes with a long-term relationship with the customer.”

Not everyone is convinced that the Canadian heli-ski industry will be able to keep up its positive safety momentum with so many guide companies now vying for skier dollars, and so many helicopter operators angling for a share of the pie. However, even those who take a pessimistic attitude toward the sector tend to love it as much as they hate it.

“On a bluebird day, like you see in the movies, it’s awesome – it’s the best flying out there,” said the pilot who spoke to Skies off the record. And there really is much for Canadians to love about the heli-ski business, whether they’re flying a ski helicopter, riding in the back, or simply basking in the sport’s reflected glory.

“Heli-skiing started in Canada and Canada remains the leader, and we’ve set international standards for the industry,” said Ian Tomm. “These are things I think Canada can be very proud of.”