Posted by Jane Carswell on Thu, Jul 29, 2010 @ 10:20 AM
By Lilla Molnar, CMH Heli-Skiing Guide
Helen Sovdat is a Mountain Guide and has been guiding for CMH Heli-Skiing for over 20 years, currently she works in the Adamants. In September of 2009, Helen was part of a successful climbing expedition to Manaslu, Nepal. She is the first Canadian to summit the 8163m peak. Manaslu is the world’s 8th highest peak. In her career she has climbed many other high mountains around the world including; Choy Oyu, Ama Dablam, Mustagatah, Mt. Logan and Mt. Fairweather to name a few.
The planning for this fairly spontaneous trip started in the spring of 2009 with some vision of climbing something big with Val Pitkethy a trekking guide and friend of Helen’s with whom she has shared many other great adventures. Val has some great connections within the world of Himalayan climbing. And so, Helen, Val and their friend Mel Proudlock, piggy-backed with a commercial trip heading to Manaslu.
I sat with Helen to ask her about her recent adventure.
LM: How did the trip to Manaslu compare to other expeditions you have done?
HS:It was a holiday! – It was my chance to tag along as one of the members of an outfitted expedition. Food, portering, and camp set up were taken care of. We climbed on our own but we had full support. It was a nice treat as a guide to not have to take care of other people and focus on this climb for myself. Climbing at altitude is tough because it always takes a huge commitment in terms of time and energy. We felt like we were quite quick to acclimatize and we were on the summit within about 3 weeks of arriving in basecamp.
LM: How were the conditions on the mountain compared to other seasons?
HS: Great conditions on the mountain lead us to the summit, weather and conditions were perfect. We had the best conditions I have ever heard of after talking to others who have tried to climb Manaslu. At least 3 other Canadian expeditions had tried the climb in the past. About 20 other climbers summited while we were there, so that was considered a good season. Several other teams made it to just below the summit but turned around at the final corniced ridge. The day after we were on the summit, the mountain got shut down for the season, as the winter jet stream moved in over us. We anticipated the change in weather was coming so the last day of our climb we really went for it.
LM:What was your climbing strategy and what was the crux?
HS: We drove NW from Kathmandu and then started on the Manaslu circuit which was a 5 day trek to basecamp. We set up four camps between basecamp and the summit. The route was quite interesting and included several crevasses, steep avalanche slopes and a dangerous icefall between camp 1 and 2. It was a 300m section where you had to travel horizontally under the leaning towers of ice. It was just one of those places you had to run and hope you didn’t get hit. After we came down off the mountain a climber was killed there. Summit day was long and exhausting. It was a thrill to be on top, but going down drained the last of my reserves. It was a struggle to keep moving one foot in front of the next. While we were there Manaslu also had its first ski descent by two Brits and one Chilean who skied from just below the summit.
Helen’s next trip is to Mongolia for trekking and general mountaineering. She will also be guiding in Nepal and India in the fall of 2010. The main objective is top secret but if you’d like in on it contact Helen helenso@telus.net. Or, if you'd like to join Helen next winter at the Adamants, contact CMH Reservations at 1.800.661.0252.
Photos:
Helen in Icefall between camp 1-2 by Val Pitkethly
Manslu Summit, Front to back: Tensing Sherpa, Helen Sovdat, mel Proudlock, Ngima Sherpa, Val Pitkethly by Rob Casserly.
Posted by Topher Donahue on Tue, Jul 27, 2010 @ 09:05 AM
The CMH kitchens produce the kind of dining experience you see in the lefthand photo, in the kind of locations you see in the righthand photo. The juxtaposition seems kind of unreal to me, so to get a glimpse of how they do it, I asked Rick Carswell, veteran chef of heliski lodges, CP Hotels, Holland America Cruise Lines, the film industry, pirate ships and the food and beverage manager for CMH.
TD: What issues do you face cooking at a CMH Lodge compared to an equivalent restaurant?
RC: As a chef at CMH you have an incredible amount of culinary freedoms, and on the flip side lifestyle restraints that are different from your average restaurant job. There is no-one else qualified in the lodge to cover for you if you get sick or injured and that can be intimidating and all-consuming. I remember being sick once and I had a dream that I walked down the hall to the managers room and told him that I was sorry that I wouldn't be able to cook breakfast because I was going to die - and I was terribly sorry. He thanked me for telling him and said it had been a pleasure getting to know me, then I turned and walked toward my room were I was going to die.
TD: How do you get all that food in there anyway?
RC: It takes about a week per lodge to refit them in the fall for the coming winter with all their food and beverage inventory. I figure as accurately as I can the amount of food they will need for this coming winter, run quotes for those supplies from all our vendors and then drive it to the lodge by the semi load. If you are at a lodge early in the season ask to have a look in the store rooms. It's impressive to see the wall of Kokanee beer, or the 100 bags of flour. During the operating season, the fresh food is ordered weekly by the chefs, received in Banff from the 15 or so suppliers where it is then sorted by area, reassembled and shipped to the appropriate helipad to meet the helicopters for it's trip to the lodge. Quite an interesting journey if you're a fresh mussle from PEI to a mountain lodge in three days, one plane ride, three different truck rides, one helicopter ride, one ski-do ride and passing through about a dozen sets of hands to get there.
TD: What does a CMH chef typical work day look like?
RC: Long. At CMH workday begins at 6am and finishes at 9pm and goes day after day for two weeks before you get a break. As a chef, if I got out skiing it meant that I would work into the night to get pay back for my reward of skiing, but man is it worth it. I can work on six hours sleep if I can get a few runs in the middle of the day and I find that I work much more effectively if I get outside for a bit.
TD: If an experienced chef wanted to work for CMH, what advice would you have for them?
RC: This is a serious work hard play hard environment. But you need to have the experience and confidence to be able to pull it off. We look at chefs with about five years post apprenticeship experience and hopefully in the eight years of their work experience they have moved to lots of different places, worked different styles of cuisine and have some management experience. It's a hard position to fill and certainly we have taken the chance on lesser experience levels for exceptional personalities who mostly have worked their way up our ladder but team is sustainable because we manage to retain about 80% of our chefs from one season to the next. The average work/life expectancy for our 44 chefs is around ten years, which is pretty spectacular in this industry of nomadic pirate chefs. My best friends are CMH chefs and we go back 20 years with this company. They are a book of stories and talent.
TD: Anything else you'd like to add?
RC: Come, enjoy the mountains and the skiing, but when you get back to the lodge stop by the kitchen and visit the chefs, I'm sure you'll be impressed with my friends, ask them about the vegetarians who eat lamb when they are at CMH, ask them what wine they will be drinking with dinner, ask them about their greatest culinary disaster and how, as a good pirate, they pulled it off and nobody noticed. My friends tell good stories.
Posted by Topher Donahue on Thu, Jul 22, 2010 @ 04:29 PM
Last winter I was standing on the rim of the Canoe River drainage, stunned by the view across some of the biggest glaciers left in British Columbia. Above us, the 3516-metre bulk of Mt. Sir Wilfrid Laurier dominated the sky. I turned to ask Dave Gauley, our heliski guide and assistant manager of CMH Cariboos, about skiing from the big peak’s summit. He told me that it used to be a CMH ski run, but that a big crevasse opening had effectively killed it.
With ten years experience as a professional freeskier, Gauley is not one to be easily deterred by terrain challenges. He mentioned something about trying the descent, not doing it, climbing out of a big crevasse - and then skied away and dropped into the Canoe. Distracted by big terrain and stellar heliskiing, I forgot about his unfinished story.
Earlier this week I was daydreaming about big mountains, remembered Dave’s story, and caught up with him – he’s easier to catch in the summer - and here’s what he had to say:
If you skied it (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) from the summit to the valley (which they used to do) it would be 2500 metres vertical. I’m not sure how that ranks with other CMH runs, but it's pretty frickin’ long. I tried to ski off the summit, but there is a big, melted-out crevasse a few hundred metres below the summit you have to climb out of.
The North Canoe Glacier (which would be the lower part of the run) also has huge crevasses, and an icefall that it did not used to have. I think when they built the Cariboo Lodge in 1974, it was in the middle of the biggest snow decade in the area. From talking to oldtimers like Kiwi (Gallagher) and Ernst (Buhler), as well as (people) who grew up in the area - that's kind of their memory.
So I think the changing of the glaciers is a combination of back then they were really lucky with a huge snowpack to fill the crevasses, and glacier recession is now coupled with less snowfall. Bingo - less terrain to ski.
Other runs in the Cariboos are changing quickly too, like pretty much everything at the apex of the Premier Range on all the big ice (“big ice” is guide speak for glaciers) is becoming trickier to ski. Crazy Horse, Little Matterhorn, Penny, Ned's Moon, Thompson Glacier, Jerry's Perch, The Zipper… These are just a few runs that are becoming difficult, or are no longer possible to ski.
Another thing that has changed is that they were much more aggressive on glaciers in the old days as well. Those first Euro guides did not know anything about tree skiing, so they almost exclusively skied on glaciers. What was acceptable risk then would in no way fly today.
I heard, maybe from Bob Geber, that the Bugaboos has lost 30-50% of their glacier skiing from the original area over the last 40 years. Just look at the S&S Glacier. I skied it on a guide exam in 1997 - we were roped up shitting our pants - and they used to take heliski groups down there!
Sounds like a good reason to book a heliski trip now before we lose more ski terrain! Are there any of you lifelong heliskiers out there who can remember the natural closures of ski runs being a sad day?
Photo of skiing Ned's Moon in 2010 by Topher Donahue.
Posted by Topher Donahue on Thu, Jul 15, 2010 @ 08:44 AM
At sunrise, just a few days ago, I snapped this photo of a ski track melting out of an alpine snowfield. It made me wonder about the skier who left it behind. Was it a committed ski bum, merely grabbing a quick training run before heading to Las Leñas for a winter of skiing in the Southern Hemisphere? Or was it some inspired weekend warrior who wanted to do something unusual to end their season?
Skiing is one of those things where one moment blends with the next, one day with the next, and one season with the next. Even powder days tend to blend with other powder days, but for some reason I find the last day of the season is often memorable.
A year ago it was a sunny day riding lifts in a ski area so deserted that I left my helmet behind - and avoided the trees - to let the rejuvenating mountain air tickle my ears.
A few years ago life got in the way and my last turns were on bulletproof moguls sometime in February. By July skiing seemed a sadly distant memory.
There was a dreamy season when my last turns stopped just 30 meters from a waiting helicopter after a thousand-meter heliski run at CMH.
A couple of seasons my last turns were long, tired arcs across Alaskan glaciers under the ghostly midnight glow of the Arctic summer during June climbing expeditions.
One year it was a long walk in the high country for the reward of ripping a few beautiful arcs in the middle of summer.
Where were YOUR most memorable last tracks?
Posted by Jane Carswell on Tue, Jul 13, 2010 @ 09:22 AM
by Becca Blay
Switching gears from the heliskiing season to the summer season can often be challenging if you’ve worked hard to keep your skiing legs strong. During
the summer months, the best way to maintain your ski fitness, is by switching gears while riding a bike. Fortunately, watching the Tour de France can not only be entertaining, but it can be extremely motivating as well. Skiing and cycling compliment each other and the benefits of cycling will pay off in face shots during the winter months.
Road biking in the summer helps to strengthen the stabilizer muscles around your knees and ankles. Riding at a base (easy pace) for the first month on the bike, will help to prevent injury in the future. Mountain biking will enhance coordination, agility and core strength. You can cater your rides in order to directly benefit skiing as well. For example, short power efforts on a mountain bike will help build strength that will directly translate to skiing, similar to doing squats. Hill repeats on a road bike, 8-15 min in length, will increase endurance and decrease fatigue throughout the day/week when skiing.
On top of the cardiovascular benefits that you will gain while riding, make sure to tap into a weekly core routine as well. If you have back pain while skiing, the summer months allow you to spend time doing crunches and sit ups, which in turn help relieve back strain. Typically if your back hurts, it is because your core is weak.
It is also important to stay limber in the off season as well. Stretching is key, and while you’re at it, remember that you don’t necessarily have to be at a CMH lodge to enjoy a massage. Treat yourself, you’re body will thank you in the long run.
Posted by Topher Donahue on Thu, Jul 08, 2010 @ 10:29 AM
Behind the coffee machine in the CMH Gothics Lodge hang drawings of early climbers in the Alps navigating glacial crevasses and arresting falls. Photos of climbers from 5 different decades adorn the CMH Bugaboo Lodge. Most CMH lodges are equipped with some kind of climbing wall. Ski guides are often overheard talking about climbing adventures. But the two sports are so different. So what’s up with all the climbing culture in heliskiing?
If you look at the hard skills side of guiding, the rope techniques that are learned while climbing give skiers a powerful tool for exploring technical terrain. And of course, if someone falls in a crevasse or gets stranded on a cliff, climbing skills become an important part of the rescue.
However, these days, the two sports have diversified so radically that many ski guides can work competently and safely without studying the climbing part of the guide certification process. Basic rope skills are taught during ski guide courses and heliskiing is so specialized in its system, and intimate knowledge of the local mountains so important, that any guide must work for several seasons in an area before taking on the responsibilities of a lead heliski guide. So is the climbing, hiking and mountaineering really all that important?
To become a full mountain guide, the top certification in the UIAGM, a guide must show competence as both a skier and mountaineer. From the view through your goggles or out the window of a helicopter or gondola, this might seem unnecessary; but in the bigger mountaineering picture, skis, climbing boots, ropes, and carabiners are all just tools for exploring different parts of the same thing - the mountains.
Exploring the mountains as a climber, hiker or mountaineer teaches guides about subtleties of the mountains that you don’t see while exploring on skis. Mountaineers gain intimate knowledge of things the vast majority of skiers will never experience such as:
- The way ice and snow bonds to rock in different conditions.
- The invisible transitions from snow to ice that happen on big peaks.
- Travelling on snow types that are rarely encountered on skis - like rime, penitentes, and glacial ice.
- Vertical and overhanging snow formations a skier will rarely touch.
- Rock quality and the terrain features that hide under the winter snows.
Perhaps the best answer lies in the perspective a guide gets while climbing up or skiing down mountains. To put a really complicated thing very simply: skiing teaches guides how to look down the mountain and climbing teaches them how to look up.
For the past 45 years CMH has watched the sport change, but one thing has remained the same: the mountains are the best teachers - and the guides, climbers and skiers who explore the mountains in all seasons are the best students.
It's not only our guides who benefit from all season mountain adventures. If you want to add to your perspective of the mountains, check out the CMH Summer Adventures. It's more than you think...
Photo of skiing below the biggest peak in the Selkirks, Sir Sanford, in the CMH Adamants by Topher Donahue.
Posted by Topher Donahue on Thu, Jun 24, 2010 @ 03:52 PM
In some areas, a big part of the game is skiing out of bounds. Heli, backcountry and cross-country skiing all occur outside of a ski area. Millions of skier days each year are logged outside ski areas, but the relationship between ski resorts and the ski terrain outside the resorts varies dramatically. To get a perspective on how different ski cultures and resorts around the world view skiing out-of-bounds, I asked Joe Vallone, a mountain guide with experience in the US and Europe, and Jorg Wilz, a CMH Revelstoke guide with experience in Canada and Europe. Here are their surprising responses:
JW: The terrain/options are vast in Europe whereas in North America it's a lot more limited with the treelines going up to 10,000 feet and the natural forest being close to unskiable. Consequently, the out-of-bounds skier numbers in Europe are huge - it's tough to find untracked terrain that is easy to reach in many places just hours after the lift opens. The popularity/easy access lures EVERYONE with the consequences often dire.
- Europeans have little tolerance for getting locked out of public lands.
- Permanent closures are rare and "backcountry gates" virtually unknown.
- Area boundaries are there to indicate the controlled area but for most part everyone is free to venture into the uncontrolled.
In short, like in so many ways, it's Europe that has become the land of the free.
JV:
Jackson Hole, Mt. Baker, Whistler and Blackcomb, and some other areas have a very liberal open boundary policy. It is amazing to see what goes on there. I guess what I am most impressed with in these areas is the ski patrol knows folks are gonna go out-of-bounds and ski, so they tend to educate rather than try to keep people within the fence.
In areas where ski areas allow out-of-bounds skiing, the community is embracing the culture of the mountain and its dangers. But at the same time the community is very proactive at educating, so the people tend to recognize the risks and respect the terrain more than in areas where out-of-bounds skiing is not allowed.
TD: How much do you use ski resorts while skiing out-of-bounds in Europe?
JV: Almost every day. The trams in Europe are amazing. You can rise 2500 meters in a single lift and be instantly time warped into a glaciated canvas of complexities and difficult route finding. I use lifts all over Europe to gain access to endless landscapes of untracked goods. It is possible to ski huge runs with no marked runs, no trail maps, no ski patrol, no avalanche control and navigate glaciers with giant seracs, crevasses, couloirs and cliffs with an average pitch of 40 degrees.
TD: As a ski guide, are ski areas in the States part of your profession or are you pretty much required to avoid ski areas because of their out of bounds policies?
JV: It is so difficult to make an honest living as a ski guide in the States. I have tried so many ways and so many times to work with resorts locally. No one is interested, I put a bunch of time into launching a guide service out of a Colorado ski area, and I did huge presentations working with the head of patrol and the head ski instructor to get a program started. In the end it was so much energy and so much red tape. I gave up.
Do you feel backcountry access is a valuable element for ski areas to offer?
Out-of-bounds North American style: CMH Bobbie Burns photo by Topher Donahue.
Posted by Mark Piquette on Tue, Jun 22, 2010 @ 09:57 AM
At some point in the ski season, whether on a chairlift, around the lodge after heliskiing or maybe sitting in traffic on I-70 in Colorado..the debate ensues...what are the top ski movies. Not ski movies in the Warren Miller, TGR or Matchstick sense, but Hollywood movies with or about skiing. You might think there are not that many but check out IMDb. Here are my top 5:
5. The Spy Who Loved Me: One of the best opening scenes of the James Bond series. Plus CMH "friend of the show" John Eaves does all the skiing for Roger Moore.
4. Out Cold: Technically about snowboarding but who cares. Some quality "us" vs. "them" plot line along the lines of Caddyshack. Any movie that has "6 Million Dollar Man" star Lee Majors is all good. Plus you can check out a young Zach Galifianakis from "The Hangover". Pro snowboarder Todd Richards puts in a cameo as well. Oh and in Japan this movie was called "Cool Boarder".
3. Better Off Dead: "I want my $2.00". I have seen this movie probably 20 times- which says a lot about me. John Cusack as Lane Meyer skiing the K-12 is pure gold. I use the line "Go that way really fast, if something gets in your way...turn" on every heli-ski trip. Especially useful on Mega Bubba at CMH Galena.
2. Hot Dog: Watching it now the skiing is dated but the overall fun of this movie cannot be denied. Chinese downhill anyone? The cast of characters is classic - Harken Banks, Squirrel Murphy and Rudi Garmisch- what's not to love. Plus Shannon Tweed in hot tub! Watch the ballet skiing scene...who thought that would be a good idea on skis...thankfully that aspect of skiing is gone.
1. Downhill Racer: This is probably the best movie about skiing in my opinion. It came out in 1969 but holds up really well. Robert Redford and Gene Hackman are great as always. The footage of old school racing from Kitzbuhel and Wengen is fantastic.
So there are my top 5 ski movies that end up getting quoted and watched on a regular basis. Who will be the first to chime in that their favorite is "Aspen Extreme"?
Posted by Topher Donahue on Thu, Jun 10, 2010 @ 09:30 AM
What makes a great heli-ski run? The easy answer, of course, is any heli-ski run YOU are on, but for the insiders perspective I asked Steve Chambers, the manager of CMH Revelstoke.
1) Great Snow - At CMH Heli-Skiing, we have runs that range in length from 400m to 2000m and if the snow is perfect it doesn't really matter if you're on a short or long run! This is why people come heli-skiing in the first place. I'm not talking about just any kind of deep snow here. I'm talking about that infamous, dry, interior British Columbia powder. This is the stuff of legend - you can almost feel your skis on a firm base deep in the snowpack while the lightest, fluffiest snow is blowing up into your chest, over your shoulders and yes, even over your head. You will remember this run and this day even years from now. After 16 years of doing this job, January 5, 2009 still stands out as one of those epic days with perfect snow, top to bottom on every run all day long. The best day ever? Perhaps...
2) Fall Line - The helicopter lands, you put on your skis, your heli-ski guide shuffles over to the 'edge' and you look down to the valley floor and see the helicopter, another group at a pickup or the pickup flag itself. There's one thing that stands out - it's STRAIGHT down with no deviations from the fall line! It's also a guide's favorite as well and a common phrase heard when you have the right group is 'see you at the pickup'. Need I say more?
3) Transitions through Terrain - There is something to be said about the run that begins high in the alpine and makes its way through the sub-alpine and then down below treeline to the valley floor. You know the type of run - we're talking about the mega-classic, long CMH heliskiing runs that give you all the goods. There's the high glacier landing and open turns followed by the sparse trees at treeline where you feel the snow getting a little deeper and then the finale into the old growth trees and that deep powder. It's amazing to see all that type of terrain & snow in one run.
4) Incredible Scenery & Location - Some runs just have a quality about them even before you make a single turn! Take another helicopter flight into another landing and wait for the silence after the machine leaves. Look around and try to imagine another place like this in the mountains anywhere on the planet. Now try to imagine 100's of places like this at CMH's 11 areas. I still have runs that leave this impression on me even after all these years - you never get tired of being there again and seeing the reactions on the guests faces when they have that 1st experience.
5) The Right Group - Not every run in heli-skiing is going to have that perfect powder but with the right crew and the right attitude, it doesn't even matter. I have had some truly 'dud' runs over the years that were a blast nonetheless because of the people I was skiing with. These are the kind of people that can make any situation seem fun and enjoyable and regardless of the snow quality, they're having a good time. It is only skiing after all and is probably a better alternative to what you could be doing instead...
6) History & Reputation - Every CMH operation has 'that' run - the one everyone talks about because of its history, legends attached to it, famous photos attributed to it and so forth. Just getting out at the top of a run like that gives you goose bumps even before you make that 1st turn. These are the quintessential heli-ski runs that have many of the above elements and then some.
7) First Tracks - What can I say? This is the selfish part of the blog where, as a guide, I get to rant about how much fun it is to get 1st tracks - on every run. There's something about that untouched blanket of snow in front of you that just makes for a great run. If you're right behind your guide and just out of their tracks to either side, guess what? It's all fresh right there as well! This is what most of us think about when we picture ourselves heli-skiing anyway - making our way down some untracked piece of mountain real estate and leaving our own little impression upon the terrain.
Photo by Topher Donahue
What makes a great heli-ski run for you? Share your thoughts...
Posted by Jane Carswell on Tue, Jun 08, 2010 @ 01:00 PM
Our founder, Hans Gmoser, was a passionate skier and mountaineer. He was inspired at a young age by the local Catholic Priest, of all people, to spend time in the mountains. This pasttime ignited a passion in Hans and he committed his life to persuing that passion. Now Hans is remembered as many things but most notably as the father of heliskiing and a founding member of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides as well as a world-class climber with remarkable first ascents to his name.
Today our CMH Heli-Skiing guides share Hans' passions and dreams and are making history of their own. I asked one such guide, Dave Gauley about his life as a skier and who were the heroes that inspired him. Here's what he had to say:
JC: Dave, when did you start skiing and what got you into the sport?
DG: I started skiing when I was about 6 years old in Rimouski, Quebec. I started because my friends were doing it and I got some hand-me-down equipment from one of my cousins.
JC: As a young skier, who were the athletes and skiers that inspired you?
DG: The skiers that inspired me were at first Scot Schmidt (the first ever professional extreme skier), then Trevor Peterson, Jean Marc Boivin, Pierre Tardivel and the likes.
JC: There are some pretty hot skiers out there these days that are pushing the envelope on technology and technique. In your opinion, who are the skiers and riders that are the heroes for the next generation?
DG: Shane McConkey was an inspiration. I had a chance to ski with Shane a few times. He was very talented and always thinking of new ways to advance the sport. Many, if not all of today's performance powder ski designs were his brainchild. That footage of him mounting ski bindings on waterskis, and ripping an Alaskan face to convince people that the spatula design was worthy is something i will never forget.
I am more inspired by the big mountain riders like Seth Morrison, than any jibbers. But Jon Olson is pretty impressive, in that he can dominate the jibbing world, and may compete in the next olympics in alpine racing.
JC: Did you always aspire to be a Heli-Ski Guide for CMH or like other young boys did you really want to be a fireman?
DG: I dropped out of university where i was pursuing a law degree, to move to Whistler to chase a dream. I watched ski movies, and wanted to be one of those people in the movies. I made that happen and had a career as a professional skier chasing first descents around the world for about a decade. During that time I had a chance to go to CMH for a photo shoot in the Gothics with Brad White. I saw what was going on and thought "This is a job?". I became a guide over the next 5 years, moved to Chamonix to guide for a year, then got started with CMH in 2000.
JC: And now, what do you want to be when you grow up?
DG: I don't want to grow up. I have achieved everything i have ever put my mind to. I just have to figure out what the next challenge is.
What about you? Who are your ski heroes and where has your passion for the mountains taken you?
Ski with Dave: Dave Gauley is Assistant Area Manager at CMH Cariboos and the brainchild behind CMH's Steep Weeks held each April in the Cariboos.