GMOSER PASSES: Father of heli-skiing dies at 73
All of the 80 adventurers at the party were in some way instrumental in making heli skiing the revered pursuit that it is today. A serendipitous series of events started the fire. In the early ’60s, the owner of an outdoor shop in Calgary, Alberta, Ethan Compton, gave $200 credit to a young Austrian mountaineer named Hans Gmoser so he could buy equipment to start a guide service. Gmoser had moved to Canada to escape the privations of post-war Europe and skiing became his business. But in his heart Gmoser was a mountaineer with the first ascent of North America’s biggest face—Denali’s 14,000-foot Wickersham Wall—to his credit.
The catalyst for using helicopters was a geologic engineer named Art Patterson, a skier from Calgary who worked with helicopters and started daydreaming about ski access. He approached Compton to find a mountain guide. Compton recommended Gmoser, “In hopes the project might allow the $200 debt to be repaid,” Compton [FC]recalls.
Gmoser took the bait. What followed was the Big
Bang of heli skiing. It took 10 flights to get 20 skiers up Alberta’s Goat Glacier in a tiny Bell 47. The breakable crust toyed with the era’s skis. The group made a total of one run. But it was the maiden voyage and every creamy helicopter-accessed run since can trace its ancestry to that day. In 1965, Gmoser started what became Canadian Mountain Holidays and developed the well-oiled systems used by heli ski operators everywhere.
While Gmoser, 72, is considered the father of heli skiing, he is adamant that his role was just a fraction of the innovation. To show his appreciation, Gmoser took Compton, at 88 the oldest skier in the group, on a private heli tour of his favorite runs in the Bugaboos.
But back at the lodge, it was Rudi Gertch, a Swiss guide who immigrated to Canada in the ’60s to work for CMH, who exemplified the spirit of the week. He turned and blurted, “Taking you heli skiing is like feeding caviar to a pig!”
It was meant in welcome, rather than offence, from someone whose snout has been buried in Beluga since the beginning.