Bugaboo Lodge :

"Duck down! Now's the time to lose them." I watch the group of sexagenarian hikers sprint ahead of us through an alpine flower meadow of BC's Columbia Mountains until they're mere specks of fleece jackets and hiking poles in the forest green. All day, my friend and fellow writer Don George and I have been trailing the geriatric athletes as we traverse snowfields and high ridges, up craggy escarpments to sapphire lakes, over hills lush and emerald and shrieking with Indian paintbrush and glacier lilies. In all directions, snow-white, jagged-blue mountains stretch into the sky with nothing but pure wildness between us and them. All day I've wanted to yell out to the group, "Stop!  What's your hurry?" 

After all, this is a place where racing ahead should land you in jail. Or at least on a reality show.

"They're earnest hikers," says Don. "They have hiking poles. Why are you collecting rocks?"

"If we have to dash through paradise, I'm taking some of it with me." I gaze beyond tinkling ribbons of mountain brooks and can hardly see our group at all anymore. "Let's just sit by this stream and enjoy the view. If we're alone, we might have an adventure we can write about."

"Like a grizzly roaring at us out of the woods?"

"Yeah, or Julie Andrews, singing at us."

I can well imagine Julie Andrews here. Although she probably didn't take a helicopter up to her mountain meadow like we did. Today is the first of our three-day heli-hiking adventure with Banff-based Canadian Mountain Holidays, and despite the overambitious pace set by the group, I'm ecstatic. For one thing, I hadn't anticipated the rides up here to be so overwhelmingly heady, so death-defying and, well, so fun. Before the helicopter landed to pick us up, the guides had carefully instructed our group of ten to heli-huddle-which meant we all crouched down together grinning our faces off-as the 5,500-pound Bell 212 Twin Huey came in for a landing four feet from us. After two minutes of whooping blades, hurricane winds, and a deafening thump-thump-thump, we were all piled inside and lifting into the sky. 

THE FIRST FLIGHT
The first flight took us up to the remote Bugaboo Lodge, a chalet set majestically facing the Bugaboo granite spires. On our next flight-to begin our first hike-jaws dropped as we banked over a forest of lodgepole pines and the winding jade waters of the Columbia River, then crested over a razor-sharp icy ridge into a panorama of snow-clad peaks splicing into the dome of cobalt sky. The mountains were massive up close, cradling crumpled blue glaciers in their folds. All around us was magnificence and we were flying right into it.

Five minutes later, the helicopter dropped down and left us in a vast and silent alpine wilderness. Across a valley was a massive glacier; beneath us were acres of splinted shale, as if someone had thrown a Greek dinner party and smashed all the plates. Across another valley, lying perfectly still on an unnamed mountain, was a glacier lake-a  tarn-of the deepest turquoise. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I kept thinking we'd landed in another time, in the world as it existed eons ago, before humans were even an idea, a thought on the wind, before the far-fetched incident of animal life began. 

In stunned silence all we could do was gawk. "Time for a walk?' said our guide Paul.  We all nodded.

Paul is tall, sandy-haired, knowledgeable and thoughtful and somehow keeps ending up in my photos as he surveys the crystal green lakes while I survey him.

Oh darn. There's that Manhattan lady Margo again-Don and I have now caught up to the group-and she's getting in the way of my perfect shot of Paul and the lake. Margo is asking Paul another question about the history of the rocks. Earlier, she'd told me about her golf clubs. Don and I are a little out of place here, noticing the conversations usually involve real estate and retirement funds. But that's okay. These friendly and mostly retired Americans all seem to be as euphoric as I am. One guy, a heavily perspiring Miami attorney even plunged his overheated naked body into a near-frozen lake. This isn't a Florida bog, we warn him. But Miami man pops out of the water beaming. "Whooopeeee!" he shouts.

THE INVENTION OF HELI-HIKING
This must be the kind of experience that Austrian-born Hans Gmoser-the founder of modern mountaineering in Canada-had in mind in 1959 when he started Canadian Mountain Holidays. Soon after forming the company, he decided to incorporate helicopters into ....