This January, we invited Ellie Crabb to take part in an all-women’s Powder Intro heli-skiing trip. Ellie skis resort runs almost daily, but until recently, she’d never been heli-skiing.
She said ‘yes’, and in one week went from nervous powder newbie to rediscovering what it means to have fun on skis.
Ellie is an avid skier, mountain biker, and self-described ‘fatlete’ who is a fresh, rising voice in the adventure industry.
The 30-year-old documents her experiences on skis and mountain bikes for her growing online community, posting helpful tips, mindset musings, pops of humour, and pure, totally infectious hype.
“Take up space in the outdoors. We all belong here,” is her mantra. Through sharing what that looks like for her, Ellie has become the ultimate hype woman for anyone who has ever doubted if they fit in on snow or on trails.
Here’s her experience heli-skiing for the first time, from start to finish.
Trip details
Who: Ellie joined six other women who’d travelled from Canada, the U.S., and Europe to try heli-skiing for the first time in a low-pressure, supportive group environment.
Where: They spent five days at CMH Bugaboos, a remote luxury lodge in British Columbia that’s known as the birthplace of heli-skiing. Their stay included guided heli-skiing, transportation to and from the lodge, chef-prepared meals, accommodation in a modern room, and access to amenities like a sauna, hot tub, and an expertly tended bar.
What: CMH’s Powder Intro trips are designed for strong intermediate to advanced resort skiers or snowboarders who have considered heli-skiing but have never experienced true backcountry powder conditions. Three expert guides introduced Ellie’s group to low-stress terrain at a relaxed to moderate pace, offering tips, tricks and encouragement to take their skills to the next level.

How good do you need to be to go heli-skiing?
Am I good enough to heli-ski? What if I’m slow and hold everyone else back?
Like most skiers or riders who haven’t yet tried heli-skiing, these were the types of questions running through Ellie’s mind before she took the leap.
She was filled with a mix of raw nerves and a “jittery kind of excitement” the day before her trip started.
“I am SO nervous,” she said. Travelling solo added to her butterflies. “I think for me it’s a mix of being on my own in the group and not knowing anyone, plus the anxiety of holding strangers back if I’m the slowest. When I imagine heli-skiing, I’m imagining pro athletes and not just little old me learning to ski as an adult.”
Yet to an outsider, Ellie’s on-snow credentials don’t exactly leave one doubting her ability to handle herself on skis.
Last season, she logged 106 days across 10 resorts, and she’s an ambassador for Resorts of the Canadian Rockies, as well as Panorama Mountain Resort. She rips on groomed terrain (like, rips) with palpable confidence.
“I love a high edge angle on a flat icy slope,” she said. “Give me a race ski and well-groomed run and I’ll have the time of my life.”
She started skiing as a kid in Scotland, her home country.
“It was a way to spend time with my dad who loved to ski. We would head up to the Scottish ski hills and have a great day together.”
Despite having so many days on skis already underfoot, Ellie still found herself wrestling with niggling self-doubt before her first heli-skiing trip.
For Ellie, multiple factors were contributing to that feeling.
First, she didn’t take a formal ski lesson until two years ago. So, although she’s been skiing for most of her life, she says she feels relatively new to it in many ways.
“I didn’t take lessons in Scotland, so you would catch me doing some high-speed pizzas down the hills,” she joked. “Then when I was 19, I moved to the Italian Alps and again didn’t take lessons. Here you would find me hiding out at the bars instead of actually skiing. Then I moved to Canada and found out, ‘Yeah, I can ski,’ meant something different. So, a few seasons ago I took myself back to the green runs and learned skiing again from scratch at the age of 28. It turns out breaking bad habits is harder than doing it right in the first place!”
Also on Ellie’s mind? She has less experience navigating powder than she does on groomed runs. It’s something she was keen to remedy.
“Growing up skiing in Scotland, ‘powder’ isn’t something we have the luxury of. I’ve had two great resort days for powder, but nothing like this! I can’t wait to experience it.”
Goal: feel brave, have fun (and let out a ‘woooo!’)
Before loading into the helicopter for the first time, Ellie shared her hopes for the trip.
“I’m just really hoping to come out of this braver,” she said. “I love carving a piste and ripping some turns, but I want to come out of this season a more well-rounded skier who says ‘yes’ to more experiences. This is to that end.”
The opportunity to level up her skills and grow her confidence is one way to fuel bravery, she said.
“Whilst I’m not imagining this to be ski school, I’m hoping being around the guides who know better than me and watching how they ski things will help me come out of this with the confidence to tackle more varied terrain when I’m back at the resort.”
“I feel when you’re progressing as a skier your ego goes through peaks and troughs,” Ellie added. “Last season I thought I could tackle anything, and now I’ve progressed more, and I realize how little I actually know. Truthfully, my confidence has taken a dive this season so much so that it’s really impacted my love of the sport.”
To build back that love, she’s making a conscious effort to focus on fun.
“It used to really annoy me when people would say, ‘The most important thing is that you’re out there having fun.’ I would find it patronizing. I’d think, ‘But I can be good; I have the capacity to be a great skier. It’s in me and I know it is, and I will not be held back by ‘having fun.’”
“Well, now I’ve realized how important just getting out and having fun is. Not every day can be about chasing that perfect turn and dialling that perfect technique. It’s not good for your relationship with skiing, your self-confidence, or actually conducive to improving in the long run.”
“So, on this trip I want to inject FUN back into my skiing. I want to experience some turns that may not be perfect technically but that feel great. I want to understand what a day on the mountain giggling (and maybe even wooing) is like.”
What, exactly, is a ‘woo’ to Ellie? Well, in all her bluebird, best-ever days on snow, she’s never unleashed an unbridled, top-of-the-lungs, joyous ‘wooo!’ while skiing.
“Okay this is really strange, but I can’t ‘woo,’” she admitted. “I’m so jealous of Canadians who seem to whoop and cheer all the time no matter what they’re doing! I hear them hooting and hollering on the slopes and the mountain bike trails and I just can’t do it. Although my personality may be a bit more … Wednesday Addams … I want to ‘woo.’ I want heli-skiing to turn me into a ‘woo’ girl.”

Expectations vs. reality
Once Ellie’s trip was underway, the nervousness she’d been feeling began to gradually fall away.
Arrival day began with a welcome lunch, introductions and a thorough safety briefing. Then, Ellie’s group loaded into the helicopter and eased into things with a single run.
“I found the first day a little overwhelming just with meeting everyone and all the safety briefing,” Ellie said. “But I’m glad we did one run the first day because it gave me a little intro on what to expect.”
The more she skied during the following days, the more she relaxed.
“The first full day of skiing I was so nervous and yet the guides were so nice and really great at making me feel safe and secure. I was doing terrain I never thought I’d be capable of. It was even type-one fun!” she joked about unexpectedly finding herself being fully in the moment while skiing and enjoying it.
I felt my confidence skyrocketing.
Ellie Crabb, Powder Intro participant
CMH guides Teresa, Christjan, and Randy helped set a welcoming, low-pressure tone for the group, Ellie said.
“Teresa was so kind and patient with us. She picked lines that she knew we could handle and made us feel safe. Christjan was at the back, helping any of us who were struggling choose alternative routes, offering tips and advice, and helping us when we fell. Randy was amazing as well. I loved the way he framed his tips because it never came across as patronizing, and he was always complimenting improvement.”
Halfway through her trip, Ellie was feeling at ease and found herself tackling things she didn’t know she could.
“I was way more relaxed, and I felt my confidence skyrocketing,” she said. “I was really able to shake off the, ‘What if I’m not good enough?’ hyper-fixation on perfect technique and just be proud of myself that I got down the hill and had fun doing it—which is huge for me! It’s exactly what I needed.”

Ellie’s nerves briefly resurfaced later in the week when she learned that snowy weather meant they would be spending the day skiing in the trees.
“I was nervous and didn’t know if I’d be able to do it, but once again I surprised myself,” she said. “I was so scared of trees after an incident last year, but not only did I do trees, I did trees in steeper terrain. That’s a huge moment for me and I’m so proud of myself. I never would have attempted any of it without this course.”
Do you ‘woo’?
The burning question everyone wants to know: did heli-skiing break Ellie’s ‘woo’ dry spell?
Halfway through the trip, the probability wasn’t looking good.
“I’ve done it internally,” she reported. “I don’t think I’m a ‘woo’ girl after all. But everyone else in my group has been doing lots of whooping for me. I’ve been singing a lot of Chappell Roan and Macklemore as I descend the slopes!”
But then, on one of the final days arcing turns among the Bugaboos’ granite spires, it happened.
Midway down a wide-open alpine run, the sun casting sparkles across the snow, a ‘woo!’ escaped Ellie’s lips. At first, it didn’t register. Her GoPro helmet cam caught the moment of surprise when she realized she’d officially become a ‘woo’ girl.
“Oh my God, my first woo!” you can hear her shout excitedly in the footage. Watch the moment:
Feeling supported
The atmosphere of the all-women’s Powder Intro group is a major reason Ellie said she was able to let go of everything that was holding her back from shouting her joy to the sky.
“My group has been so supportive. I’m so grateful to them all. We all cheered each other on and looked after each other. What a great group of great ladies.”
In her experience, the vibe is different in an all-women’s group, Ellie said.
“I have so many wonderful men in my life, so this isn’t a diss on them. But it’s a different atmosphere. I swear the way men and women work through fear in skiing and push past it is just different. In my experience, men tend to be able to just go ‘send it’ more whereas women take a second to look at something and hype each other up to send it. Women’s groups have been such a supportive place for me for encouraging, learning and feeling safe…but also a great place for feeling fear and expressing that fear.”
Being on her own in the lodge turned out to be way easier than she’d imagined, she added. Before the trip began, she wasn’t sure if she’d have someone to sit with during meals. As it turned out, she departed with an entire lodge full of new friends.
“I was hopeful that I’d be able to sit with people at dinner and stuff so I wasn’t totally alone, but it is so friendly. Not only has our women’s intro group really bonded, but we’ve bonded with the rest of the other groups too. There are always friendly people to chat to and be with.”

Officially addicted
Ellie achieved her hope of bringing fun back into her skiing and is already dreaming of her next trip in the heli.
She has some encouraging words for anyone who might be doubting their own abilities to try it.
“This trip was amazing. I had the best time. If you’re as nervous about heli-skiing as I was, then I definitely recommend it,” she said.
“This experience has helped me realize that what I preach is there in practice: skiing is for everyone! And that means all types of skiing.”
“Within my group there was a huge range of age, size, shape, ability, and yet we were all just there for each other. Whether you’re a powder hound or a groomer girlie, there is a place for you.”
Follow Ellie and see more video and photos from her trip @crabbtacular on Instagram and TikTok.
Join a trip
Powder Intro trips (women’s-only, as well as men’s/women’s mixed) are offered at multiple CMH destinations.
If Ellie’s experience has inspired you, reach out to learn more about joining a trip and boosting your powder skills.

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