To know mountain guiding in Canada, one must trace its roots back to Europe.
From the Alps came Canada’s first generation of mountain guides, including notable Austrians and the since heralded ‘Swiss Mafia,’ among others.
Theirs is a legacy carved in rock, snow and ice, on which integral organizations like the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides (ACMG) and Heli-Cat Canada were founded.
Many winters ago, 10 of these influential guides donned the CMH logo on their chest and became known as the original group of CMH guides.
They left Europe in the decades after World War II, often with a trade to their name that the Canadian government sought, searching for the mountain adventure that was ripe in the western reaches of a country very much in its infancy.
Word of CMH and heli-skiing travelled quickly in European circles, with guides following other guides across the Atlantic. In addition to their prowess in the mountains, they brought grit and determination to Hans Gmoser’s heli-skiing vision, driving trucks, chopping wood, and helping build the very lodges heli-skiing called home.
In celebration of our sixtieth year, we share their stories and their monumental impact on Canadian mountain culture.
Hans Gmoser
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… the Canadian Rockies have a magnetic fascination, and as I look down from the peaks I get the feeling that a man should have wings to carry him where his dreams go. Since we are not angels, a pair of skis is a good substitute.
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A pair of skis carried Hans Gmoser a hell of a long way. And back again. Hans defined the heli-skiing industry and changed skiing forever. Though it was never the hatchings of some long, premeditated plan. Hans was asked by a couple of ski tourers about using a helicopter for skiing. He didn’t dismiss the idea outright but didn’t immediately chase it either.
Similarly, his coming to Canada in the first place wasn’t necessarily planned, at least not more than a few minutes after running into his lifelong friend, Leo Grillmair, on the streets of Linz, Austria. The promise of mountain adventure in the Canadian West was enough to convince Hans to set sail.
It was in the Bugaboos where, as mentioned, a few ski touring clients inquired about using a helicopter for skiing. Hans brought the idea to Jim Davies, an experienced mountain pilot who he had worked with before, asking if he could use a helicopter to take skiers up a mountain. Jim replied plainly, “I know I could.”
READ: The ski trip that started it all
This marked the birth of CMH, as well as heli-skiing in Canada. This was significant in its own right, but the immensity of impact can only be appreciated with a wider aperture.
With the coming of heli-skiing came the formation of mountain guiding in Canada. Many of the first guides were from European nations, those rich in mountain culture. They created the ACMG, of which Hans and Leo were founding members, with Hans chairing the first standards committee and developing the initial course curriculum.
And as heli-skiing grew, many young Canadians were able to aspire to make a living in the mountains. Canadians learned to see mountains not as barriers to the railway or highways but as destinations in and of themselves. This change happened slowly, but today most heli-skiing guides are Canadian.
An staggering accomplishment, one that reverberates even today. But Hans was loath to take any credit on his own. “I get a lot of credit, but in actuality, in truth, I’ve just been a very lucky person who met loyal, excellent people who made all of this happen,” he remarked, deflecting what he deemed undue praise.
Leo Grillmair
Leo Grillmair is a name that echoes loudly across the Canadian West and beyond. Fitting, for such a gregarious, all-out personality. Born in Ansfelden, Austria, and growing up in the shadow of World War II, Leo chased solace in the Austrian Alps by both rope and skis.
With a labour shortage looming at the war’s end, Leo, a journeyman plumber, heard about a program paying for skilled tradesmen to head to Canada. With the ink still wet on his paperwork, Leo bumped into his pal Hans Gmoser. As the story goes, Leo convinced Hans to hop the Atlantic to explore Canada’s Western mountains. The origins of heli-skiing were wrought by pipes and wrenches.
Their Canadian exploits and misadventures were many, but it was the spires of the Bugaboos erupting for rolling blankets of ice that captivated both Leo and Hans. The birthplace of a snow-filled dream: heli-skiing.
True ‘partners in crime,’ or skiing, rather, Leo managed CMH’s ski touring trips while Hans grew the budding heli-skiing aspect of the business. Leo later invested financially and turned his focus to CMH’s operations, including the construction of Bugaboo Lodge. Who do you think did the plumbing? To this day, each CMH area has two guides who are full-time Area Managers and Assistant Area Managers, much like Leo modelled in CMH’s earliest days.
He spent 22 years as Area Manager and lead guide in the Bugaboos, even meeting his wife Lynne there while she worked as a cook. It was a family affair, where every guest was a friend in their home. For all his talents scaling rock and arcing turns on skis, it was his singing, yodelling and storytelling with guests that was his deepest legacy.
READ MORE: Remembering Leo Grillmair
Bob Geber
Hailing from Lauf, Germany, Robert (Bob) Geber was another young man for whom professional guiding was relegated to the stuff of dreams, especially given the looming spectre of the war. So, to say the early days of heli-skiing, which included all manners of work, from shovelling dirt to building lodges and guiding for weeks on end, represented a kind of freedom for Bob and his colleagues is no exaggeration.
Bob hopped in with CMH in 1966, just as the proverbial rotors started turning in the Bugaboos. That led to a CMH career lasting over 40 seasons, at one point the longest tenure in the company. He worked as a guide but also gained a breadth of experience across CMH’s operations. When Radium Glacier Skiing and CMH came together in 1973, he was picked to manage the operation, doing so until 1981.
Naturally, he also lent his talents to public relations and marketing, skiing well outside the assumed boundaries of a mountain guide, as was and still is often the case at CMH. But as you might expect for someone who guided for over four decades, Bob lit up most when getting to share lefts and rights with guests through Canadian cold smoke, again and again.
Lloyd “Kiwi” Gallagher
Born in, as you might have guessed, New Zealand, Lloyd “Kiwi” Gallagher was one of CMH’s first employees. And investors, as it happens. His entire life savings of $5,000 went into the construction of the Cariboo Lodge, along with a dollop (or five) of heart, soul, blood and tears.
Lloyd spent his early 20s climbing at the bottom of the world. Before long, the ranges of the Canadian West, along with the storied exploits of Conrad Kain, ensnared the young Kiwi’s imagination and he bought a one-way ticket to Canada at the age of 25.
He had barely strolled down Banff’s main street before hearing about Hans Gmoser. In March 1966, he had a job interview with Hans. “I was a mechanic by trade and Hans saw I had a strong back, a weak mind, and a warped sense of humour–he knew I’d make a good guide.” – Kiwi once recalled.
Eventually, Hans nudged Kiwi towards becoming a mountain guide. For a man who started in the early sawmill camp at the base of the Bugaboos, driving snowmobiles and chopping wood, in addition to being a rather novice skier in his early days, this marked a long journey dedicated to the mountains.
In the CMH tradition, Lloyd became manager of the Cariboo Lodge while doing a big chunk of the guiding in the area in its early years. In fact, he helped develop CMH’s first heli-hiking program in the Cariboos.
Affable and accomplished, Lloyd earned many awards, including the “Outstanding Achievement Award for Search and Rescue in Canada,” Honorary Membership by the ACMG, and a Summit of Excellence award. But what truly makes Lloyd a legend? “Lloyd Gallagher is a person you like and want to be like.” – Robert Sanford, one of the foremost historians of life in the Canadian West, put so concisely.
Rudi Gertsch
Wengen, Switzerland rears exceptional skiers. It is the birthplace of Rudi Gertsch, and Herb and Peter, after all. The son of a guide, Rudi grew up in the shadow of the Eiger, one of the Alps’ most famed faces. Canada came calling, however. Its wilderness pulled at his adventurer’s heart, and he emigrated in 1966 with his brother.
Good thing he did. He found work with CMH, right as the company was getting going. Rudi’s guiding experience in Switzerland and fleet-footedness on skis was instrumental in helping teach Hans and Leo how to guide skiers, as they were more familiar with guiding climbers. Working together, they laid the blueprints for safe, successful heli-ski guiding that have evolved into the systematized procedures and protocols that are industry-standard today.
Like Herb, Rudi was instrumental in elevating Canadian guiding, working as the ACMG’s technical director for a decade. Rudi represented Canada at the International Federation of Mountain Guides Association’s (IFMGA) annual meeting in 1973, keen to convince the European powerhouses of mountain guiding that Canada’s standards were up to snuff. This was Canada’s first IFMGA meeting, and the country was unofficially welcomed as the first non-European member.
Alongside Hans, Peter Schlunegger, Roger Madson, Don Vockeroth and Mike Wiegele, Rudi also helped establish Heli-Cat Canada to address heavy-hitting issues like land tenure, licensing, safety standards, operations methods, and environmental stewardship. It remains an integral body today.
In 1974, Rudi struck out on his own: Purcell Heli-Skiing, based out of Golden, British Columbia. This was another chapter in the arc of Canadian heli-skiing, with Rudi choosing to run day heli-skiing out of the small town as compared to Hans’ mountain lodge model. Still, it was skiing that mattered most for both men. Rudi, and then his son Jeff (a third-generation guide) etched more than 250 ski runs across nearly half a million acres of backcountry tenure. In 2021, CMH’s parent company, Alterra Mountain Company, acquired Purcell Heli-Skiing, representing a return to roots for Rudi, bringing heli-skiing’s visionary pioneers together once again.
READ MORE: CMH Announces CMH Purcell
Herb Bleuer
Herb came to Canada in the late 1960s from Wengen, Switzerland, by way of New Zealand, where he’d been teaching skiing. Though he was a quiet, introspective man, his are the very threads by which mountain culture in Canada are woven.
He was hired to work avalanche control at the Granduc Mine near Stewart, British Columbia. A few winters prior, a large slide had hit the mine camp, killing 28 people. Naturally, he had brought his skis with him, so he spent his days off sketching squiggles on the area’s uncharted slopes, getting a taste for Canadian snowflakes.
Later, he worked as a ski instructor in Lake Louise along (with Peter Schlunegger, we might add) before taking up a position as a guide at CMH Bugaboos. Herb ceaselessly advocated for guiding’s professionalization. In fact, it was partly his dedication to this initiative that saw the Ministry of Parks in British Columbia mandate the ACMG standard to guide in the province.
A longtime examiner for the ACMG, Bleuer brought the exacting standards and relentless professionalism of Switzerland’s guiding culture to Canada, helping usher the evolution from heli-skiing’s juvenile beginnings to the systemized and sophisticated modern era. In 2007, he was awarded Honorary Membership by the ACMG, its highest designation.
Peter Schlunegger
Peter Schlunegger is a fourth-generation Swiss guide. Talk about pedigree, eh? His great grandfather, Karl, was one of the first guides working in Rogers Pass in 1899. Nearly seven decades later, Peter picked up the torch, or ski pole, as it were.
Peter stopped off in Banff after a guiding trip to New Zealand. Working as a ski instructor at Lake Louise seemed a half-decent idea for a stop-gap job. A year later, he got talking to one Hans Gmoser and was offered a guiding position at CMH. Another member of the influential ‘Swiss Mafia’ had joined heli-skiing’s cause.
His prowess in the mountains was a boon for Hans and CMH, lending the rigour and excellence synonymous with the Swiss designation to the nascent days of heli-skiing and mountain guiding in Canada. He guided extensively across the Rockies, throughout British Columbia and led a group of glaciologists to Canada’s highest peak, Mount Logan. Even at a glimpse, his body of work is stout.
In 1978, Peter set out to make tracks of his own and founded Selkirk Tangiers Heli-Skiing in Revelstoke. Though now known as a powder mecca the world over, Revelstoke was not yet a snow-seeker capital. Peter saw potential, however, in the form of snow. Tons of it. And terrain that nearly begged for skis. This vision was surely part of what contributed to the metamorphosis of this small logging and railway town, making Peter a heli-skiing trailblazer in his own right.
During his career, Peter acted as an examiner for budding mountain guides within the ACMG, cementing the long-held mountain guide tradition of instilling lessons learned in the generations to come.
Sepp Renner
Another of the famed ‘Swiss Mafia’, Sepp Renner grew up near Switzerland’s Matterhorn. Like many Europeans of that time, Canada represented a wild land teeming with adventure. With his Swiss mountain guiding license in hand and imagination filled with the words of Jack London, his favourite writer, Sepp headed west.
Sepp guided for CMH for 14 winters, helping to evolve the art (and science) of heli-skiing guiding in industry circles, the residue of which can still be seen. And the industry changed dramatically in its earliest years, to say little of the evolution of ski technology at the time.
“I don’t know why we never thought about wider skis,” he once said. “We wanted extra flotation, so we used longer skis. Sometimes you ignore the obvious, eh?”
Nearly his entire life has been spent guiding in the mountains, and for those who have had the privilege of sharing a rope or skiing with him, the fluidity of his movements is a testament to such a life.
When family began to pull at the hem of Sepp’s jacket, he left CMH and began managing Assiniboine Lodge. It was fitting for him to have found his own Matterhorn in the Canadian West. He and his wife Barb ran the lodge for over three decades, raising their family there.
Ernst Buehler
The story of CMH, or heli-skiing as a whole, can’t be told without mention of Ernst Buehler. Ernie was a character by any definition. With an infectious giggle that could (and did) fill an entire lodge and an ever-twinkling eye, Ernie came to Canada from Switzerland on a passionate search for powder. And he found it.
For over 40 years, Ernie guided clients through the mountains with a calm, masterful approach. He also served as manager of CMH Cariboos. His mixed role as both guide and manager created an intimate link between out-of-lodge and in-lodge departments, which still defines CMH operations. It would be no exaggeration to say most skiers and riders left the Cariboos counting Ernie as a dear friend.
Swiss by birth, Canadian by choice, Ernie played a mean alpenhorn. If you’re out in the Cariboos and lend an ear to the prevailing wind, you might even hear his memory blasting notes out on high in the hills that brought him such deep-seated, laugh-line-wrinkling joy.
READ: In Memoriam: Ernst Buehler 1945-2017, Mountain Guide & Friend
Frank Stark
Frank Stark left the Austrian Alps in search of the sort of rugged, mountainous wilderness Canada promised.
Landing first in Quebec, Frank loaded up a car and pointed its headlights west, crawling across the Canadian prairies. He took jobs in logging camps so he could keep fuelling that little car across this massive country. As the story goes, when the Canadian Rockies finally came into view of his windshield, he pulled over and kissed the pavement.
His guiding exploits in Canada were many, including guiding with Hans Gmoser on Mount Robson, the Rockies’ highest peak, in the late 1950s. And it was Hans who convinced him to come out of an early, injury-induced retirement to guide heli-skiing at the Bugaboos with CMH in the 1970s. Broken kneecap be damned, Frank strapped on a pair of skis. He was made by the mountains and made for the mountains.
Guiding's later generations
The coming of the first generation of guides to Canada ushered in an entire industry, leaving ski tracks for future guides to follow. The next generation of CMH guides followed closely behind the original ten, including notable names like Kobi Wyss, Colani Bezzola and Pierre Lemire.
Kobi, another import from Switzerland, worked briefly as a millwright in Lake Louise before his adventurous spirit saw him guide for CMH for 45 years. Again, his roles at CMH were numerous and varied, including operations manager and radio technician.
Colani made his way to Canada from (you guessed it) Switzerland explicitly to guide for Hans and CMH. Starting in 1978, he managed CMH Bobbie Burns and oversaw the construction of its lodge in 1981. In 1991, Hans asked Colani to assume the role of Mountain Safety Manager for CMH, a move that was an integral part of the development of mountain safety for both CMH and the wider guiding community.
Craving the thin air of the mountains, Pierre left his native Quebec with but a few English words in his pocket and visions of exploring the Canadian West. He started guiding at CMH in 1975, carving out a career on skis until his retirement in 2011. Between 1980 and 1990, he was an Examiner for the ACMG, which marked the formalization of his already prolific mentorship of many guides.
By 1977, nearly 30 guides made up the CMH roster. Like those that came before, they continued to shape Canada’s heli-skiing, mountain rescue, avalanche safety, and guiding industries. Today, more than 150 men and women guide for CMH — the largest guiding team of any heli-skiing operation in the world.
The past, present and future of Canadian guiding
The enduring traditions of European guiding culture, stewarded by guides like those who joined Hans in CMH’s earliest years, are the ink with which much of Canadian guiding’s foundations were written.
Their experience and the industry they helped create gave many young Canadians permission to dream of becoming guides. The first heli-skiing guides were European, but today most are Canadian. This is no small thing for a young, upstart country rich in mountains and wilderness.
But when we think of those early names—Hans, Leo, Bob, Kiwi, Rudi, Herb, Peter, Sepp, Ernst and Frank, among others—they were all chasing the adventure they craved in the marrow of their bones, united by a love and reverence for the mountains above all else.
Though their achievements are many, it is how they shared that appreciation for the mountains, both here in Canada and the world over, that might be their most enduring legacy.
2 Responses
Many great memories with Ernst, Leo, Hans, and Daniel Audibert in the Cariboos, Gothics (we were the first to ski there), Bugaboos, Galena, and Adamants.
I’ll look in my archives for older photos. Please send me a link to share them.
Hans Gmoser was one of the classiest guys I ever met.
The first time I skied at CMH was in the middle of the 70s at the Monashees. The dam was still being built. Most of us stayed in dorm rooms with the construction workers and ate in the employee cafeteria. Sepp Renner was the head guide and the manager. Eddie and Albert Bohren, Daniel Audbert, Geo Bettenbourg (who died the following summer) were the guides.
Of the guides pictured from those in the 70s, I also over the years skied with, besides the ones for the Monashees I mentioned already, Franz Frank, Pierre Lemure, Jon Rudolf (Colani) Bezzola, Jean Troillet, Theirry Eardon, and Leo Grillmair. I was on the trip when Leo Hartmann was killed in the helicopter crash.
I was there for the opening week of the Gothics and stayed in trailers at the Bobby Burns. I could go on and on with many great memories.