Words: Leslie Anthony 2018-01-18 14:26:38
<br. Rudi’s own story is interesting enough to have inspired a book by the Alpine Club of Canada. No surprise, then, that his Purcell Heli-Skiing base is a veritable museum constellated with iconic powder boards, old climbing gear, alpine sketches, woodcuts, a scatter of his uncle’s inventions (remember Gertsch plate bindings, touring bindings and skis?), and a large painting that journeyed far through time and space to land here. Like the Swiss-born Rudi, it also emigrated from Europe, although its North America path began in Lake Louise, AB. From there, it ended up in the Swiss-styled village of Edelweiss outside Golden, BC, before someone decided Rudi should have it.
The art piece—depicting Swiss guides, of course—hangs over a massive fireplace splitting floor-to-ceiling windows that invite in the Purcells. The scene commands the attention of our group, which stands riveted before this diorama of Old-World tradition framed by rugged new-world mountains.
But we’re not here for nostalgia. Long-faced and square-jawed, Rudi is perpetually relaxed—until it’s time to go skiing. He snaps us out of our wide-eyed reverie, hectoring us all out to the helipad, accompanied by his son Jeff. We’re here for some of British Columbia’s best powder, at one of Canada’s most iconic heli operations, with one of the industry’s most storied pioneers. With no protests, within minutes we’re in the air, headed into domain Rudi claimed nearly 50 years before.
Rudi grew up in Wengen, Switzerland, in the shadow of the Eiger. Like most kids in the area, he started skiing early, aided by the fact that his father was a mountain guide. Though his life path at home followed in the footsteps of the paterfamilias, Rudi sought bigger horizons, emigrating to Canada with his brother in 1966. Thinking a metropolis would be the easiest place to find a job and learn English, the boys chose Toronto as their landing pad, figuring to spend weekends in the Rocky Mountains, not realizing these were 2,500 miles distant.
Once the geographic penny dropped, Rudi wasted no time in abandoning his brother and jumping a plane west, where he found work immediately in Banff, AB, with Canadian Mountain Holidays (CMH), the growing guiding company founded by countryman Hans Gmoser. Among other responsibilities, Gmoser pulled Rudi into his nascent heli-skiing venture in the Bugaboo range south of Golden. Thanks to Gmoser, Rudi became a de facto pioneer in a business where he remains very much at the forefront.
“Working for CMH was truly a dream come true for a young guide like me,” he says. After the Bugaboos, he worked up north in CMH’s Cariboo operation for a few years, and then helped open a new Monashees base near the Mica Dam north of Revelstoke, BC.
After learning the heliropes with the CMH crew, Rudi struck out on his own in 1974 with a day-skiing operation in the Purcell Mountains close to Golden, growing it into an iconic family business with Jeff as lead guide. “I chose the Purcells because my experience in the Monashees was that they got too much snow, and we were often weathered out waiting for conditions to improve,” Rudi says. “I also wanted a day-skiing place so I could go home every night. I knew I didn’t want to spend my whole life in a remote lodge.”
These days, with a small herd of beef cattle on his farm in the Blaeberry Valley just north of Golden, Rudi relishes a job that allows him to maintain year-round ties to the land. Purcell Heli’s guests stay in town, and though he and Jeff have made a few tweaks to the business over the years, there’s not a lot else they wish to do with it. “We’re pretty content,” Rudi says. “On our days off we go ski-touring; sometimes we even have the pilot drop us off somewhere.”
As the heli whirls us over the spire-filled landscape, Rudi points out notable runs and landing zones. The Purcell Mountains are dramatic, smooth-sided stone towers punching up from wide alpine bowls. It’s serious terrain, but luckily Rudi has five decades of experience—some of which, have been less cautious than others.
“The early days of heli-skiing were total cowboy years,” Rudi says, through crackling headphones. “One time a group of us were out with Hans Gmoser flagging landing zones. We were easing into one and everyone was trying to figure out if we were close enough to land. Hans looks out the door, says, ‘Yes,’ then throws his pack out only to watch it tumble down the mountain face. We weren’t even close.”
We disembark atop a stunning run called Top of the World, only to find the alpine zone is wind-hammered, with plates of crust and raised sastrugi making the going anything but smooth. No worries, advises Rudi, who has many other options in a tenure that spans 770 square miles. A couple of quick turns down the ridge and Jeff has us on a different aspect, with soft, boot-top powder underfoot. When we pull up to a stop, the effect of the mountain panorama before us is hard to put into words, but Rudi offers the perfect explanatory anecdote.
“My father began guiding heli-skiing in Switzerland around the same time I started here. Then one year, Hans Gmoser had me invite him over for ‘exploration week,’ something we did at the start of every season. Standing on a peak like this with my father, he finally understood what the attraction was for me here. He said, ‘If I were 20 years younger, I’d stay here, too.’ That was good because it let me off the hook of any expectation to return to Switzerland.”
Farther down the ridge we duck into the trees, where shaded chutes and a huge pillow feature provide for endless lines to which we return again and again. The pickup, where the pilot meets us after each circuit, features a grizzly bear rub—a tree marked by claws with fur stuck to the bark—suggesting it’s still as wild out here as the day Rudi arrived.
Scattered throughout the tenure are three hand-built cabins used for lunch stops or emergency shelters. The one in which we enjoy soup and sandwiches faces the pillow line we just skied, with a distant overlook to the Selkirks. Both Rudi and Jeff settle in with their sandwiches, and stare out over their domain.
Keeping with Gertsch tradition, Rudi introduced Jeff to skiing early; Jeff was 3 years old when he first went heli-skiing, on a run called Rudi’s Ridge, located adjacent to Kicking Horse Mountain Resort. Considering his grandfather’s history in Switzerland, it’s no surprise Jeff ended up guiding alongside his dad. It does make you wonder, however, if some part of Rudi misses his homeland and the family legacy he chose to leave behind.
In many ways, he was able to maintain those national ties with Gmoser and other Swiss expats working in the mountains of Canada’s west. Rudi, in fact, also had a great working relationship and friendship with celebrated photographer Bruno Engler, another Swiss guide. Two of Engler’s most recognizable shots involve Rudi: in one he does a spread-eagle off the Mount Norquay Tea House; in another, also on Mount Norquay, he is a silhouetted in a large powder cloud as he descends. “It’s ironic those two photos are so famous considering I got kicked off Mount Norquay the next year,” Rudi says. “I was coaching kids and they called me in and said, ‘You’re skiing too fast.’ I said, ‘Kids need to go fast and get some mileage on their skis.’
“They let it go for a bit, then called me in again and said, ‘You just don’t get it; you ski too fast. Get your gear and get out.’ Years later, after Bruno died, I went back to Norquay for the Bruno Engler Memorial Race, dressed in an old costume and riding 135-year-old, 240-cm-long, steam-shaped skis. One of them had a split repaired with a flattened-out coffee tin fastened to the wood with baling wire. But I won first prize—a season’s pass to Norquay. The old-timers who remembered me being kicked off had a good laugh.”
Another favorite is when Rudi was hired to ski for the 1968 movie Downhill Racer, starring Robert Redford, who was reportedly scared just standing in the start gates. The producers received permission from FIS for their cameramen to ski the famous racecourses like Lauterbrunnen and Hahnenkamm—but only if they’d skied the courses in the past, which Rudi had. “So, I carried an enormous camera for many of the establishing race shots,” Rudi says. “There’s an archive of incredible footage somewhere that never got used. You can get the same today with a GoPro and you wouldn’t even know you were wearing it. Can you imagine?”
As the day continues, each run brings a new tale—heavenly skiing served up with an earthly libretto—and now, at the cabin, the stories become more contemplative, more introspective, as if the land before him has slowly seeped into his consciousness. In the wan January light, the mountains stampede toward the porch under a harlequin sky, the kind of beauty that has captured more than one pilgrim’s heart. Rudi looks out over the peaks, leans back, and starts talking again. Jeff smiles—he’s sure he won’t hear anything new.
“I’m probably the only one in North America who can claim they’ve been guiding heli-skiing continuously for 50 years,” Rudi says, with a twinkling eye and his perpetual half-smile. “And I still just love to be out there. I have no official plans for retirement or to stop guiding—why would I? After 50 years of making first tracks, if I stop skiing, then what?”
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