LEFT • Rudi may have started Purcell Heli-Skiing, but it’s since become a family affair, with Rudi’s son Jeff (left) working as one of the main guides. Photo: Mattias Fredriksson THIS PAGE • After 50 years of guiding and a lifetime of skiing, Rudi can still make a powerful powder turn. Gertsch, enjoying his legacy deep in the Purcell Mountains. Photo: Mattias Fredriksson 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—heav-enly 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?” Rudi Gertsch 045
The Ski Journal Volume Eleven, Issue Four: Page 45
