RESORT, SLED,
CAT OR HELI
The decision people spend the least time on and that most decides what they ride. Here is the honest comparison, including the one most people have backwards.
Once flights, accommodation, transfers and time off work are paid for, access is a small proportion of the trip and the biggest single lever on what you actually ride. Spending there rather than on more nights is usually the better trade.
Which is why the question is rarely “can I afford it” and almost always “which one suits the week I am actually going to get”.
Resort days
A warm-up, not the product
Lifts, groomed runs and whatever is left in bounds. Everything a resort is good at, which is getting your legs under you quickly and cheaply.
As many laps as your legs allow, on terrain everybody else is also riding. The first hour after a storm is the good bit and it is gone by mid morning.
The most weatherproof option by a distance. Lifts run in conditions that ground everything else, and there is always something open.
The cheapest access there is, and the one that scales worst. Another resort day adds very little to what you will remember.
- Day one and two of a trip, finding your ski legs
- Anyone still building confidence on variable snow
- A weather day when nothing else is flying
- Anyone who flew across the world for untracked snow
- Powder days at a busy mountain, where the queue for the top lift can be hundreds deep and the first lap is riders landing on each other
Sled access
The most terrain per dollar, if you can ride
Snowmobiles carrying you and your gear into backcountry the lifts do not reach, then lapping it under your own steam. The machine is the chairlift.
Genuinely unlimited within the zone. You lap what you like, as many times as you like, and nobody else is there.
Runs in most things. Flat light and storm days affect what is sensible to ride rather than whether you go, and you can retreat to trees.
Machine hire, fuel and guiding. Cheaper per day than cat or heli, and the option where the riding scales hardest with your own skill.
- Riders who want the most days on snow for the money
- Anyone happy to work for their turns
- Groups who want to lap one zone properly rather than sample several
- People who do not want to learn to ride a sled, since the machine is a real skill in itself
- Anyone who wants to be delivered to the top without effort
Cat skiing
Most people’s answerThe underrated one, and the answer for most people who ask about heli
A tracked snowcat with a heated cabin drives your group to the top of a run, you ski it, and it meets you at the bottom. Same guided backcountry terrain as heli, delivered on the ground.
Fewer, longer runs than heli, on a schedule you can rely on. A cat day is a rhythm rather than a scramble, and the cabin between runs is a genuine part of it.
This is the argument. **A cat drives in weather that grounds a helicopter.** Flat light, snowing hard, low cloud - the cat still goes, which means a storm cycle becomes the best days of your trip rather than the days you sat in a lodge watching the window.
Meaningfully less than heli per day, and more than sled. Against the total cost of getting yourself to the mountain it is a small line, and it is the line that decides what you ride.
- Anyone who assumed heli was out of reach - this is usually the trip they actually wanted
- Groups who want untracked snow without needing to ride a sled
- Trips built around a storm cycle, where reliability matters more than ceiling
- Strong intermediates. You need to handle variable ungroomed snow, not couloirs
- Anyone whose picture of the trip is the helicopter itself, which is a fair thing to want
- Riders wanting maximum vertical per day at any cost
Heli
Not the expensive option people assume it is
A helicopter puts your group on terrain nothing else reaches, and picks you up at the bottom. The largest possible menu of terrain on any given day.
The most of any access mode, and the widest choice. A heli operation can have an enormous area to pick from, so the guide chooses the aspect and snow rather than accepting what is nearby.
The honest weakness. Helicopters do not fly in everything, so a weather day is a day waiting. Good operations have alternatives; that is a question worth asking before you book.
The highest per day, and still a small proportion of a trip once flights, accommodation, transfers and leave are counted. That arithmetic surprises people, and it is why we put it in writing.
- Anyone who has wanted to do it and keeps deferring on cost that they have not actually run the numbers on
- Trips where terrain choice matters more than day-count certainty
- Riders who can already handle variable ungroomed snow across consecutive days
- A trip with no weather contingency, unless you are relaxed about losing days
- Anyone who would rather have three cat days than one heli day, which is a completely legitimate preference
The part that is the same whichever you pick
Cat, heli and sled access all put you in avalanche terrain, all day, with no lift and no patrol. None of them is safer than another, and choosing one over another is a decision about terrain and weather rather than about risk. Our avalanche and companion rescue training is required for all three.
Not sure which one you want?
Tell us the week you have and what you ride, and we will tell you honestly which access gets you the most out of it - including when the answer is a cheaper one than you asked about.