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Helene Steiner – Mountains in her soul

She grew up in a community where people went up into the mountains for a variety of reasons. And much of them had nothing to do with sports.
1521alta
Helene Steiner

She grew up in a community where people went up into the mountains for a variety of reasons. And much of them had nothing to do with sports. “Every year” recounts local heli-ski guide Helene (pronounced Aylaynee) Steiner, “there was a big mass held in an alpine bowl high up above our village. It was a huge event for all us.”

Austrian-born and raised — right on the border between Tyrol and Salzburg provinces — Steiner is a laughing, smiling, high-energy advertisement for the outdoor active life. But it’s when talk turns to special mountain moments like this that her eyes really begin to sparkle. “I remember those times so well,” she says in her still-lightly Tyrol-inflected brogue. “Everybody in the village was Catholic in those days so everyone climbed up for the mass.” And then she chuckles. “Even the priest. It was quite a sight to see all the key people in the community sitting outside in this great mountain amphitheatre while a traditional mass was being celebrated.”

Talk about a “natural cathedral”…

But that was only one example, she says. There were alpine cultural traditions in her homeland that even pre-dated Christian times. On Midsummer’s Eve, for instance, great fires would be lit on the ridges and peaks above the country’s villages and towns. “It was an amazing sight,” she says, “to watch, first one great fire burst into flames, then another and another and another, all along the high ridges, all the way to the horizon.” And like the mountain mass, this was an event in which everyone participated. “It was a big celebration, for sure. It was something you really looked forward to…”

And then in true Helene-Steiner fashion, she launches into an impassioned plea for the re-launch of a Whistler classic. “All this talk of mountain celebrations,” she says, “brings me to an event I’m really sad has disappeared.” She frowns in mock concern. “What ever happened to Symphony In The Mountains?” she asks. And sighs. “I’m not a great classics connoisseur or anything, but I was lucky enough to attend an event at the top of Whistler Mountain a few years back and the orchestra was playing one of my favourites — Tchaikovsky’s Concert in B-Minor.” Another long sigh. “I remember sitting at the Roundhouse on that beautiful sunny afternoon and listening to that music and totally getting carried away…”

She laughs — just a little bit self-consciously. “It brings me goose bumps just thinking about it,” she admits.

Steiner says she’s always loved mountains. Always been intrigued by their power and grace. That’s why, she maintains, she couldn’t imagine doing anything else for a living. “My job is unbelievably fulfilling. I’ll never get rich but it feels so good to help people get in touch with their mountain surroundings…”

But there is even more to it than that. Because of the nature of her work, says Steiner, she gets to see Whistler through fresh eyes every day. “It’s such a benefit of my job. Michel, it’s so rewarding. It doesn’t matter where they come from — Germany, Switzerland, the U.S. — they all have stars in their eyes. They just love this place.” Her face explodes into another bright smile. “It always reminds me of what I felt like when I first came here 16 years ago.”

She pauses for a moment. Laughs. “It’s not like I’m a young girl anymore,” says Steiner, reflecting on her 20 gruelling winters of heli-ski guiding. “My knees are bad, my back is sore — but I just can’t leave this business behind. It’s so magical…”

And her sense of empowerment is confirmed by just about every group she works with during the winter. “At the end of the day,” she says, “you sit with your clients at the bar and they want to kiss you and hug you and they’re so excited…” She smiles. “They might be millionaires, they might be corporate chiefs with hundreds of employees, but when they’re with me on the mountain they’re all like little kids on Christmas day…”

Hard to put it any better. N’est ce pas?

Steiner moved to Whistler in 1992. She started her own business, Canadian Adventure Tours, the very next year. “Peter Alder says I was a bit ahead of the curve,” she says of her concept of offering guests 10-day adventure tours across Western Canada. “I was just a little too early with the idea…”

Still, she worked hard and never gave up on the concept. But her financial bread and butter would remain her winter guiding work.

She joined Whistler Heli Skiing in 1996. She’s never looked back. “Those four guys — John Hetherington, Doug O’Mara, Andrew Wilkins and Ken Hardy — they’re amazing. It’s been really inspiring to work with them.”

She pauses. “It will be interesting to see how Whistler-Blackcomb manages the transition,” she says of the heli company’s recent acquisition by “the big guys”. She searches for just the right words to use. “How can I put it? This is a very different business than the lift-served variety. In my opinion, it takes a committed owner/operator to make it work. You really have to love this business to be successful at it. To be frank, I’m not sure how an employee/manager will cope...”

Given her experience in the business, one might want to take heed. But I digress.

A self-avowed tomboy, Steiner “fell into” mountain sports as a very young girl. Given that her dad was a highly respected guide in the tight-knit Austrian mountaineering community, it’s no big surprise. But her decision to follow in her father’s footsteps was.

“The Austrian media really pissed me off,” said the first woman in her country to become a fully certified mountain guide. “They wanted to hear how tough it was to be the only woman in the group. And when they didn’t hear what they wanted from me, they went with their own story anyway.”

It’s not like the path she’d chosen was easy. “This is an extremely difficult course — for everyone. Back when I was going through the exams, you were expected to know all your mountain skills — climbing, skiing, etc. What they taught you was how to deal with clients, how to use ropes, how to ‘manage’ the adventure.” She laughs. “And there was none of this ‘watching out for the psyche of the students’ stuff. If you made a tiny mistake — or if you showed any particular weakness — they’d push you even harder.” She stops speaking. “But it was exactly the same for everyone — men and women. To pass, you had to prove that you could do the job.”

She sighs — one part anger, one part frustration, and one part humour. “But that’s not what the Austrian press wanted to present to the public. One of the biggest Sunday papers there published a piece about me titled: Lipstick, Rope and Ice Axe. I almost died of shame. They’d totally twisted my words! When it finally came out, I felt compelled to run out, buy all the papers and destroy them. It really taught me something about dealing with the media.”

Steiner’s education was far from over, however. “I spent the next two years at college studying hotel/tourism management,” she explains. “The course was mostly for the middle-class sons and daughters of hotel owners. But I came from a totally blue-collar background.” She laughs. “At first, I was like a fish out of water. The only time our family ever went to a restaurant was on Mother’s Day…”

But she persevered. And, as with most things that Helene decides to focus on, it eventually bore fruit. “Shortly after I finished my course, Mike Wiegele recruited me to come work for him at Blue River. That was in 1988…” Wiegele was no fool. In addition to the new tourism management diploma under her arm, the fully certified mountain guide was also fluent in five different languages. “So I worked as a heli-skiing guide for Mike during the winter and in the off-season I became his marketing director for Europe.“ She smiles. “It worked well for both parties,” she says.

And then in a rush: “I fell so much in love with Canada, you know. I only had a work permit, so I couldn’t yet live here year-round. But every season I would spend a little more time here and travel around and visit more of this country. And every year I became even more convinced that this was where I wanted to live.

By 1992, she’d made up her mind. “I decided this was where I wanted to live.” Only one question remained: Whistler or Banff? She laughs. “I wanted to run a tourism business and they were the only two Canadian mountain towns with enough infrastructure to make that possible. It was a hard decision, believe it or not. But there were two things that convinced me. It was too cold in Banff — I mean, it can snow in the middle of July there. And it was just too far away from the ocean. So I decided on Whistler…”

Was it the right choice? “Absolutely,” she says with enthusiasm. “It was one of the best decisions I ever made.” One last smile. One last wink. “Besides, I would have never met my husband if I hadn’t moved to Whistler…”