5-Day Selkirks Glacier Adventure at Battle Abbey with Heli-Hiking

The day starts at Calgary airport, where the lodge's shuttle bus collects you for the drive west over the Rockies to Golden; the lodge can book you a hotel by the airport the night before. From Golden, the helicopter carries you into the Selkirks to the lodge.

Once you have settled in, the guides lead you up the via ferrata on Foremast Peak and down to Round Lake for a cold swim below the Omoo Glacier and Mount Ridiculous. Sauna, then a four-course dinner.

If you are arriving by private jet, you can instead take a one-hour direct helicopter transfer from the FBO in Calgary to the lodge.

After espresso and breakfast, crampons go on for the Omoo Glacier. You follow the guides past the granite pillars of the Throne to the crest at Kings Landing, where lunch comes with the Battle group, the northern Selkirks, and the Purcells in view.

The afternoon continues with walks and scrambles along the ridge tops to Schooner Pass and down to the lodge, in time for a sauna, a massage, or a pint on the patio before dinner.

Today you fly over glaciers and deep valleys for the day you chose. Heli-hikers start on a remote summit and follow a chain of ridges and wildflower meadows all the way back to the lodge door.

Anglers drop into an old-growth river system known for bull trout and cast beneath the cedars, with elk and deer for company and an eye out for grizzlies; others raft the river or paddleboard its glacier-fed channels. A swim and a good dinner close the day.

A day around five-day trips.

A last climb to the ridge called the Blue Danube, a granite vein that snakes toward the valley floor, then down through the trees into the old growth of the Butters headwaters, a world away from the glacier of two days before.

Snacks on the trail, an early lunch at the lodge, then the afternoon helicopter to Golden and the shuttle bus back to Calgary airport. Plan to fly home the following day.