After several years of dreaming, planning and building, Blackcomb Helicopters will be opening a newly built heli-biking trail between Whistler and Pemberton, BC. With the opening of this new trail, they will be operating under a new division specific to adventure tourism, AlpX Expeditions (AlpX).

AlpX is the unification and expansion of Blackcomb’s year-around offerings of heli-hiking, weddings, picnics and ski touring activities. This also includes the recent acquisition of Tyax Adventures, a backcountry operation offering a network of float plane accessible cabins and trails in the mountain biking and hiking mecca of the South Chilcotin Mountains & Big Creek Provincial Parks.

This new heli biking trail from AlpX has been the culmination of 5 years of consultation with the Province of British Columbia, Lil’wat Nation’ Land Referrals Committee, Squamish Nation, resource organizations and local user groups. The trail work is being completed by Howler Contracting, a Whistler-based trail building crew lead by Zander Strathearn. A temporary alpine camp was created for the build team, where they spent their days building trail and their evenings by the wood stove. The resulting trail will be 13km of freshly built singletrack over including a 3km Black Diamond peak descent, a 1.2km climb trail, and an Intermediate Blue trail of 9km that follows a ridgeline down to old growth forest with a mix of singletrack and bike park style flow sections.

“We wanted to build a trail that offered a world class experience to riders of all levels. We believe we have done just that. This has been years in the making, and we couldn’t be more excited to be up and running this summer” said Jordy Norris, director of Marketing, Tourism & Sustainability for Blackcomb Helicopters.

Blackcomb Helicopters has been committed since 2019 as the first full service helicopter operation to offset the entirety of its emissions, across all areas of the organization. Additionally, AlpX has retained qualified biologists and professionals to undertake the appropriate studies and make recommendations to ensure the least impact to environmental resources throughout this project. Environmental values are managed according to the Wildlife Guidelines for Backcountry Tourism/Commercial Recreation in British Columbia and will be a foundation of Blackcomb Helicopters’ operations.

This press release was prepared and distributed by Blackcomb Helicopters.