Heli rafting a solution to Kicking Horse impasse

With no compromise in sight over road access to the Lower Canyon of the Kicking Horse River, a rafting company in Golden has come up with an innovative solution: heli rafting.

Glacier Raft Company has teamed up with Alpine Helicopters to fly clients into the now inaccessible portion of the river where the biggest whitewater rapids are found.

“We had to go way outside the box on this one,” said Ryan Johannesen, Glacier’s owner. “But we did the math, we measured how long a flight, did a test run with rafts and found the right spot to do it. We’ve done our due diligence. Now we just have to fill some seats.”

Another rafting company, Wet N’ Wild Adventures, will also offer this option while four other rafting operators will stick to trips in the Upper and Middle Canyons. The helicopter lands on a small, pebbly beach about 50 metres from where the trips used to start.

Rafting companies in the B.C. mountain town have been unable to operate in the Lower Canyon since Canadian Pacific barred them from using the only access road. For 40 years, rafting companies have used a private road on CP land and carried rafts and gear across active rail tracks. But late last summer, Transport Canada staff witnessed the practise and told CP to find a safer solution. After much back and forth, the rail company and the B.C. government reached an agreement in principle, which included levelling the crossing and using a flag man to ensure safety.

But one day before the season opened at the end of May, the agreement fell apart over both sides’ refusal to accept legal liability should an accident on the tracks occur.

The rafting companies had already accepted booking for the iconic whitewater trips on the Lower Canyon and were forced to start cancelling until they came up with this solution. The trips on the Middle and Upper Section are not affected.

“When the idea first came up, we thought it would be unaffordable, undoable. But for $99 extra, you get a heli flight up the canyon, over the whitewater you’ll come back down. The pilots like it and we think it’s pretty cool,” said Johannesen. The heli trips will run on weekends, and possibly Wednesday if demand warrants, starting on the Canada Day weekend. “There’s been a lot of negative lately. We needed to find a way to get back down there and turn this into a positive.”

The town’s mayor, area MLA and MP have all been outspoken in their support for the rafting industry, which attracts 40,000 people to the area every year. Tourism Golden says it’s one of the area’s biggest draws and loss of access to the Lower Canyon is detrimental to the town, with a possible economic effect in the millions of dollars.

Kootenay-Columbia MP Wayne Stetski appealed to federal Minister of Transport Marc Garneau to intervene. But Garneau said his priority lies with rail safety.