Our Sustainability Story

At Stellar Heliskiing we rely on our amazing natural environment to offer life-changing experiences for our guests. We also rely on our community of amazing employees, partners and suppliers to consistently operate.  There is no doubt that the success of our business relies on the support of our community as well as the continued resilience of our mountain environment.

Maintaining a viable heliskiing operation requires energy.  The challenge that Stellar faces is that carbon emissions are causing the climate to change in ways which will likely impact our way of life and, in our context, the reliability of the snowpack and colder temperatures we depend on.  While climate change could have devastating impacts on our business, there are also limitations on how much we can reduce our emissions while remaining providers of heli skiing.

Stellar acknowledges that our business has consequences for the planet.  We are global citizens and we want to do more than just mitigate our impact.  That’s why we have chosen to give back to the community and our environment. Stellar Heliskiing is now taking clear steps to reduce our footprint, as well working with environmental partners to develop sustainable industry standards that will help to preserve the stability of the environment, and the climate, for years to come.

Our Commitment:

• We are actively taking steps to reduce our overall energy needs. Our largest use of energy relates to our helicopters and we are committed to reducing the amount of flying that we do. Specifically, all helicopter time is tracked down to the minute and guides and pilots are always working towards the most amount of skiing using the least amount of flying. We have remote fuel caches so we can refuel in the field which reduces time flown on refuel flights. We use large vans, which are more fuel efficient than helicopters, to position guests in locations to reduce heli time. And we collaborate with our industry partners to share best practices to improve our efforts in unison. Read about our industry efforts on the Helicat Canada website.
• We will offset our emissions by purchasing high-quality carbon credits that meet comprehensive international standards.  Carbon offsets are a way to reduce overall global emissions and we have done our research to ensure the offsets we purchase are as effective as possible.  Projects that interrupt unregulated carbon production have the greatest overall impact on global emission levels. This is why we have chosen to partner with The Gold Standard to support  projects which bypass significant emission leaps by providing clean technology directly to some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. By investing in offsets that recognise the global nature of emissions, we can be confident that our contribution is making a real difference. Learn more about the Gold standard or purchase carbon offsets emissions for your trip.
• We are making contributions through data collection and financial support to projects that support environmental stewardship and clean technology.  We participate in the HeliCat Canada Wildlife & Environmental Research Fund, which is a skier-funded initiative focused on supporting research and management projects that directly support wildlife and environmental research. Our contributions enable the HeliCat sector to continually improve its operating practices for Wildlife, Habitat Conservation & Species at Risk; Climate Change; Sustainability; Avalanche Research & Safety.  Learn more about the HeliCat Canada Wildlife & Environmental Research Fund.
• We are also using standardized energy use tracking tools to collect operational data so information can be consolidated with others in the industry to form a baseline for energy use.  Currently there is no established energy use goal for operators to strive toward. Developing an inclusive energy use dataset will help benchmark and improve energy management practices by allowing energy savings to be measured and assessed more clearly.  Read more about our standardized practices here: HeliCat Canada Sustainability.

If you would like to learn more about Stellar’s commitment to responsible environmental stewardship, our environmental partners, and opportunities for our guests to participate in our programs, please contact us.