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When I reach the summit of 2,712-metre Mount Fang, there is no view, no pictures to be taken and no sense that I'm on a mountaintop. I've been climbing on skis in clouds and blowing snow for several hours.

David Lussier, my guide, is growing impatient: Two members of the group are lagging behind. But it's not the visibility he's worried about — it's the temperature. An inversion has occurred. It's now 2 C. The warmth will increase the risk of avalanches. Then out of the clouds emerge Evan Brahm and Norman Hoffman, a pair of psychiatrists from Montreal, the last of the group.

“We've got to get moving!” Lussier says.

It's early April and I'm midway into a week-long trip with Selkirk Mountain Experience, an outfitter specializing in alpine touring and ski mountaineering in B.C.'s Selkirk Mountains, a snow-packed range 300 kilometres west of Banff. To escape the bustle of busy ski resorts and take in some untracked slopes I've signed up for SME's “relaxed ski week” to climb and descend 1,200 to 1,500 metres vertical a day, all on my own power.

Founded by Ruedi Beglinger, an ultrafit 51-year-old guide, SME has a reputation for big tours and big terrain. Lussier leads our group of four, while Beglinger guides an Olympic cross-country skier who has just returned from Turin and another guest doing an extreme ski clinic. We're on our way to the Moloch Hut, the second of two high-alpine chalets run by SME.

I remove the climbing skins and descend in Lussier's tracks down the Juliana Glacier, into the white. It's a strange sensation not being able to see the slope I'm skiing on. I feel myself pick up speed on steeper pitches, and struggle to make turns faster.

Lussier stops and tells us we're on Fang Col, the high ridge separating Mount Fang and 2,585-metre Empress Peak. “Stay in my tracks exactly,” the 32-year guide from Quebec says, pointing with his ski pole into the clouds. “There's a cliff right there.”

I sideslip behind Lussier, careful not to stray from his line. When the rest of the group arrives, he is smiling. “Okay, now we get to do some skiing.”

The clouds part and the massive snow-covered slope of the Dismal Glacier shimmers in sunlight beneath me. Snow-capped granite peaks surround the glacier. I bomb down under blue skies carving wide turns in untracked powder. We regroup more than a kilometre down the slope. Lussier points back up with his pole, “See, that's where we came from.”

The clouds have lifted and I notice the narrow ridge we traversed. A fall would have sent me hurtling a hundred metres or more. I'm thankful I did it in the fog.

The others are beaming from the descent and the stunning scenery. It's a formula that's worked for SME for the past 21 years: heart-pounding mountaineering combined with exhilarating backcountry skiing.

The trip began on a rainy Revelstoke morning four days earlier, when the group was shuttled by helicopter above the clouds to the Durrand Lodge at 1,960 metres, SME's home base in the Selkirks. With Ruedi's wife, Nicolene, and daughters Charlotte and Florina, aged 13 and 12, helping out, SME resembles a tiny slice of the Swiss Alps.

Before going out on the first day, Lussier gave us a course in avalanche rescue. We practised using transceivers, probing and digging. Avalanches are the biggest concern in the backcountry. And while these tools would aid us in rescuing one another in a slide, your best bet is a trained mountain guide who knows the backcountry. We would be skiing on alpine touring gear: special skis with heel-lift bindings that are fitted with sticky skins for going uphill, or “walking.” The rigid boots and wide skis resemble modern downhill equipment. Bindings are locked down and skins removed for downhill.

With the Durrand Chalet as our base, we spent the first two days touring the surrounding summits, getting a feel for the terrain and the equipment. Brahm and Hoffman, the psychiatrists, had never done the sport before and Lussier coached them on walking with skins. I had only been in the backcountry a few times, so was happy to be with other beginners.

We would make long climbs of two hours or more, take a snack break, then ski down a secluded slope. We would bang off two or three peaks, and be back at the lodge by mid-afternoon for freshly baked pastries and an afternoon sauna. Most nights were spent chatting in the reading room surrounded by rusty ice axes, wooden ski poles and black and white photos of a young Ruedi skiing in the Alps with his father.

When we set out on the third day, a sharp wind buffeted us from above. We traversed the Diamond Glacier, an immense desert of snow flanked in the east by 2,615-metre Diamond Peak, a rocky outcrop that stood like a sentinel above the glacier's rolling white dunes. No one spoke. We enjoyed the quiet solitude of the mountains, the clicking of our bindings and sliding of our skins on the snow.

As we approached the summit of 2,752-metre Tumbledown Mountain, we heard the familiar wump-wump of a helicopter and saw a group of 12 skiers stuffing into the machine at the base of the slope. We were at the boundary of SME's terrain — 26 peaks, 14 glaciers and 180 ski runs in an 80-square-kilometre area — the heli-skiers were at their boundary.

Beglinger got his start working as a heli-ski guide in the early 1980s but soon missed mountaineering and the tranquillity of long traverses, something mechanized skiing can't offer. He feels the best way to experience the mountains is under your own power.

“Crammed in a helicopter or cat-ski with a dozen other people and fogged up windows, you won't see anything,” Beglinger says. “You absorb the real beauty of the mountains by walking.”

But he cautions that alpine touring is not for people who don't want to pay the high price of heli-skiing. “Ski mountaineering is about going to peaks. There's an inner drive to reach that highest point.”

In other words, it's about earning your turns.

The next day is the traverse up Mount Fang to the Moloch Hut, a comfortable two-storey lodge built on a knoll above the tree line at 2,230 metres, eight kilometres northeast of the Durrand Chalet. In the afternoon, we explore two ice caves inside the Dismal Glacier. One involves sliding on our bellies under an ice shelf, into a dark, crystal-filled chamber. Another is a tunnel of blue sculpted ice, which we ski through.

After two days of touring from the Moloch Hut, we head back to the Durrand Chalet. A small film crew has arrived to make a documentary about Ruedi. They film us putting on our ski boots, reading, eating. I begin to feel like a movie extra.

On the last day, Lussier tells us he's got something special planned. We will be climbing up 2,752-metre Mount Ruth, one of the classic ski tours of the Selkirks. We leave the lodge early and zigzag up the Needle Icefall, a roller coaster of giant ice steps. I'm soon climbing the Durrand Glacier, the early rays of light warming me. Now comfortable with the equipment, the group moves swiftly. On the Diamond Col, the terrain becomes too steep to walk with skins.

“Skis on your packs,” Lussier says.

I begin to climb, kick-stepping into Lussier's tracks, using my poles for balance. A postcard view unfolds. The Selkirk Mountains surround me, countless snow-capped peaks piercing the horizon. Across the valley, the film crew is shooting Beglinger from a helicopter. Then Lussier gets a call on the radio: Now, they're filming us. Conscious that I'm on camera, I swagger to the summit.

Special to The Globe and Mail