I found myself in the middle of one of the larger storm systems, peaking at 100cms in one 24 hour period. That's a lot of snow, most of it 3%. You could walk to breakfast, and by the time you walked back your tracks would be gone. Luckily this was the time when someone offered me the loan of a Burton Stella, a board I'd never heard of before. The Stellar immediately looked like the business - a little like a Dupraz and those other big powder boards.

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It's a weird name for a snowboard from a ski company, but it's owned by Adidas these days so there you go.

I rode the 160 Sick Stick in heli-accessed Monashee powder. There was some Alpine stuff, but as usual it was mostly top-to-bottom trees. After the first few runs I rapidly forgot it was a new board. It just rides, and rides well.

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Revelstoke is BC's newest big-noise investment. A few years ago it was just a small town on the Trans-Canadian highway with a local hill plus cat and heli-based riding. I knew it as a place the Greyhound stopped on the way from Calgary to Kamloops, and a CMH helicopter base. Two years ago that all changed, with the cat operator selling out to what is now "Revelstoke Mountain Resort" (RMR), who also picked up the local heli operator (Selkirk Tangiers). They inherited a large steep hill, which with the lift extensions built for the 2008/9 season currently has the largest vertical in North America.

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That's snowboarding but using helicopters instead of ski lifts to get up the hill. Of course "the hill" tends to be tucked away in the back country so there's no one else there. Fresh tracks every time, all the time. Accept no substitutes.

You can heliboard in any number of places. Those I'm aware of include: Canada, Alaska, New Zealand, Italy, Nepal, Greenland, and the USA. Where you go depends on how you like to balance the riding, your creature comforts, and your safety.