Lift-line thoughts can sometimes slalom down the slopes of harsh reality into pure fantasy.

What if, like, a helicopter could swoop down right now, pick up me and my buddy and deliver us from this tourist-choked resort with groomed-to-death runs to some choice unmarked and totally fresh powder? We'd say, "So long, you ski-lift lemmings." How chill would that be?

Yes, given the customary long wait for a single run at any resort during the height of Lake Tahoe ski season, the mind tends to concoct such inventive leaps of imagination.

Dave Rintala is all about wish-fulfillment. Rintala, self-proclaimed ski bum turned entrepreneur, offers to literally lift you above lift lines and liberate you – not to mention a considerable chunk from your wallet, too – from the crowded, Gore–Tex'd masses.

His company, Pacific Crest Heli-Guides, soon will start its second year providing personalized backcountry day trips for skiers and snowboarders with the skill and robust financial portfolio to handle it.

For (swallow hard and dig deep) $899 per person, a helicopter will fly skiers and snowboarders from Tahoe Truckee airport to more than 100,000 acres of privately held land on the north side of the lake for a day of fresh tracks.

And there's no exhaustive backcountry trekking involved. The chopper simply meets you and your guide at the bottom and whisks you away to the next pristine couloir, glade or bowl.

The catch, of course, is the cost, especially in these recessionary times. The thought of laying out this much cold, hard cash to ski cold, pillowy powder can be daunting. But the experience can be so invigorating, so cathartic that it can perhaps justify making one's bank account do a steep vertical drop.

So says Kaarel Kaljot, a Bay Area resident and "big-time powder hound," who often makes the commute up Interstate 80 to ski.

"They don't call it 'heli-crack' for nothing," Kaljot said. "There's a trail of ex-wives, neglected children, abandoned pets and foreclosed homes that can testify to the addiction. If I could afford it, I would only heli-ski. Is it worth it? Oh, yeah, they are really special experiences."

To paraphrase Robert Frost, the ski run less traveled has made all the difference to these skiers.

Rintala figured as much. For a decade in Tahoe, he has provided snow cat skiing, in which backcountry enthusiasts pay $325 a day to board a hulking piece of machinery that rumbles to 3,000 acres of virgin territory.

Thrifty backcountry skiers, naturally, find their own ways to reach the untrammeled slopes. They do it the old-fashioned way, attaching gripping skins to the undersides of their skis and climbing, step by slippery step, to their destination. But skiers say blazing their own trails is too taxing and not very efficient.

"Sure, you can hike, but you will get to the top of one hill, and, if you are anything like me, you will tumble all the way down it because you are too tired to ski," backcountry skier Olja Mihic said. "The cat drives you to one hill, then by the time you are at the bottom, the cat has made its way down also, and then it takes you to another hill.

"Cat-skiing was an affordable way to get to those peaks that you point to from the ski resort when everything around you is chewed up and say, 'Wish I can take a turn there.' "

Mihic, a real estate agent for Coldwell Banker in Tahoe City, jokes that he'd have to sell a few more lakefront properties to afford to make heli- and snowcat-skiing an everyday activity.

"But," he added, "for someone that is already spending upwards of $100 a day at a resort for a weekend visit, why not spend a few more dollars and make a memory of it?"

Bob Roberts, of the California Ski Industry Association, said the number of backcountry skiers remains small because of the cost and because it takes an advanced or intermediate skill level.

"There is no question that backcountry skiing has seen a surge in popularity in recent years," Roberts said. "With the strong snowfall in the Sierra Nevada these past two winters and the prospect of another La Niña season, the odds are good that we'll see even more backcountry activity."

Ski resorts vying for tourist dollars have recognized the market for backcountry experiences. Kirkwood was the first resort to offer snowcat tours from its slopes. This year, Sierra-at-Tahoe will do the same.

"With backcountry skiing becoming so popular we want to be able to offer our guests the opportunity to get back there and experience that feeling of floating through powder," said Sierra-at-Tahoe spokesman Steven Hemphill.

Backcountry skiers come off as almost evangelical in their fervor. Rintala, who formerly owned a heli-ski operation in Valdez, Ala., says backcountry skiing is to resort skiing what mountain biking is to road cycling. Freer, more daring, closer to nature.

"The idea of skiing in powder is that you've got a cushion of snow and air beneath you, and it's much more like you're flying or surfing or something," he said. "There's nothing underneath there that creates a bump. There's nothing to negotiate. It's very fluid and you get to sort of express yourself in the mountains in a way that skiing was really intended back originally.

"Instead of having (at a resort) to watch out for this cat track or look for those people coming at you from the side, and having to slow down over here and watch for that snow gun in your way, instead of worrying about all that stuff, you basically look at the mountain and just decide what you want to do.

"Your guide is there to explain to you the hazards of a particular run and how to avoid those hazards."

Foremost among the hazards of backcountry skiing is the possibility of avalanches. Rintala said his guides, who are all certified emergency medical technicians, provide a detailed seminar on safety and how to use an avalanche beacon and transceiver and what to do if you get separated from a group.

But a guide's most important job becomes assessing the safety of slopes and whether it is within the ability level of the skier.

"He'll say, 'This is a good stable run, but we're going to avoid this convex roll or this pillow where you can see all this loading,' " Rintala said. "We might choose a run that has a double fall line, which allows small debris that might get loose to move away from the group as opposed to toward the person skiing.

"In some ways, it might be safer (than at a resort). You are with a guide that assesses these hazards. When I ski now at a ski resort, it scares me how fast people ski so close to you."

Kaljot, who has heli-skiied in such varied locales at Wyoming, British Columbia and Alaska, says it's important to select guides who show prudence.

"You need to feel safe going with them, especially if you're someone who doesn't backcountry ski a lot or someone who just wants to go out for nice powder day," he said. "Dave's guide'll go down (runs) first and check out the conditions. You, as a client, don't even have to think about it, which is nice."

Mihic says skiers need to be prepared for last-minute cancellations if the guides feel snow conditions are too unstable. If anything, he says, guides err on the side of caution.

"They provide you with transceivers and make you do a minicourse," he said. "You ski one at a time, so at any point in time there is someone above you that can get to you. I felt very safe, and in fact, we had kids in our group."

In some cases, the trickiest part of heli-skiing rests at the hands of the pilot, who must determine where it's safe to touch down based on wind speed and terrain.

"There are times," Rintala said, "it's easier for a pilot to land on a pinnacle than a big flat area, based on the way the rotor winds are. That makes it, you know, more exciting for the skiers. These are people who really want to go exploring and immerse themselves in nature."

And avoid lift-line ennui.

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