The pitch of the helicopter engine rises as the rotors accelerate, and the skids beneath my feet begin to tremble. The next thing I know, we’ve lifted high above the ground and are soaring toward breathtaking snowy mountains on the nearby horizon. These aren’t the Canadian Rockies in British Columbia or the Brooks Range in Alaska, but rather the Sweetwater Mountains, a string of peaks in the Northeastern corner of my home state, California.
When we touch down at the landing zone we step out one at a time, crouching low to keep away from the spinning blades above us. The engine whine increases again, and the helicopter flies off, spraying us with fine powder. Suddenly we’re alone, standing atop a mountain in the middle of nowhere, staring at snowy bowls and glade-covered mountainsides. We strap into our skis and snowboards and gaze down at our first drop. A thought pops into my brain: I never thought I’d get to go heli skiing in California.
California is the nation’s most populous state with 39 million people. It’s also home to many of the lower 48’s tallest peaks and some of the country’s largest ski resorts. Yet there’s just one heli-skiing business, and it’s brand new. Called Sweetwater Heli, the business just opened its doors on January 31, 2026, and it has a license to take guests into a soaring stretch of 180,000 acres. I managed to get a seat on its seventh-ever commercial flight, as the first journalist to ride, just days after a storm brought several feet of snow to the area.
Somebody pitch me.
The business is the baby of an entrepreneurial ski-bum named Mark Johnson and a fifth-generation potato farmer named Brian Kirschenmann. Somehow, the duo managed to secure one of the few coveted business permits that are granted in the U.S. to heli-skiing businesses. In the contiguous United States, there were just seven businesses operating at the beginning of 2026. Sweetwater is number eight.
I recently asked Johnson how he came up with the idea to start the operation. He laughed. “I’ve never heli-skied before,” he told me.
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