"We snowshoe as soon as there’s snow and as long as there’s snow," Guillaume Otis tells me on the drive up the Cayoosh Pass to the trailhead. Typically, he begins tours in late November. "How long will we snowshoe this year? Until it disappears."

Twelve years ago, Otis and his father, both avid outdoorsmen, migrated to Whistler from Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Que., and soon realized the town lacked guided tours. They operated out of a van for the first two years and led people backcountry and cross-country skiing, ice climbing, mountaineering, summer hiking and on wilderness safety trips. They weathered post-9/11 and post-SARS tourism dips and several snow-lean winters. But things are better, and the popularity of snowshoeing has spurred that success.

The sport, says Otis, is attractive to families and foreigners who don’t ski and to anyone looking to exchange the crowds of the village for the silence of the backcountry. Most visitors have a few

hours to kill. "Our half-day trips are most popular," he says, "but the overnight programs, that’s the icing - that’s the good stuff."

I’ll take the icing every time. For our two-day tour, we head into the Joffre Peak region northeast of Garibaldi Provincial Park, an 80-kilometre drive up Highway 99 from Whistler. This collection of glaciated peaks is accessible - just three hours of legwork from the roadside trailhead - yet forms a dramatic backdrop.

After our avalanche primer, we turn on our beacons, shoulder our packs and head off on the Cerise Creek Trail. Snowshoes have improved since the last time I duck-walked on a set of cheap plastic ones. Our lightweight aluminum models come with crampons to bite into the crust and metal bars that snap up to support boot heels. The high-tech designs let you toe your way up icy inclines that would otherwise leave you knock-kneed with nerves. It still feels a bit like backpacking in moon boots, but steadied between two hiking poles, I soon find my stride.

Over the next two hours, we shuffle five kilometres up a steady slope, following the snowed-over creek and skirting a pair of avalanche chutes. Abruptly, we reach the source of the hype. Bookended by Joffre Peak and Mount Matier, the Anniversary Glacier rises like a great amphitheatre, with the rocky wedge of a debris field like an orchestra pit at its base. We spy a few ski tracks etched into the otherwise blank canvas above the moraine.

Another half-hour gets us to the Keith Flavelle Memorial Hut. The A-framed log cabin, which fits about 20 sleepers in its loft, is nearly hidden under five metres of snow. It was built in 1989 by friends and relatives of a 22-year-old local mountaineer who died on Mount Logan. His family helicopters in firewood, removes waste and asks visitors for a $10-per-night donation in return.