Ken and Patti — Boulder Ventures Ltd.

*With matching Million Suits, Ken and Patti rip the burn in Galena, Christmas 2010.*

Ken and Patti Ferrin taught me to heliski.

I was already an aspirant ski guide and a decent powder skier when I first met them on the way to the Adamants in 1992, but I’d only been on five or six CMH trips and I didn’t yet understand the nuance of the lodge culture. Ken and Patti embodied the ethos of people that shaped their lives around heliskiing in the Columbia Mountains of Canada, and I had a lot to learn from them.

Ken Ferrin graduated from UCLA with a Ph.D. in Math too early to get drafted for Vietnam. Instead, he went to Wall Street and programmed the first computers in the 1960s to arbitrage bond prices. It sounded like science fiction to people back then, but Ken did it successfully and sold his company to JPMorgan for a lot of money. At that point, he was a conventional Wall Street guy: wealthy, married, couple of kids, living in the burbs.

After he sold his business, Ken was rich but unhappy, a bad combination for someone with a strong sense of adventure. He left his wife, went to Capri to have fun, met Patti there playing tennis and fell in love. Ken and Patti wanted to learn to ski together, and moved to Aspen, where they became experts over a couple of seasons. Then Ken and Patti went on a heliski trip with CMH and decided that’s what they wanted to do together for the rest of their lives.

I was confused when I met Ken and Patti in 1992.

I wanted to be a venture capitalist, but I also wanted to be a mountain guide. Ken told me that money is like gasoline on a road trip: you don’t want to run out, but the point of life isn’t to go on a tour of gas stations. He convinced me I could do both.

Ken and Patti invited me on their CMH team and taught me how to act like a good guide and a good client on a heliski tour. I skied with them a couple times a year, but always at Christmas at Galena with an incredible group, all of whom became our lifelong friends.

*Ken and Patti enjoy a snuggle with Bernhard Eber, a founding CMH Guide and Manager of Galena Lodge for decades.*

The Christmas 1998 Galena tour was an especially good one and after six days in the white room with Ken and Patti, I was ready for more. Bernhard had space for me if I wanted to work, but I had made a blind date over New Years in Telluride with a girl from Richmond and would have to blow her off if I stayed in the Monashees.

“Do you want to be alone the rest of your life?”, asked Patti, rhetorically, over dinner at the lodge. “Go home!” she said.

I went home, met Cindy, took her skiing and fell in love. She was twelve years younger than me, same as Ken and Patti. We skied and climbed and lived together for a year before I brought her back to Galena to ski with Ken and Patti over Christmas 1999. I had already bought a ring and was prepared to propose marriage, but first, Cindy had to go heliskiing and she had to like it.

*Cindy and Kyle’s first heliski trip together in Galena, December 1999. Photo by Patti Ferrin.*

The tree skiing early season at Galena is steep and deep, plenty intimidating for a pretty Jewish girl with a seat on the helicopter in Group 1. Everyone else had a Million Suit but Patti was there to show Cindy the ropes. On Day 3, Cindy locked into Heliski Mode and has been there ever since. We married the next spring and Ken and Patti came to our wedding.

When he was well into his 80’s, Patti decided that Ken had done enough heliskiing and they switched to fishing, became experts at that, and flew all over the world looking for the best, most remote locations. “The tug is the drug”, Ken explained to me.

Patti sent us a note that Ken had died on March 29, 2025, at age 92.

If the guy that dies with the most powder days wins, Ken Ferrin took home the Grand Prize. I’m going to try and live as long as Ken did and keep going at it just as hard. I’m going to try and teach my Boys all the things Ken and Patti taught me about heliskiing. I’m going to try and love Cindy as much as Ken loved Patti.

When I go heliskiing, I hear Ken Ferrin’s voice in my head. His memory is my blessing.