The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: July fourth, heli-hiking in the Selkirks.

Adamant Lodge is a quasi-Tyrollean retreat set amid the wild jagged 7,000-foot peaks of the Selkirk Mountains in eastern British Columbia, Canada, and a five hour drive from the town of Banff.

Adamant is one of seven small lodges operated by Canadian Mountain Holidays, a private company that leases access to pristine public land. Surrounded by 400 square miles of wilderness, each lodge accommodates only 40 guests at a time. By comparison, 30,000 hikers are often shoe-horned into the same size area in the Swiss Alps.

The lodges were set up as bases for hard-core skiers who were delivered by helicopter to the tops of nearby peaks for some of the world's best, and longest downhill runs. That still happens in winter, but now hikers populate the lodges from mid-June through September.

There's a primordial feeling to this landscape; pyrite peaks thrust a mile high by the slow collision of tectonic plates, with great gashes to the earth's crust, gouged by the inexorable grind of glaciers. Stream laced valleys are a geological field day, with vast tracts of brittle shale and sandstone boulders interspaced with spongy heath and heather.

And these hikers don't need to walk to get around. The same copters that ferry skiers in the winter help summer hikers cover vast stretches quickly. They deposit small groups at points of peak perspective for local adventures and then pick them up at day's end. Purists may sniff at the notion of air lifts, but helicopters provide access to places few hikers would reach on their own two feet, and make it both safe and, in some ways, even more exciting.

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