The guilt when all your tree-hugger pals find out.

Groovy Ridge is the name blissed-out heli-skiers gave to the rocky crest we’re walking, presumably for the far-out and mind-blowing vistas of granite spires jutting out of crystalline glaciers like exclamation points.

But at the moment, “groovy” isn’t the word that comes to mind. Fear is nagging me. It has nothing to do with the ridge ahead, which looks like fun. Rather, it’s the thought of what my Sierra Club friends back home are going to say when they hear how I got here.

I didn’t slog for sweaty, blistery hours through mosquito-infested forests and over tipsy boulders with 50 pounds on my back to reach this spot high in the mountains known as the Bugaboos.

Instead, I stepped out of a helicopter.

I hiked with a woman one time who said she used to date a guy who was a helicopter pilot; he’d take them up to these impossible locations in the Sierra and they’d bask in the bliss of being where nobody else could be. Then they got caught in a storm that knocked the chopper around like a hummingbird and she figured she’d just about breathed her last. After that it was less fun.