Category: Backcountry

Yes it was twenty years ago that the late Trevor Peterson and Eric Pehota skied the North Face Of Mt. Fitzimmons. And a couple days later Jia Condon and I did the second descent following the first descent of Mt Iago North West Face.
For Years the N Face of Fitzimmons has been on Jason Lee’s hit list. Two previous attempts preceded our attempt on Feb 2. We stayed in the Himmelsbach hut at Russet lake with a couple of ‘boarders from Quebec. When we asked them what they were up to they replied that they had “taken a look at N Face Fitz” and were slightly overwhelmed by it and decided to take a look at a line on Fissile instead. They mentioned that they could see tracks on Iago but none on Fitzimmons. That obviously excited us an extra amount of determination to see the face. Before dawn on Feb 2 we skinned up away from the hut with a few clouds about and temperatures at -3c. The clouds grew grey and ominous as we approached the Overlord bypass. In and out of cloud we traversed around Overlord and Benviolo. We bootpacked up the south coulior of Fitzimmons and made the notch at 10:45. Total white out and strong southerly winds had us hunkered down on the high N Face waiting for a clearing….
Around 11:30 the clouds parted, the light became clear and we could easily navigate the downward traverse to the top of the face proper. John Baldwin calls it “380m of 45-50deg”. Pretty intimidating, but after our last outing on the Central Coulior of Joffre it looked really manageable.