Fissile Peak - March 9 2023
Fitzsimmons Range, Whistler, British Columbia
2439m
This trip report is a continuation from Whirlwind Peak, so to see how I got to the col between the two, start there.
That transition was about 15 minutes of life I'll never get back (gotta get faster at getting my skis on my pack and getting my crampons on). It didn't help that it was NOT wind-sheltered here at all, and my hands were FREEZING after fumbling around with all my gear. After I got over that, though, I came up with the basic plan of "try and top out the ridge sooner vs later, and hope to use as much crusty, supportive snow as possible to avoid swimming". I figured the ridge didn't look super gnarly, and it'd be better to have options, and be on top of the snow, even though overhead hazard was really nonexistent before the point I had already chosen to cross over into the skiable face.
Unfortunately, the "avoid swimming" part didn't go super well, and I was postholing to my waist for most of the climb up, which wasn't exactly ideal. I spent what felt like a year but was really only about 15 minutes ascending as many metres from that point to the ridgetop, where I looked over and saw a pretty mellow, skinnable route up to the top if I just scrambled over to the little pinnacle I had chosen previously as my "last point to cross over" and put my skis on at the little bench below it.
The scramble over to the bench was actually pretty simple, the ridge was snowy, so just a matter of stepping carefully and it's a non-issue. You could do this without an axe or crampons, it'd just be a bit annoying to get onto the ridge. There's almost certainly easier routes (I actually brought the Spearhead Backcountry Atlas with me, which describes such routes, but we chose this route for unique reasons, discussed in the previous post if one is curious), but this worked well enough for me. Plus I got to confirm my crampons' fit with my new ski boots, as the rear "buckle" doesn't sit flush, so I wanted to test to see how secure it was in-practice (seemingly, plenty secure). The transition here was a bit faster, but still not the fastest, as having to pack/unpack and remove/add both skins and crampons is quite tedious.
The skin up to the apparently false summit seen above was pretty simple, only about 20 minutes for about 100m of elevation gain, which I was happy with at my tiredness level, which was starting to kick in again (seems repeating the same thing I did the day before, but faster, then doing more takes a toll after all). I got to the false summit only to be rudely slapped in the face with a decently long ridge to the true summit. Checking the time, and looking down at Philip having plenty of fun down below, I decided that it was worth it to push on, so I started the slightly sketchy traverse across to the true summit.
As seen above, there was some undulation in the ridge to contend with, which was a bit annoying on skis w/ skins and free heels. I kept them on because I knew it'd just take too long to transition a couple times to adjust for the small elevation changes on the ridge, and just dealt with it. Safe sections I could slowly ski down, but there was a lot of walking flat and side-stepping down to avoid losing control and tumbling down the steep+rocky faces to either side. Thankfully it was not a long section, and just 6 minutes later I was across the sketchy bit and had the goal in sight with a clear+easy path ahead to it.
Four minutes of skinning up later, and I made the top of Fissile. Views were pretty great from here. Didn't bother getting closer to the exposure and maybe more cornices to check out the ski lines off the top since I already had a chosen route down, but I did at least take some pictures before heading back.
I skinned back over and up to the false summit I'd seen from the col, and then ripped my skins before dropping onto the bench I skinned up previously. I waved and hollered at Philip from afar (we didn't have radios and Philip had his phone off, so "old school" comms for us) to ensure he was watching in case I did something stupid, and then dipped over the lip and enjoyed some excellent steep skiing down the bowl into the Overlord Glacier.
The run brought me down to 2250m, so I had to slap my skins back on, and skin back up 100m to get above the wind lip, which was not the most fun I'd ever had, as at this point I was tired, and also starting to worry about if I'd make it back before dark. It'd be fine if I didn't, but I of course prefer to have light if the option exists. I did my best in what was, of course, the deepest pow of the day (uselessly in a spot I was only going to ascend), and got up in 15 minutes, giving Philip ample time to pack the kite up and get a small head start on the descent (he headed to the col below the wind lip, presumably hoping for a little shelter from the wind). After a quick transition (I did at least get a lot of practice ripping skins without leaving my bindings in the last 2 days), I joined him there.
From the col, we had some pretty good turns until we had to start traversing across the base of Fissile's western flanks to stay high before we dropped down to the lake. Those slopes were really hammered, and almost skied like ice; super fast, and I didn't even break the crust (but that worked well for me, as I was trying to traverse them, not ski down them).
From there, we split up for the last time. Philip went to go play at the lake until dusk, and I went on a mission to get out before dark and/or my legs gave up on me. I met a couple guys transitioning back into my skins before the short climb from Russet Lake to the hut, where I discovered that I made the right choice in line on Whirlwind, as they were complaining about bad snow, which was quite different from my experience (they went too far skier's right). Unfortunate for them, but good to know my snowvaluation and line choice was fruitful.
I quickly scampered up to the hut from there, and snapped a couple pictures just after 5:00pm before heading across the skin track around Cowboy Ridge (I at least bagged that the day prior, so I got to save a small amount of time+energy I'd have otherwise had to spend bagging that and Russet Ridge). After skinning around the corner to the mellow slopes where the uptrack to the hut is from Musical Bumps, I ripped my skins once more and had some very nice, mellow skiing down to the start of the Singing Pass trail (almost). I decided a while ago that it was not worth the time+energy to skin back into the resort, as it'd probably be dark, and I'd be unable to appreciate the "more sendable" terrain, even if I ignored the extra exertion.
I said "almost" for a reason, as one will end up at a large intersection of skin tracks after skiing down, but not quite at the singing pass trail just yet. There are a few final metres of elevation to gain to get across the creek and onto the trail, so I had a pair of transitions to make and about 5 minutes of skinning before I could finally "just head down". As part of my final transition, I packed my googles away (too dim with them on this late), got my earphones back in (well just 1, but still), and got ready for the tedious ski out.
Singing Pass was in good shape, but I never really enjoyed that kind of skiing. It's just a bunch of sidehilling which hits me in the same muscle every time, and a bunch of absorbing bumps for the whole way down, basically. Or at least the first half is especially like that. Still better than walking, though, and it got me out from a bit over 1700m to 693m at Whistler Village in under an hour, so I will still take that every time over booting it out. By the end, the trees were getting pretty dark, but I managed to avoid busting out the headlamp, so I'll consider that a success.
The overall trip was a bit over 8 hours, and I suspect a fast party that skis off of Fissile directly toward Singing Pass instead of going too low and the opposite direction could shave 1hr or even more off of that without too much trouble. Definitely a fun peak, especially when combo-ed with Whirlwind. I don't repeat peaks too often, but if I'm going for a "ski day" anyway, there were a lot of lines there I didn't get to try, so maybe this will be one of the rare peaks I do revisit a few times.