Home > Trip Reports > Apr 5, 2015, Fissile Peak, Whistler

Apr 5, 2015, Fissile Peak, Whistler

4/5/15
Canada BC
3641
5
Posted by discostew on 4/7/15 7:00am
Started skinning from the Symphony resort area at the crack of 11 am (due mostly to my tardiness) with the intention of riding the Banana chute on Fissile Peak, a line I have long coveted.  We first tried to gain the ridge via the west face but came up about 20 m short because we are geniuses and didn't bring crampons and ice axes ("uh... i think we should be able to skin right to the top").  Rode down the west face, which was decent consolation for our failure.  At this point it was 3:30 and we debated whether we had enough time to try to boot straight up the chute.  After confirming we all had headlamps, we booted up the Banana and rode almost all of it.  Google earth says we actually did about 80% of it depending on what you call the bottom.  We'll be back, properly equipped, to shred the spicier NW face.  With another dump scheduled for this weekend, looks like winter is making a late comeback.

video of the down:  https://vimeo.com/124269555

pics of the up:

Fissile playing peek-a-boo:


the Banana is the one being hidden by the closest rocky ridge.  Yup, should totally be able to skin to the top of that thing


on the west face:


as far as we got via our first route:


looking up at the Banana after booting up and shredding it:


our tracks down the west face:


a catalogue of our day:


a last look before heading back into the resort:


Decker and Trorey at sunset.  Back at the car at 8:30 pm


Nice work guys. Good snow that day. Looked like you had excellent stability even on the steeps. I saw a picture of a guy getting up there in 2006 and his caption was "my kingdom for an ax, or even a whippet". You certainly made the most of it. I'm hoping to ski Cowboy Ridge tomorrow.

Thanks Avajane.  Yeah stability was not a concern - one of the pluses of a lack of snow.  The downside was the lack of anything to dig our toes into.  We also discovered that there's a lot of shale on Fissile so when we did get down to rock, it would slide around on us.  I definitely want to return with the proper equipment and do a line right from the top.

I had never been out further than Oboe before this trip, but now I figure if you're going to go to Cowboy, might as well just push a little further out to Fissile.  You should go do it this week before the forecasted storm hits this weekend.

My partner bailed - another inbounds day. But I do have new demo skis that cost me $242 US! Atomic Access with bindings. Bottoms are perfect!

Fissile does look good. Those were some sweet looking tracks. How steep would you figure Banana Chute would be? I do have a limit...

I think John Baldwin's book says it's 40 deg, which felt about right to me.  With the couple feet of pow that's in there now, it's not intimidating at all.  If it was anything close to icy, it would be a very different story.

Thanks - that's still within my limit! A beautiful line that should be skied!

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apr-5-2015-fissile-peak-whistler
discostew
2015-04-07 14:00:30