Extreme skiers Christina “Lusti” Lustenberger and Guillaume Pierrel made history last month by being the first to ski down Mount Robson’s south face.
Lustenberger, a former Canadian Olympic skier who grew up in the Columbia Valley, had spent her life hearing about the imposing Mount Robson and first began considering descending its south face a decade ago.
“As you look at mountains differently and your skill set evolves, you’re unlocking terrain and the way you approach and look at things,” she said. “It’s been a 10-year vision of wanting to go try this thing, but also a lot of things need to align to give it a reasonable attempt.”
Located in British Columbia about 87 kilometres west of Jasper, Alta., Mount Robson is the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies at 3,954 metres, with the south face having a vertical drop of over 3,000 metres.
Lustenberger has tackled various extreme ski descents across the world. She was recently featured in Trango, a documentary about how she and Jim Morrison undertook the first-ever ski descent of Pakistan’s Great Trango Tower.
These kinds of experiences made her confident enough to attempt skiing down Mount Robson’s south face. She needed to be ready emotionally and physically, plus find a partner who shared the same vision and skills that not only matched hers but also pushed her, which would ultimately result in a stronger team.
Lustenberger met French alpinist Pierrel in Germany last summer while rock climbing and skiing in New Zealand in the fall. After developing a good skill set together, she proposed they go to Mount Robson.
“I kind of knew it would always be on the table,” she said. “You’re trying to figure out how to do it, who to do it with and the things you need to do it, and so there’s so many different aspects of that pre-work, and obviously finding and believing in the right partner is only going to set yourself up for success.”
The duo first climbed up Mount Robson’s north face, which required two attempts due to poor weather conditions.
On their second try, they established a base camp at the Dome and climbed the Kain Route, which is the original way up Mount Robson, before doing a complete ski descent down the south face that Lustenberger described as “super engaging.”
“The climb is, in some ways, a huge challenge, but this style of skiing is also incredibly challenging,” she said. “There isn’t really one place that you’re not dealing with some sort of life-threatening exposure.”
The line, or route, took three-and-a-half hours to ski, required seven repels and featured ever-changing snow surfaces and convoluted terrain. Lustenberger noted how such treacherous descents test all the skills of an athlete.
“There’s not a moment on that line where we weren’t intensely focused on what we were doing,” she said. “Time is just lost to the intensity of what you’re doing.”
Given how Mount Robson already had many legendary stories and names associated with it, Lustenberger emphasized the need “to write your actions for your vision in the history of this mountain.”
“We didn’t fill any lines. We didn’t do a variation. We skied a whole new side of the mountain, and this side, it’s what you see from the road. It can be shared with so many people,” Lustenberger said.
“And now when people go and look up Mount Robson, they can imagine two people skiing down, and I think that is kind of cool, that you’re just opening the imagination of many people who can share that view,” she added.
