Balanced on the edges of her skis on a steep, icy ledge on Canada’s Mount Robson, Christina Lustenberger picked her route down: all 3,000 meters (9,843 ft) of it. Sheer, uncovered drops flanked all sides of her, as she and her associate, Guillaume “Gee” Pierrel, ready to descend an uncharted route on the mountain that they had taken two days and two gruelling makes an attempt to climb, via battering storms and bitter chilly. Any misstep or improper flip might show lethal.
A ski prodigy from an early age, Lustenberger grew up listening to tales of adventurers who had climbed the imposing mountain, which, with an elevation of 12,970 toes is the tallest in the Canadian Rockies. Routes down Robson had been skied only some occasions earlier than, and the Great Couloir — an enormous, steep snow gully that results in the summit — on the mountain’s south face had by no means been tried.
“You can ski off the summit, right down to Kinney lake… But it had never been tried before, and so that had been something that I had been thinking about for probably 10 years,” Lustenberger, who made the descent in February 2025, informed NCS.
“When you’re in that terrain, it’s a loopy place to be, the place individuals haven’t skied earlier than.
“Even earlier than you enter, there’s a variety of psychological simulation that goes into it: like speaking together with your companions and determining the logistics of it, the way you need to strategy it, the place you want a specific amount of technical gear, how technical you suppose will probably be.
“What really is interesting is kind of writing it in your own words, rather than reading someone else’s route description and just navigating and figuring the whole puzzle of it out yourself,” she defined.
Lustenberger grew up in Canada’s Columbia Valley, British Columbia, nestled between the Rockies and the Purcell mountain vary, the place her mother and father ran the ski store at the Panorama mountain resort. She has at all times pushed the boundaries of her sport — a aggressive skier by the age of 11, Lustenberger has competed on the nationwide and worldwide stage, first for the provincial Alpine Ski Team after which the Canadian Alpine Ski Team.
Retiring from aggressive racing in her 20s, Lustenberger, now 41, focuses on what she deems “exploratory ski alpinism,” a white-knuckle sport which sees her try new ski lines throughout the world in “wild terrain and crazy places,” together with Pakistan and New Zealand.
But lately, the completed athlete has additionally turned her consideration again to her homeland.
“Canada has a great amount of wilderness and huge mountains, ones that hold their own to the Himalayas and the greater ranges. So being able to have an intimate and authentic relationship with those mountains … you’re very in tune with the snow conditions, the valleys, the lines and everything and so to be able to explore in your backyard is very interesting,” she tells NCS.
Earlier this yr, she and Pierrel, together with Brette Harrington, climbed and skied a never-before tried route down glaciated terrain on the 11,234 ft Mount Deltaform, in Canada’s Valley of the Ten Peaks — a visit sophisticated by changeable climate, falling glacial ice, uncovered faces and sections of ropeless climbing.
Though the North Glacier was initially climbed in 1968, the route is now not advisable and even talked about in present guidebooks due to vital modifications in the glacier and hazards that embody elevated ice fall, Lustenberger defined.
“Direct elevation and remoteness always add certain complexities to these things,” Lustenberger stated of her expeditions.
“But I think that’s what makes it very interesting — it’s not only the descent. The ascent itself can often be just as engaging, and the snow surface will change from day to day,” she added.
Lustenberger and her companions, all athletes with The North Face, function at the highest stage, trying climbs and ski lines that others haven’t but dared to. Still, danger of failure — or worse — is rarely far-off.
In their first try of Mount Robson, the place Lustenberger and her associate Pierrel spent two freezing days — and one bitterly chilly night time sleeping on an uncovered ledge — slogging up the Great Couloir, stormy climate set in and compelled them to desert their plan agonizingly near the summit.
But days later, after beginning a climb at first gentle up the mountain’s Kain Face, they descended the Great Couloir.
“There is a big quantity of these items that you might interpret as difficult or struggling — while you’re on the market and minus 17 (Celsius, 1.4 levels Fahrenheit) and sleeping on this chilly little ledge or excessive in altitude, and it’s difficult to breathe — the whole lot simply feels laborious.
“These moments are very, very intense. It’s not a lightweight, straightforward time. But I feel that via the complete course of, you stretch your self and also you’re on this, like, vice, to carry out and to execute it.
“At the end of achieving something like that, there is a significant amount of joy, being completely proud of yourself and your team, of what you accomplished, and that really is something that makes it really unique. Because if it was easy, everyone would do it, and it wouldn’t have the same significance.”