Until a few years ago few people had ever heard of Baffin Island. Far to the north and with most of the island above the Arctic Circle it was for along time the preserve of hardened arctic explorers, hunters and fishermen. Baffin featured large in the exploration of the pole with explorers such as Frobisher and John Davis passing through. Since that time climbers have discovered the area and some areas such as Sam Fiord have become popular with big wall climbers looking for ultimate in adventure. At SMC we have experience in this region and have climbed there in the past climbing some of the major peaks in the area including Asgard and new routes on some of the smaller peaks. Since that time we have always wanted to return and try the skiing in the late winter and spring. Much of the Cumberland Peninsular is part of Auyuittuq National Park. The name comes form an Inuit word meaning "the place where the sun never sets" and this park is one of Canada's northern most National Park. Much of the park is the Penny Highlands with granite peaks reach 7,000 feet but the area is dominated by the Penny Icecap, where huge valley glaciers spill down into the lower elevations and fiords.

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There have been very few ski expeditions to this area and information is hard to get. But you can rest assured that we will probably be doing first descents of a number of lines.
For this program we intend to explore the high valleys in the Pangnirtung Pass region and ski as many peaks and gullies as we can. We will use snowmobiles to access Pangnirtung Pass where we will set up a comfortable basecamp. The route to camp follows the Weasel Valley for nearly 20 miles but gaining only 600 feet. Once here the options are enormous. We will ski tour up under the vast faces of the double summited

Asgard and ski some of the glaciers dropping from the icecap and to the south of our basecamp we can climb towards peaks such as Briedlabik and it's chutes and glaciers.

The arctic is an amazing place so this will certainly be an adventure to remember for a long time.

Itinerary
This is a tentative schedule at best. We have to have good snow conditions to travel in and out on the snowmobiles. We also need to be well done with our trip before the sea ice shows any signs of breaking up. When this happens there is a period of time when neither snowmobile nor boat can travel on up the fiord.
Once at camp weather will certainly be our big dictating factor and we will be doing our best to work around it. But in a perfect world this is what we would aim for.

Day 0 You arrive in Pangnirtung.
Day 1 We travel via snowmobile up the Weasel Valley to Summit Lake and set up basecamp here
Day 2-11 We ski and explore as much as we can.
Day 12 Return to Pangnirtung.
Day 13 You return home

Notes and other information:
Prerequisites:

Notes
You need to arrive in Pangnirtung the day the trip starts to finalize equipment sorting and to prepare everything for transportation up the fiord. Pangnirtung is a very small Inuit community and is hard to get to. Currently one airline flies in there and that is First Air with flights from Montreal three times a week via Iqualuit. Getting there should give your travel agent something to work hard on!!!
For Canada entry you now need a passport. There is always a possibility that you may not be able to fly to Pangnirtung from Montreal because of weather. Keep this in mind. We will be in the high mountains so there will be no problems with polar bears – so do not fret about this too much. They prefer the coastline where there are seals!