Thor Peak
Interesting facts
- The west face does more than drop vertically: it overhangs at an average angle of about 105 degrees, leaning 15 degrees past plumb.
- Lyman Spitzer, one of the two men who first climbed the peak in 1965, conceived the idea of telescopes in space in 1946.
- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is named after the astrophysicist who made the first ascent of Mount Thor.
- Spitzer also invented the stellarator, a device for confining hot plasma that is still used in nuclear fusion research.
- Pat Baird, who led the 1965 expedition, had earlier led the 1953 expedition on which climbers first reached the North Tower of nearby Mount Asgard.
- Winds funnelling through Akshayuk Pass beneath the mountain can reach about 175 kilometres per hour.
- The national park around the mountain was created in 1972 as Baffin Island National Park and given its Inuktitut name, Auyuittuq, a few years later.
- Mount Thor belongs to the Baffin Mountains, part of the Arctic Cordillera, the mountain system running along Canada's far north-eastern edge.
- A second solo ascent of the west face, after Yasushi Yamanoi's in 1988, was made by Jason Smith in 1998.
Why it is worth it
Mount Thor is not especially high, at 1,675 metres, but its western face is one of the most extreme walls on the planet: a sheer cliff of granite that drops about 1,250 metres and, rather than leaning back, overhangs its base. It is often cited as the greatest purely vertical drop on Earth. The mountain stands on the rim of Akshayuk Pass in Auyuittuq National Park, on the Cumberland Peninsula of Baffin Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, just south of the Arctic Circle. Its official name is Thor Peak, after the Norse god of thunder; in Inuktitut it is Qaisualuk, "huge bedrock", or Kigutinnguaq, "tooth-like".
The rock itself is extraordinarily old. The granite has been metamorphosed several times over its history, and its age ranges from about 570 million to 3.5 billion years, which puts it among the most ancient rock exposed anywhere. The wall owes its shape to ice: glaciers moving through Akshayuk Pass gouged out the classic U-shaped trough of a glacial valley, leaving the mountain's flank cut off almost like a sliced loaf. Around it lies the park whose Inuktitut name means "the land that never melts", a 21,470-square-kilometre expanse of fjords, glaciers and the Penny Ice Cap, home to Arctic foxes, snowy owls, polar bears and narwhals along the coast.
The first recorded ascent was made in 1965 by Donald Morton and Lyman Spitzer, the astrophysicist, during an Alpine Club of Canada expedition led by Pat Baird. The great west face was first climbed in 1985 by Earl Redfern, John Bagley, Eric Brand and Tom Bepler; the Japanese climber Yasushi Yamanoi soloed it in 1988, and in 2012 Bill Borger and John Furneaux made the first free ascent of the southwest buttress. For trekkers along the pass, the wall rises straight out of the valley floor, the defining landmark of the route between the Weasel and Owl rivers.
Getting there
Mount Thor lies about 46 km northeast of the hamlet of Pangnirtung, which sits on Pangnirtung Fjord, an arm of Cumberland Sound. Pangnirtung Airport (YXP) has scheduled flights from Iqaluit Airport (YFB), about 345 km south-west of the mountain. Mount Thor stands beside the main trekking route through Akshayuk Pass, along the Weasel River.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Mount Thor, officially gazetted as Thor Peak, in Nunavut, Canada, is a mountain with an elevation of 1,675 m (5,495 ft) located in Auyuittuq National Park, on Baffin Island. The mountain is located 46 km (29 mi) northeast of Pangnirtung and features Earth's greatest vertical drop of 1,200 m (4,100 ft), with the cliff overhanging at an average angle of 105 degrees. Despite its remoteness, this feature makes the mountain a popular rock climbing site. Camping is allowed, with several designated campsites located throughout the length of Akshayuk Pass. For climbers looking to scale Mount Thor, there is an established campsite a few kilometres north of its base, complete with windbreaks and emergency shelters.
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