Mount Fee, North Tower
June 28th, 2025
Saturday I found myself with: a free day, an ebike, and a can-do attitude. I was lacking a partner. I hummed and hawed about what I should do, and eventually decided I’d go check out the North Tower of Mount Fee, which I had wanted to do for a while, in particular after doing the much harder South Tower (the true summit) last year.
The North Tower was supposedly only 3rd or 4th class but loose. I decided I’d go on my own, bring a rope in case I wanted to rappel anything, and just be very conservative being on my own.
I drove down Squamish Valley, then parked right at the start of Shovelnose FSR, and took the ebike up to the cut block. This was well over 1000m of gain but the ebike makes that not an issue.
After clearing the tedium of the cutblock, I strolled through nice open forests into the alpine. I was generally in the clouds, and just headed over to Fee hoping it would clear. My wishes came true, and as I neared the base, the clouds lifted enough for me to get an establishing view of the face and plot my attack.
I had a choice between two broad gully type features, with a small arete separating them. I took the right one. There were two cruxes: the very loose steep dirt section at the very start, and then a short almost 4th class section on very loose rock yielding to a stretch of 3rd class ramps on (more) loose rock just below the summit. In between these two cruxes, the climb was actually mostly class 2 on heather and dirt. I kept my spikes on for the whole climb, and was getting good purchase in the dirt with my axe.
The summit was mostly clouded in, except for a sweet view of the South Tower. To reverse, I actually took the other gully down (skiers right, climbers left), as it looked much better than my way up from above. This ended up being much nicer and less exposed. However, there was one steep section that necessitated a 25m rappel, the last 5m of which were overhung. This way wouldn’t go on the way up (at least not directly).
I then hiked out to my bike and rode it down Shovelnose, taking a few breaks to let the brakes cool down on the 1250m descent.
Glad to be done with Mount Fee now! While this is never really harder than 4th class, the rock is very loose - deceptively so at times. Be careful if you go up!