Glowacz's close-up

Expedition Baffin Island, May 4: Stefan Glowacz’s blog on his adventurous journey to a wall to which nobody has ever been.

Saturday, May 3

Free climbing from nine in the morning till two in the afternoon. Following that, until ten pm, technical climbing in the biting cold but in a magnificent landscape. Robert, Mariusz and Klaus manage four pitches. Tomorrow it’s Holger’s, Klaus’ and my turn. We’re under time pressure. On May 20th at the latest we have to begin the trek to Clyde River. Otherwise we’re in danger of the ice from our arrival trip breaking. We’re all under enormous strain. Contact with polar bears is very probable. But we knew this when we booked. The huge polar bear tracks we’ve discovered only a few meters from our camp instill fear in us. It’s a wild, exciting land. But due to unfathomable reasons we didn’t want it to be any different …

Friday, May 2

The first meters into the wall. None of us has ever climbed in such an exposed place before. In front of us lie icebergs and the open sea, which stretches all the way to Greenland. The rock face takes some getting used to. What seem to be safe scales unexpectedly break. Due to the high differences in temperature, the rock texture is difficult to gauge. We have to be extremely careful. Any accident in this place would have serious consequences. After an easy free climbing pitch comes a difficult technical pitch. Two pitches, a modest start, but one nevertheless.

Thursday, May 1

We move the camp closer to the wall. The advantage here is that we save ourselves the whole daily leg on the return march back to civilization. We travel 340 kilometers of 350. It’s sunny but an ice-cold storm is blustering inland from the sea. Fine, glittering crystals flitter about in the air. Billows of snow drift across the surface of the ice. We pack the kites and dash across the vast plains for a few hours. Under these conditions a march back to Clyde River would be a treat. But we’re still expecting on the worst.

Wednesday, April 30

Yesterday we were only able to imagine the huge rock faces and the overwhelming scenery behind the curtain of clouds. When we stick our necks out of our tents this morning under streaming sunlight we’re absolutely speechless. We pitch camp directly in front of the “China Wall”, a granite wall over 1000 meters high, which protrudes directly from the frozen fjord. In the Seventies the American Eugen Fischer flew over this area. His aerial photographs of this wall inspired us to take the expedition. Back then he wrote of the last great challenges in the fjords of Baffin Island in the ‘American Alpine Journal’.

But there are several other untouched rock faces waiting to be conquered. We go on an exploratory journey with our hunters and travel over the entire Querbitter Fjord. After that we go to the neighboring fjord Icy Arm and Cambridge Fjord and out again towards the estuary mouth in the Buchan Golf. As far as we know, no other climber has ever been active in this region. We feel like pioneers, discoverers, like the Christopher Columbus of our own new world of rocks.

But we aren’t faced with the difficult choice we feared. Yesterday when we turned off into the Buchan Golf during a snow storm, we saw it at the Bastions. It was love at first sight. It protrudes about 800 meters upwards directly from the surface of the ice. A rusty iron fort about half-way straight across the wall. Above that is the totally smooth headwall with a single series of cracks, a perfect line.

Tuesday, April 29

Don’t brood and stay positive, because it could be worse. And we didn’t brood and stayed positive – and things got much, much worse. The day begins with the overturning of one of our snowmobiles. Thank God nothing happened to our driver, but a mess has been made of his vehicle. Only a few kilometers later one of the sleds falls over. The blade breaks; repairs take three hours. The Inuits are true masters of improvisation. Even in moments like these they stay completely calm, composed and maintain amazingly good spirits. You can’t say cool in these regions, that’s what we all are.

Late in the evening we reach the long desired entrance to Querbitter Fjord. What a moment! The walls on both sides get higher and more grandiose. Today we’ve put 60 kilometers behind us. Our preliminary last leg. We’ve reached our goal and it’s stormy and snowing as always. 71 degrees north, 41 minutes, 06.7 seconds – 74 degrees west, 47 minutes, 11.8 seconds.

Monday, April 28

Last night it got even colder. Light snowfall has set in; in the early morning it begins to storm. ‘Whiteout’ and ‘rough ice’ again and again. Even Scheti, our experienced leader, has to find the way using the GPS. We’re only making headway at walking speed. We’re constantly turning around to find new routes. The scenery is ghostly. Welcome to the freezer. After eight hours we give up and pitch our tents in a flurry of snow. Minus 15 degrees and we’ve only covered 53 kilometers. Exhausted, we crawl into our sleeping bags, the only warmth and snug time of day. 72 degrees north, 4 minutes, 45.7 seconds – 74 degrees west, 14 minutes, 55.4 seconds.