Some of you have perhaps seen some pictures, some of you might have read ‘Grønlands Giganter’ in Nordlys from the 12th June 2004 and some of you have heard part of our story already but there are also some who want to know more…members of Tromsø Mountaineering Club will hear the full version in the winter when the evenings are dark and long and when it feels cozy to listen to a good fairy tale….sort of thing. What I am going to write now is a ‘forrett’ (a starter) as Espen would definitely call it. Here it begins… We sit squeezed in a Twin Otter and look impatiently through the small windows to see the first peaks on the East Greenland coast. The noise makes it difficult to communicate but then someone shakes my arm and I notice that there’s something going on. The first view towards the Watkins Mountains opens up and we get our cameras out. Several minutes later we see the spot where we’re going to set up our base camp. After a short circle in the air we land in the deep snow cover on the glacier. We jump out of the plane and sink waist deep in fresh powder. There is a lot of fluffy snow around us, sun shines mercilessly and we start to sweat not prepared for so much warmth. It takes only a few minutes to get our rucksacks out, and the plane is ready for take off. A group of Englishmen wave to us and we head off towards our supplies piled up close to their campsite. They are getting ready to move to a new base camp about 15-20 km away …snow shoeing! Bjørn simply can’t believe it: ‘Where are your skis?’ he asks in astonishment. They also look surprised: ‘We don’t have them’ is their answer. Something to ponder in the future maybe – we think. Their walking pace looks painfully slowly to us but we don’t want to waste time commenting on ‘Ski or not to ski’. We prepare our own Base Camp at the foot of Gunnbjørn Fjeld or Hvitserk (3694 m), the highest mountain in the whole Arctic , which is our main goal. A ‘hovedrett’ (main course) - according to Espen.  The logistics company from UK ‘Paul Walker’s Tangent Expeditions’ left all necessary food and fuel supplies as well as emergency equipment for us near the planned base camp earlier this year. We come to check what we have here and it feels a bit like opening Xmas presents. Certainly not everybody is as excited about having maltloaf (a sort of dark, heavy, fruity and tasty bread) in the lunch box as Harvey . He jumps from joy with every bag he opens while Bjørn methodically empties his food boxes into a ‘felles matpakke’ (food for the whole group) box that is to be used by all of us. He has brought brunost, kaviar, spekemat (traditional Norwegian food) and similar items with him and doesn’t understand our excitement. ‘God mat e norsk mat’ (‘Good food is the Norwegian food’) he says getting a package of knekkebrød (another Norwegian specialty) out of his bottomless rucksack. The Watkins Mountains are not that often visited by people. A few small expeditions come every year but not all of them want to ski from the surrounding peaks. We did. Our plan was simple: we hoped to climb 3 highest mountains in Greenland , have some nice skiing trips, and if possible get to the top of an unclimbed peak or make a new route.  |
Already on the first day we invented a disciplined way of breaking trail because of the metre deep powder, and added effect of altitude. The first person breaks trail for no longer than 5 minutes then he/she walks as the last man and gets a comfortable track to follow until itstime to go first again. It worked perfectly fine for us and we spared probably lots of time and energy keeping it this way. Certainly it is better to be 8 people together in these conditions so we did not discuss individual trips. We also developed certain routines. Wake up at 7am Greenland time (9am Iceland time), queue up to the toilet, eat breakfast in the mess tent, melt snow and boil lots of water to take with you, warm up or dry the skis, skins, inner boots, gloves in the morning sunshine, pack the rucksack, put lots of sun cream on the face, queue up to the toilet again, put the harness on, put the skins on the skis, ooooops, not gluey enough – put extra drops of skin glue on the skins, try again, put the skis on, take off the jumper, put on the sun hat and sun glasses and after 2 hours from the moment when you woke up you’re ready to go. It is about 9am Greenland time (or 11 am Iceland time) and the Plodding begins! Some of you might be wondering how cold it was. Well, during the day half of your body that was exposed to the sun was sweating and you had to apply a generous amount of sun cream while the other half was exposed to a danger of a frost bite. It was about -10 to -15 deg. C during the day and down to -25 deg. C in the night. In any case after almost every trip Bjørn or Harvey had to bang with a hammer into the top of my skiing boots to let them out of the iced ski bindings. Does it sound funny? Oh, yeah, after a few days I got used to it too. As soon as I appeared in the camp there was someone ready with a hammer in hand and a big cunning smile on face…  |
There were 2 trips which offered unbeatable sceneries all day long in my opinion. These were the trip to Dome (3683 m) and to the Deception Dome (3526 m). The day we decided to go up Dome was the coldest we experienced during the whole stay on Greenland . It was icy wind blowing into our faces all the time and we were stiff frozen even while walking. Every time I lifted my head I saw the others well ahead of me. How come it was soooo hard to make myself walk faster that day? I felt as if I was at a snail pace all the time. And I couldn’t do anything about it. It was the only trip I did not warm up before I got back to camp in the evening. We had to go around a few huge crevasses, zigzagging a path up nice skiing slopes, and give up on the idea of skiing all the way to the top when we saw the summit ridge growing in front of us.  |
We left skis, put crampons on and walked up the ridge to the very summit. This was fantastic. I suddenly got my energy back; I could walk comfortably higher and higher and did not feel any altitude effect or any tiredness. It was then when I realized that we really were in the very heart of the Arctic , with all that cold, wind, deep snow and thousands of mountain peaks around us – all of them partly covered by glaciers. The scenery became more and more impressive with every step towards the summit. However we could not spend much time on the top of Dome. It was far too cold for that. ‘Eat, drink, go down and do it all quickly’ was our motto that day. The best part of the day was not finished yet. We put skis on and we experienced the ecstasy of skiing in the powder. Perfect.  |
The trip up Deception Dome, which is the 7th highest mountain on Greenland, was offering the attraction of adrenaline kicks due to crossing dodgy snow bridges over several crevasses, listening to dull sounds of the collapsing snow cover under our feet or skiing along the ridge with steep, icy slopes on both sides…this was our last trip during this expedition and we were determined to have it long, nice and unforgettable. We got to the top making a new route up the steep icefall and our team was the first one to ski down from the top. Looking around while standing on the top of Deception Dome we also saw clearly why polar bears are not seen in base camp. They would have to have ice climbing skills at a very high level and nerves of steel to climb through the labyrinth of the heavily crevassed icefall that was leading to the coast. The rifle could stay safely in the tent. 
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There were other trips we could talk about. We climbed the highest mountain both in Greenland and in the whole Arctic, we skied from a few other summits, we can easily recollect the crispy freshness of the cold air, late evening light approaching our base camp, jokes and cheerful atmosphere during the dinner. We do miss it all. We probably have developed a certain sentiment for Isafjordur in Iceland even though none of us would say it loudly (we spent 5 precious days there in the beginning of the expedition after all…). I could tell you now about our hard work to get to the top of Hvitserk, about the very first day when the trip we took was supposed to be ‘just across the glacier and up the easy slope’ as we believed. We had guests from Bergen who visited us and a lot more that happened but be patient. Wait and see - this story is to be continued… |
