Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
nopantsben
climber
europe
|
|
|
Mar 18, 2016 - 02:55pm PT
|
I think Ghost has some very good advice, especially on the multitude of climbing styles that the place offers. I think the potential for stuff that is 5.10-ish alpine climbing is pretty much untapped.
I will be in the Valley in May. I would be psyched to climb something, V. I will be in touch via the face booklet..
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Mar 18, 2016 - 06:05pm PT
|
hey, nothing wrong with 5.8+ posts... IMHO
|
|
cotuclimber
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
|
|
|
Mar 18, 2016 - 06:22pm PT
|
Killer videos. One day will be a lucky day. Should add you all on facebook as well.
|
|
gumbyclimber
climber
|
|
|
Mar 18, 2016 - 11:34pm PT
|
As was said above, the Pang/Auyuittuq/Weasel Valley is a totally different animal from the Eastern Fjords/Sam Ford/Gibbs area. The walls in the eastern fjords mostly come out of the ocean and necessitate going in AND out prior to the ice breakup in June. the Weasel Valley is usually idyllic in July and August and you go in after the ice flows out in late May or June.
Asgard IS awesome. The rock is incredible- perfect red granite with huge purple crystals and plentiful cracks. Pick a section of the wall that looks as steep as you want to climb and head up.
I sorted out Steve Backshall's trip and hung out with him for a bit. Super nice dude. His trip was complicated by his partner getting injured on our Tyrollean across the river. I was meant to stay longer but it had been a rough season already and I bailed early after soloing the Scott route for maybe my fourth time up it. We were initially stuck in Pang for two weeks waiting for the ice to flow out. It was kind of grim.
Ed: Don't give up on this dream! The Scott Route on Asgard is, by Leo Houlding's account, the best rock climb he had ever done. It's like the easy bits of the Nutcracker for 3000 feet then you do Serenity crack to get off. We brought Geoff Gledhill with us, who turned 70 prior to the trip, and he did the route twice. Beta goes REALLY far for getting up the route quickly; it can be very easy to lose 10 or 12 hours. Plus, if you have the extra $1000 or so you can ship your kit to Pang and have it dropped by skidoo at Summit Lake in April or May and walk in with basically nothing. It is absolutely achievable for you.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Mar 21, 2016 - 08:35am PT
|
Asgard Outing
by Paul Nunn
One Spring evening in 1966, the Rev. Frank Wilkinson, Chaplain of Peterhead Prison, ran quickly through slides gathered during long years as a missionary on Baffin Island. It was fairy-tale country, remote, ice-bound in half-light for much of the year. The long fjords sliced into granite mountains of unrelenting compactness, while they in turn were half enveloped in great ice mushrooms, ice caps which dominate the geography of the area, make its weather, and spill over the top of many a Yosemite-style wall. I wanted to go.
A 'phone call in May 1972 settled it. Doug Scott, Dennis Hennek from California, Tut Braithwaite and myself were to go. It seemed an excellent scheme, for I had always thought Eric Shipton ought to be right: that little expeditions are more likely to be good expeditions, even at their most extended; and I could think of few places more suitable than Baffin for such an approach. Anyway, the battle of Everest seemed to me to have undermined the very term 'expedition', which now implies multiple forms of exploitation and rigid organization for which the only compensation for many individual climbers is pretentiousness. The alienation of heart, combined with the extreme graft involved, seems to me to be the complete antithesis of what mountaineering is all about. A small group, friendly, intimate, motivated but not utterly achievement-orientated, promised to get away from all that.
I was a late arrival. Doug had got some money from the Mount Everest Foundation and Dennis had meticulously ordered food, both in the U.S.A. and from the Bay Trading Co. in Baffin; he had also organized most of the equipment. There were no strings: the plane left in a couple of weeks.
We assembled in Hudson Heights near Montreal, where Mrs. P. Baird entertained us royally. Dennis proved to be anything but the lean, rock-drilling technocrat that I had half expected. Instead he was a muscular, blond, fun-and-pleasure- loving character who seemed to enjoy the occasional discipline of climbing, and who was prepared to take great pains to do it well. Within a few hours we seemed like a team.
On July 3rd, we flew to Pangnirtuhg, a dusty Eskimo settlement across the Cumberland Sound. Blue skies, after a murky journey, boded well.
From the beginning there was a sense of unreality in this land of myth and magic enjoying its brief summer. On July 4th, Jok Polliollok and another Eskimo took us by sledge and skiddoo twenty miles down the fjord ice towards the mountains. There was a gala atmosphere, even when a sledge broke under the weight of five people and a boat. The Eskimos played at shooting imaginary seals and we golloped food and brews together when we arrived under the great face of Mount Overlord. It was a light-hearted and fortunate start, for the sea-ice was late, and we were saved at least two days.
Then we conned one another. None of us had ever carried such monstrous loads as we assembled. Food for nearly three weeks, tents, big-wall gear, fuel : the pack frames bent and creaked under the load, and so did we. Somehow, tottering upright, we trekked off from the dump at the fjord head into Weasel Valley's pebble flats. After two days of wandering up these flats and through moraines which disappeared into soaring granite walls and a grey snowladen sky, we camped to rest for a day by the frozen waste of Summit Lake.
Again the ice was useful. On consecutive days we tramped six miles over the lake-ice, taking half-loads to the Turner Glacier and a camp below Asgard. On July 9th, we stamped out tent sites by a glacier lagoon. It was snowing quite heavily, but we were all pleased - the carry was over.
Snow shoes were essential to get far on the glaciers in 1972. Crevasses were deeply covered, making unroped wanderings hazardous, though we sometimes indulged ourselves. It froze for only a short time at night, leaving a weak crust. The camp was idyllic, on the snow at the junction of two glaciers, by the blue lake, with the plumb-vertical walls of Freyr Peak opposite and Asgard behind. Rocks trundled from an outlying minor summit, but we were adequately distant from their path. Moreover, we were well fed and well equipped, and on July 10th the weather began a lasting good spell.
Our first objective, the main cause of our weight crucifixion coming in, was the West Dihedral of Asgard. Doug and I broke a track on the 10th, and dug a trench up deep insecure snow on the lower slopes. The dihedral is a real siren, drawing the eye up its clean-cut features for over 1,500ft. On a sparkling morning, we snow-shoed over the light crust to the base of the face again. Cloud rolled in dazzling furls over the ice cap to the north. Doug and I carried gear, while Tut led up the initial 1,500ft. of snow and mixed ground. It was unsafe and avalanche-prone, with little security. A last lead of over 400ft. led to the dihedral base.
Doug set off up an iced chimney with Dennis seconding, while we cut a large platform. It seemed that the donkeywork was over. For today, tomorrow, maybe the day after, we would swing and dangle, hammer away, and sleep in our hammocks in the relative safety of the vertical. This opinion seemed confirmed when the 400ft. slope avalanched in a sea of slops, although it was modified by ice lumps falling from far above and blowing in a keen wind into the dihedral.
But our confidence was premature, however well-equipped physically and mentally we might have been. Apart from the cold on this side of the mountain, which could have been a problem in a really prolonged attack, the dièdre was not a pegging fault but a closed granite joint with aberrant, unlinked cracks. Dennis found himself faced with a painful choice at 200ft. - the first of several long bolt ladders or nothing. The bolting seemed premature, and perhaps ultimately undesirable. In the early hours of July 12th we reached camp after about twenty hours' absence.
Snoozing re-appraisal led to a quick decision. Late on the 12th, Tut and Doug broke tracks to the North-East Ridge of Asgard North Peak. Next day, lightly equipped, we all set off in relentless sun. For me, personally, the route had immense appeal; it was a smooth pillar of slabby and near-perfect granite, about 3,500ft. high from the glacier. It was to be an Alpine-style push with no provision for stopping.
Doug and Dennis led through up the magnificent lower slabs, while for a time Tut and I suffered the divorcing experience of prussiking. Then, about mid-day, we led on. It was a flood of pleasure to me, with corners, jamming cracks, delicate slabs, and a gradual steepening of angle as the upper pillar came nearer. We stopped once for food, and then followed a crack system of escalating difficulty, deeply reminiscent of all the best Alpine granite climbs I have experienced. We used few pegs, nut protection being usual. In the late evening, a cold mist flung a grey cloak over us. At midnight, after about ten hours of leading, Tut and I relegated ourselves to the rear for the headwall.
The red granite, compact but split by a crack system, reared up towards the summit. There were four hard pitches for Doug and Dennis, and airy swinging prussiks on lightly frozen ropes for us. Dennis did the all-star lead on a Curbar-style 140ft. crack. It took at least two hours of real struggle and was extremely difficult, especially coming as the penultimate pitch of a hard climb. Doug finished it off up a gritstone jamming crack at Hard VS, straight to the summit. During the sojourns we dozed in our duvets, waiting for the sun to re-appear. At 6.00 on the 14th we were on the table-top summit in brilliant sun.
The aftermath was deflating. The glacier lagoon had flooded and the tents were threatened if not awash, fifty-five miles out from Pang. Good weather has its costs. Attempts at a quick descent of the original route were defeated by obnoxious, deep, wet snow, which reduced us to a commando crawl, ludicrous and deadly serious as we sank into crevasses. It was easy to see how people fail to make it under such circumstances. Fortunately the lower glacier was better, and we reached the snowshoes and the camp thirty-three hours after departure.
The blue tents were dry but afloat on the packed snow under them. With joyous, tired sploshings they were rescued, and re-erected uphill. Six more hours and they would have been drowned. Two-ton eyelids slumped to sleep, despite the relentless arctic light.
Two days later we began the tramp out. There was more to do, but we were tired and a little self-satisfied. We crossed a col below our route with 70lb. sacks, and descended dreadful, deep powder on the Caribou Glacier at less than a mile an hour, tripping occasionally as the snowshoe tips crept under the crust, and finding difficulty in swimming out with the sacks pushing our faces into the morasse. After a snooze at Summit Lake, we continued down to camp in a fine spot below the 4,500ft. face of Thor. With battered feet and still heavy loads, our retreat became a ramble. Time was taken up with peering at flowers and wildlife, and snoozing and eating food remnants.
We took the best part of a week to cover the fifty miles or so to Pang. By then the mosquitoes were coming to life, the pack-ice was breaking rapidly, the arctic summer was weakening enough to allow a little night, the food was eaten and it was time to go.
We had no commitments, except to ourselves, and they were satisfied. Success was aided by fortuitous good weather and a late winter. Dennis's meticulous organization, End especially the freeze-dried food, made the carry possible. Without air-drops or great expense, we got ourselves from Pang fjord head to Asgard, and back to Pang. We did a dream of a climb, and each led his quota. Almost all the climbing was Very Severe, or harder, so all our egos were satisfied. As an exercise in logistics, and as an intensely personal experience, the expedition was gratifyingly complete. Amazingly, it was a product of motivation which was less 'achievement-' or 'summit-orientated' than most such excursions. Perhaps therein lies its validation.
SUMMARY
Baffin Island/Cumberland Peninsula: Mt. Asgard. Attempt on the West Face Dihedral of North Peak and the first ascent of the North-East Flank of North Peak by an Anglo-American team consisting of Doug Scott, Paul Nunn, Dennis Hennek and Paul (Tut) Braithwaite. July 1972.
Mountain 26
|
|
Ian Parsons
climber
UK, England
|
|
|
Mar 21, 2016 - 10:30am PT
|
Thanks Ed. Would you mind posting this on the retrobolts thread as well; it's the route in question. You can just see the actual pitch - Hennek's "all-star lead" - as the lefthand crack in the summit tower in that upward photo.
|
|
Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
|
|
|
Mar 21, 2016 - 08:41pm PT
|
Vitaly, this one's for you. My effort to help you keep the stoke alive.
You've heard of Mt. Asgard, right? Best-known peak on Baffin. 4,000 ft monster aid routes on one side, and the moderate Scott route on the other side -- which Gumbyclimber has described as 3,000 ft of the easy parts of Nutcracker with a Serenity Crack finish.
But that doesn't even begin to describe this single mountain. Yes, there are the huge west face routes. And yes, there is the Scott route on the other side. (And the Swiss route if you want something relatively short and easy).
But look at this picture. Everything you see is "Mt. Asgard." Not just the towers at the north end, but a whole series of summits stretching south (and more out of the picture). Every kind of climb you can imagine, at every grade you might desire.
And that's just one mountain in a range that stretches for almost 1,000 km. You could drop Mt. Asgard into it anywhere, and it wouldn't stand out. And you could drop Yosemite Valley in there and never notice it again.
Ben and Gumby have talked about the "Two areas". The northeast coast and the Asgard area. But that's a gross oversimplification. Akin to describing the California Sierras as just Yosemite and Bishop. Or the Rockies as just Banff and Jasper.
Whatever you want, it's there waiting for you. But enough said. Check out this photo of Mt. Asgard and tell me there's not a route there for every climber at every ability level... And ten thousand more such peaks in every direction.
|
|
gumbyclimber
climber
|
|
|
Mar 22, 2016 - 02:23am PT
|
True, there is unclimbed rock, snow and ice all over the place up there. Depends on how motivated you are. Most people who go there are on their first trip and tick the really stand-out peaks: Asgard, Overlord, Northumbrea, etc. If you are keen on ice/snow then you may want to skidoo in earlier and then hang out for the warm weather in July/August. 6 weeks on the ground there is barely enough time to adjust to the daylight, routine, and environment. Since 1998 the ice has broken up in May or early June and the summers have been almost cloudless. We got caught, however, in '14 by the ice breaking up on July 3rd or somewhere thereabouts. Was snowing/sleeting sideways for two weeks and changing direction constantly. Lucky I was to have Inuit friend's houses to crash for Internet, showers, Xbox, raw seal liver, and whale. Some of the best unclimbed rock for the motivated is up behind Thor. The farther you go up the glaciers the more arduous and dangerous they become so you may need skis and it is a ways up the talus out of the valley to get there.
Best time to go in is as close to the solstice as you can and leave by September 1st. Winter snaps overnight and when everything on the glacier freezes you can totally hose yourself for water and the descent- which can be done in running shoes until it becomes a skating rink.
There is a lot of rockfall in Baffin. A lot. I have seen what you would call significant geologic events. A lot of the snow/ice gulleys that look super sick are bowling alleys and you should observe that and take care with your timing. Don't ever camp in the 2 or 3 kilometres past Mt. Thor.
I would not recommend the Swiss Route on Asgard except for maybe early in the season when it has lots of snow. It is ridiculously loose and rotten rock.
|
|
Regan
Big Wall climber
Poland/Scotland
|
|
|
Mar 22, 2016 - 06:03am PT
|
I found Mark Synnott guide book as very useful.
Mark Synnott, Baffin Island. Climbing, Trekking & Skiing.
You can also google TR about Mark "Twid" Turner expedition in Steward Valley.
If you will got to the East Coast, just drop me email...
|
|
Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
|
|
Just saw this :
Steven Amter
climber
Washington, DC
Mar 20, 2009 - 03:11pm PT
4Deuce: Nice blueprints.
I have to correct something though. Friends were available in the U.S. before 1980 - I know I was using them in 1979 and never ordered anything from overseas... We could buy them at Rock and Snow in the Gunks, and also, I believe, in places like EMS. I still have, and use some of those friends.
In fact, in the summer of 1979 my party had 2 full sets up to 4" to use in aid climbing on Mt. Thor, Baffin Is. (The big ones had not yet reached the market, but we got them special directly from the company.) This was one of the earliest such uses in wide, long cracks.
I also know that custom made small sized friends, and maybe TCUs hit the Gunks by no later than summer of 1983 - I bought some from Steve and Corey Rich, who were making them, and possibly visiting western climbers who were also making and selling them.
Steve Amter
and thought if he has not seen or posted to this thread it would be fun to got some input. . . Calling Steve Amter
|
|
Ian Parsons
climber
UK, England
|
|
In fact, in the summer of 1979 my party had 2 full sets up to 4" to use in aid climbing on Mt. Thor, Baffin Is. (The big ones had not yet reached the market, but we got them special directly from the company.) This was one of the earliest such uses in wide, long cracks.
Steve Amter
I've no idea whether Steve went back to Thor in 1979, but it was definitely July 1978 when Jim Fotheringham and I encountered him, Rick Cronk and Ron Sacks on their way in to Thor as we were walking out. Friends had hit the market earlier that year - February, I think; sizes 1,2 and 3. Three months later (October) in Yosemite we were able to borrow a prototype #4; it had "JARDINE" stamped on it, and a retaining slot for the trigger so it could be carried in "compact" mode. As far as I'm aware these were not commercially available at the time.
|
|
guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
|
|
Hennek has a scanner but not a high quality one. Dennis had a long conversation with his old mate Doug Scott the other day and I just bet if Ed offered to scan Dennis's Baffin slide the offer would be welcome. Just thinking!
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
Can't believe this shirt is 21yro..
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
I'm happy to scan Dennis' slides!
I think I did scan some of Dennis' that Ken had...
|
|
Ian Parsons
climber
UK, England
|
|
I've no idea whether Steve went back to Thor in 1979
Hah - should have checked! I see that Steve Amter did indeed return to Thor in 1979, along with Michael Sawicky and Ron Sacks; AAJ 1980.
I think there's a useful point to derive from Steve's experience in 1978. As I recall they were unlucky enough to arrive in Pangnirtung only a couple of days or so after the cut-off point for travelling in by skidoo (which changes from year to year) - ie during the period of "limbo" before it becomes possible to travel by boat. As a result they were forced to spend a good chunk of their available time in the area simply getting themselves and their kit by foot from Pang to the head of the fjord. They first arrived in Pang only two or three days after us but were still walking in as we headed out; we, by pure luck, flew in to Pang about four hours before the departure up the fjord of what was probably the last skidoo trip of the season. A dose of the same bad luck would have probably completely scuppered our fairly tight timetable.
|
|
Kalimon
Social climber
Ridgway, CO
|
|
Thanks folks for the awesome historic images, can't wait to see more.
|
|
Steven Amter
climber
Washington, DC
|
|
Hi Gnome ofthe Diabase, Ian, and everyone else -
Steve Amter checking in.
Wow Ian, its been nearly 40 years, but I very much remember meeting three(?) climbers who had been climbing in the Weasel Valley for something like seven weeks when we finally made it to head of the fiord in 1978 - I guess that was you! And you are right, we (and a bunch of other teams) were stuck in Pangnirtung for ever waiting for the ice to clear enough to take a freighter canoe.
I even have a picture of you that I included in our a slide show I used to give on our Baffin adventures. (Didn't remember your name though...) I used it to illustrate how rugged conditions could be there, but how one could acclimate after a few weeks. In contrast to how absolutely fresh-faced and warmly dressed we appeared when we first arrived, I pointed to you guys as looking like three of the leanest, toughest, but most "french fried" individuals I had seen in a while. You weren't wearing much clothes and what you wearing was in tatters as I remember it. Yet, by the time we left for home, we looked pretty much the same condition.
I going to alert Ron (one of my Baffin partners that also met you.)
I'm jazzed to have found this thread.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!