A team of 9 British explorers returned to London´s Stansted airport March 14th March after making the first – and second – winter ascent of Gunnbjornsfjeld – GBF, the highest peak in the Arctic. The team of 7 climbers lead by Paul Walker of Tangent Expeditions ([a „http://www.climbgreenland.com“]www.climbgreenland.com[/a]) and Baz Roberts from The North Face UK Athlete Team left the UK February 27th and made rapid progress after establishing a base camp at 2000m and some 12km from the peak by 1st March. By 3rd March an advanced base camp was established at 2430m 8km from the summit on the north side of the mountain. A massive high pressure of 1040+mb was sitting over eastern Greenland at the time so the team capitalised on this and made a summit attempt under light winds, blue skies and –30°C temperatures on March 4th. Wearing Everest grade Himalayan North Face down suits and on ski mountaineering equipment, all 9 team members reached the base of the summit ridge at approx. 3500m where they continued on foot to approx. 3600m. The sting in the tail was a steeper than anticipated c. 100m long 45 degree very exposed and icy summit ridge. It was late in the day so only 4 team members – Roberts, Walker, Adrian Pedley and John Starbuck soloed to the summit. Walker and Starbuck richly deserved this honour as they made a previous first attempt at a winter ascent in 2004 on the south ridge. Both expeditions are the only winter „sport“ expeditions to have been granted permits by the Danish Polar Centre.
On the descent, at the base of the summit ridge, Roberts made further Greenland history by making a paraglider descent – possibly the first in Greenland and most certainly the first from GBF – 1100m vertical and 8km back to ABC in 15 mins. He is sponsored by Sky Paragliders of the Czech Republic and was flying their super lightweight mountain wing, which with a harness weighs in at a measely sub 5kgs! Roberts also filmed the summit day on a Sony PD100 DVCam and intends to produce a film of the expedition.
The team rested at ABC and sat out some bad weather. Night time temperatures ranged between –25°C and –35°C and ABC only received 20 minutes of direct sunshine each day. On the 9th March, the whole team made a second summit attempt to give the remaining 5 team members another shot at Arctic glory! They skied up by a more direct route and gained 2 hours on the first ascent. Roberts made a full second ascent and fixed 60m of rope on the final pitch to secure the route and Doug Gurr, Lucy Makinson, Hugh Mackay and James Wheaton completed the climb. The wind was much stronger on the day and they estimated summit temperatures of –50c with wind chill. Adrian Pedley also made a second complete ascent and stripped the gear off the mountain. The recent fresh snow gave the team some nice fresh tracks back to ABC.
By 11th March the team had descended to base camp and were awaiting a ski equipped Twin Otter pickup on the 12th. That night at 11.30pm a polar bear – 60km from the sea and 2km a.s.l. (above SEAL level!) – ravaged their camp, ripping into three tents and completely destroying one of them. Walker first raised the alarm and then Roberts and Pedley came face to face a metre away from the bear as it peered into their tent. They hollered and threw cooking pans at it to scare it off. It backed away which gave Walker time to retrieve signal flares from the store tent which he fired into the air. The bear appeared on the camp perimeter once more 10 minutes later and another flare chased it off for good. By now, the whole team were out of their tents to commence an all night vigil in case the bear returned to make a snatch for a meal. They had flares, burning MRS stoves, a „picket fence“ of skis, pots of petrol and improvised torches – ski poles wrapped in socks ready to be doused in petrol – ready as defence mechanisms. Under a full moon but poor visibility in low cloud and fog, the team were lucky with reasonable temperatures (-25°C) and no wind as they paced the camp banging shovels and snow stakes until dawn at about 8am. The clouds broke in time for the Twin Otter to set down at 2pm and by 5pm, as scheduled, the team were back on the tarmac at Isafjordur airport, northwest Iceland. The team's story made most of the UK's daily newspapers including the Guardian and London Evening Standard.
„Illustrative CIMA pictures were not taken at the expedition.“
