“Wednesday night, Europe Palace, MENDI, the second projection of the session does that the public enjoying a lot, many laughs and enclosedly plaudits in the course of the projection, but the credits appear, it’s ending, … with live music! Nico and Sean jump to the stage mandolin in hand and harmonica in mouth to finish off the live task, the public exploits, plaudits, shouts, hisses, laughs … party!” Read more
This year was an unusual warm season… shit was falling down constantly, truck size boulders!
The approach to the base of the Bavarian route on the South tower of Asgard consisted of a 300m steep Icy couloir.
A giant hanging glacier lured over the last section.
With heavy loads and not that much sleep, we tackled the approach as fast as we could.
We were quickly exhausted and out of breath, but stopping in the couloir was not an option.
15 m from the top, a big avalanche of ice and rock erased our tracks just thirty metres behind us.
The Asgard Gods were on our side… Thor (guardian of Asgard) decided not to drop his hammer on us…
With temperatures rising every year, scars on the land are very obvious. Permafrost (ground that has been frozen for millions of years) is melting, erosion is hugh, the river is pulling down gigantic pieces of land, boulders and glaciers are falling off the mountains… A friend who has been to Baffin before, told us that in 2001 there was barely any rockfall at all!
It’s scary! And it’s an obvious message…
“A plane! An airplane!!” Stephane shouted. I looked up: nothing to be seen. I could hear the rumbling of a motor, but I couldn’t spot any plane. “No! not up there,” Stephane said “down below!!”. It was our 11th day on the wall, and I was in the middle of redpointing a hard pitch. We were quiet a bit above the glacier and the airplane was flying way below us!! We had been in contact via e-mail with Leo Holding and we knew that him and his English, American, Spanish expedition team were going to fly in to the valley one of these days to airdrop all their gear and food in. We watched the plane in awe as it was dropping barrels with parachutes that were landing on the glacier below. We could barely believe our eyes when we saw the plane turning in the valley! Then all of a sudden the plane started going up and up… and then, when the plane was higher than us, we saw three bodies falling out of the plane!!!! The bodies were flying straight at us!! They kept falling and falling, going straight towards the glacier. “open your bloody chute! Please!” I yelled as I prepared myself to see them splash against the glacier. Not a site I wanted to see. Then all of a sudden to our relief, three chutes opened, and they gently glided to the glacier right at the base of the wall we were hanging on. “yeehaa” they yelled up as we monkey called back down. What an impressive entry!!! We spent 3 weeks getting all the gear and ourselves to the base of this wall, they spent five minutes! We had the perfect seats to that show! It was incredible to watch!
We were leaving the valley as they started climbing up their route. The weather started turning bad. They had some very, very rough conditions.
Check out their website and their story:
http://www.theasgardproject.com/
http://www.posingproductions.com/
There were five of us on the wall, but only 2 portaledges. Luckily we had a hammock for the the fifth person. Every day we did rock, paper, sizers to see who was sleeping in the hammock. It was a nightmare to get in to your sleeping-bag and get comfortably installed. Once you were in some might say it was ok. One night, when it was Silvia’s turn to sleep in the hammock we heard a loud scream. When we looked out, Silvia was dangling off a rope three meters lower. The hammock had suddenly flipped and thrown her for a ride. Always a nice way to wake up.
Oh yeah some bad news guys!! It’s the end of the world! Women can pee standing up!! I swear it! We’ve seen Silvia do it! The only consolation to us men, is that she needs aid (some kind of tube) (yes even for peeing she needs artificial aid!)Who is Silvia Vidal? A climber form Spain, oh err sorry from Catalonia, she’s probably one of the best aid climbers in the world right now. She might look normal when you see her for the first time… don’t be fooled: she’s completely crazy! In Pakistan she put up a route spending more than 20 days all alone (!) on the wall!
To make the story short: when Silvia heard we where going to Baffin, she decided to travel with us because it would be easier for the organization, formalities, etc. Her plan was to aid-climb a big rock face solo. However when we got to Weasel valley, she wasn’t feeling any connection with any of the closer rock faces and being alone she didn’t have the time to ferry all her gear too far up the valley. She decided she wasn’t going to climb, she was just going to hang out. So we invited her to come along with us. Crazy as she is, she accepted, probably not realizing what a kind of a mess she was getting herself in to.
Turns out that having an expert aid climber tag along can be pretty handy. When the free climbing was too dangerous or too impossible we just attached the rope to Silvia and she would go upwards pulling on copperheads, RURPs and skyhooks that would only barely hold the weight of a fly and fix the rope on the belay above… Next we could check out the moves holds etc and try to free the pitch.
The route we choose to climb in big wall style in a team of five was the Bavarian route. However the start of the route (3 bolts) was now 15m higher than when it was put up in 1995 due to the melting of the ice and snow. This section was too hard and dangerous to onsight free climb, and we would have had to either add a bolt… or stick clip the first belay. Instead we sent Silvia up there and she aid climbed it (at about A4+!) so we could check out the moves.
After a few days of ferrying loads we quickly decided to take a quick break of all the walking by doing some climbing. We split in to two teams: the Favresse brothers spotted an unclimbed unnamed beautiful red spire at the base of Mount Odin, Stephane and Sean decided to try the unclimbed wall of Tirokwa Peak… by starting up an unfinished Australian line. Both climbs were put up in perfect style: onsight, first ascent, clean (no gear or bolts added to the wall). Both were put up in a +/- 24h non stop push BC to BC.
The Favresse’s route is named “Le bic rouge”, Steph and Sean’s route is called “Chocolate boomerang”.
I was exactly what we needed to get psyched again to start carrying our load further up towards the base of Asgard. We each had three loads of between 30 and 40 kg to carry 60 km from where the boat had dropped us off. It might seem like a drag and a lot of work, it wasn’t. It was just nice to be in such a magical place. The weather was perfect and we hoped it wasn’t going to shut down on us as we arrived at Asgard.
More climbing pics of Asgard coming soon…
When we landed in Baffin island, part of the ocean was still under ice and stepping out of the plane was like entering a fridge! After 24 hours of reorganizing our gear, buying our last fruits and vegetables, and filling up on fat, we set off on a boat direction the beginning of the Weasel valley. Directly from the beginning of the fiord many big walls appears all around ,most of them still virgin. What an amazing feeling it was to get dropped off by boat for 50 days of total autonomy! We were not alone though. Our friends Jon Walsh and Chris Brazeau from Canada and Silvia Vidal from Catalunya (Spain) were part of the party as well. Quickly we started ferrying loads up the valley on our way to Mont Asgard (60km away).
Visit the Patagonia’ Tin Shed and check out the video Nico and Sean shot during their free ascent of the south African route in Patagonia. Here is the way to find the video: when you get in the shed, turn right and click on the gear… Enjoy!
You are probably wondering about the previous post picture with Sean and the bear… Well we were really hungry and already running out of food. One of us had to go full commitment, take it for the team. As you might have heard Inuit often fight with bear the catch of Seals. Here it was with us. We voted and the absolute majority decided for Sean to be the one,… because he is by far the most hairy of us. We quickly made good friendship with the locals of Pangnirtung by sharing our prey.
