This is the moment we’ve been waiting for! The conditions are no longer ideal for naked bathing…. but the weather is now bad enough to start our Atlantic crossing. Even Bob, for the first time, said that it looked gnarly! We’ve been getting the boat ready for the worst of conditions… with a possibility to meet Danielle and Pearl (two hurricanes near the coast of the US at the moment) things could get quite interesting… Even without these two ladies things are looking rough… so we look forward to staying dry by climbing the mast naked (of course).

The terrible news about Chloé Graftiaux has touched us all very much. She was very inspiring to us. We wish a lot of strength to the Graftiaux family. We named one of our new routes Chloé, dedicated to our friend and amazing person.

www. Chloegraftiaux.com

The great advantage of travelling on a sailboat is that we are free to move around while resting and investigating possibilities for climbing but it also makes it a lot easier in establishing Greenland’s first naturist beaches. While sunbathing naked on the deck (don’t tell our captain, he was below reading his book) and randomly drifting, we spotted another great looking wall. To avoid climbing wide cracks we decided not to bring any wide gear. We picked some finger cracks from the base and as two teams we began climbing finding out that we have very thin fingers… 14 offwidth pitches later we were shiver bivying once again on the summit. The crux of Nico and Ben’s climb included Nico air manteling a 200kg block and a 15 m factor two fall straight on to the anchor. Sandwiches taste better, showers feel warmer and the flowers are more colourful. We’re all safe and sound now and looking for a nice warm beach…. 550m wall, a very long ridge traverse allowing us to bag three other summits along the way, 38 hours boat to boat.

Reverend captain Bob made his second come back to climbing since 1977. “It was exciting, strenuous and technical” according to Bob himself, “but 500m is far too long for a 75 year old man”. The route is called “Never again”. We picked a line thinking it would be easy and not too long of a day, but it turned out to be a lot longer and more adventurous than what we had bargained for. One scary moment was when he got his foot stuck in the crack and couldn’t get it out. When he finally got it out he realised his other foot was stuck. But Bob remained strong all through the entire climb, even though he admits he would have preferred corned beef and condensed milk instead of power gel and power bars. It was a big inspiration to all of us!

We spotted a nice looking spire from the boat and early the next morning we set off in a complete foggy white out. With only 10 m visibility and not knowing if we were walking in the right direction the only thing we could do was keep walking… after 5 hours the fog lifted and we were standing in front of an incredible granite spire. Not the spire we intended to climb but an even better looking one. So we picked lines and we picked teams and we set off on what ended out to be a very long day of climbing. Including a shiver bivy on the summit where we were treated to some northern lights and a beautiful ridge traverse early in the morning. 450m wall and a long ridge traverse, 36 hours boat to boat.

As soon as we descended from the Impossible wall, the weather turned bad. We sailed south in the rain and fog slaloming between icebergs. The waves and motion of the ocean resulted in some delicious meals being wasted overboard… After 900 miles of vomiting the weather cleared up and we finally arrived in the fjords close to Cape farewell: the most southern tip of Greenland. We were blown by the incredible scenery and it felt like we were floating through the mountains of Switzerland with water instead of valleys and amazing granite spires around every corner. All we need to do is pick a wall and go!

Climbing this wall was like climbing in heaven.  The feeling of climbing straight above the sea was incredible with its colour changing all day long from dark to light blue sometime even black when the storm came in. Our daily spectacle included the movements of huge icebergs floating by and braking apart and the clouds that went from above us to in us, to finish below us replacing the water by a sea of clouds
 
Here are a few more pictures to give you a taste of the atmosphere.
We are now slowly sailing south exploring fjords. Hopefully we will find more big walls to enjoy more adventures before sailing back across the Atlantic…

One of the main question marks of the line we wanted to climb was a big mysterious overhanging black hole. The closer we got to it to scarier and more intimidating it seemed. After our second day on the wall it started to rain hard… very hard. First day we were happy because it gave us some time to play music and enjoy being there. The second day everything slowly started getting wet and things seemed a little more interesting… The third day the rain stopped but strangely the water didn’t stop falling down on us… it seemed we had placed our portaledges in a waterfall, which apparently originated from the black hole. The advantage being that we had running water at our portaledge flavoured with bird droppings which lead to awkward repercussions on the ultimate pitch. We would rather not describe this to you here in too much details…. However, the black hole became even more obscure…

“Go climb that wall! And don’t come back unless you do!” reverend Bob shouted up at us as we stepped straight off the boat on to the wall. Captain reverend Bob’s commitment to our efforts was full on. Putting his boat on the line on more than one occasion. May we remind you that he is the owner of two boats in Greenland… one he keeps anchored secretly below the surface… The first few cracks were fit for a lawn mower, unfortunately we didn’t have that on our rack so an ice axe had to do the job. To keep the adventurous spirit of the climb we tried to leave in as much as we could.

“Impossible mais possible après tout.”
“I’ve been looking at that wall for twelve years, but I’ve never found any team good enough” Bob Shepton winner of the 2009 Tilman medal.
On july 12 we committed to “the impossible wall”. After 8 days we found ourselves on the summit on July 22. So how is it possible that we passed 11 days in only 8 you might be asking yourself? The answer my friend lies in the burning midnight sun and 30 hour-days or nights or whatever you want to call it. Our efforts on the wall and on our musical instruments yield probably the most adventurous route we have ever done. It has everything: grassy cracks, spongy mossy cracks, licheny faces, kitty litter offwidths and an inbuilt shower. We got rained on, we got shat on and we got vomited on. We now understand better why the locals call it “Seagull wall”. Every pitch of the 850m wall offered incredible beautiful sustained climbing, always challenging, on superb quality granite. We are very happy to have freeclimbed the whole thing (if grabbing grass is accepted as free). We decided to name this new line “The Devil’s Brew” after a little present we offered Bob when we first met him and which he calls the Devil’s Brew. Also it remarkably resembles the water running from a black hole which we collected on the wall, both in colour and taste.
We are particularly proud that we left nothing behind: no bolts, no pitons, no cordelette. The only things repetitors may find extra are a few more brown falcons on the wall but we suspect they have already left. We topped out on the summit with all our gear and portaledges and hiked down to the coast and celebrated our adventure with champagne and freshly caught fish. Later that night we awoke to a raging storm that lasted for a few days so we were very unfortunate not to have experienced that while still on the wall.

We finally received some (short) news from the team! They just spent 11 days sailing and jamming on the wall and they are doing fine. More news (and pictures) should come in the next days. Stay tuned!