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Blakey
Trad climber
Sierra Vista
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Topic Author's Original Post - Oct 22, 2012 - 01:34pm PT
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Way Back in the Day (WBITD) 1975, I was lucky enough as a callow 19 year old youth to take part in a trip to the Weasel Valley on Baffin Island, what follows is a somewhat hazy account based on some fuzzy recollections……… Most, bar one of the photos are taken from the net as I didn’t have a camera.
Back in 1974 I managed to put a journalist friend in touch with a local, tight knit group of climbers in Newcastle , The Border Climbing Club. A feisty bunch of blokes with a slew of hard alpine climbs behind them. My journo mate (Dick Godfrey) wasn’t much of a climber, but had a yen for organisation and was keen to organise an expedition. The climbers, while as hard as nails couldn’t get much beyond organising the odd piss up and argument, and so I played matchmaker.
The chemistry worked and after a flurry of debates, some arguments, a lot of drinking and bullshitting,. A tornado of paperwork, fundraising, and radio interviews followed. All with the goal of getting the group to the Nirvana of the day – The Weasel Valley of Baffin Island.
I believe the area had its first real climbing visit in 1953 when Asgard was climbed by a team of Swiss scientists led by Pat Baird. (Baird was an influential climber and explorer of the region for nearly 30 years). In 1961 by a Cambridge University team, explored the Pangnirtun Peninsular and several other trips followed, often with Canadian Pat Baird along. Some credible alpine climbing was done. But the place and it’s magnificent peaks remained largely unknown until a number of trips were carried out by Doug Scott Dennis Henneck and others and written about in Mountain Magazine. The place was clearly a wonderland. And most importantly it looked like there was still a lot left to do.
I’d guess it all took around a year for the planning to turn into a reality, We had identified a suitable team objective – (Ulu Peak, a little up from the head of the fijord on the right but early summer 1975) Only two of the team had any contemporary US Big Wall experience; Kevin McClane who had several seasons in the Valley and recently had done the Salathe Wall, and his contemporary and competitor, Dave MacDonald who had done the NW Face of Half Dome. The rest of the team (bar me) all had CVs of difficult Western and Eastern Alpine climbs.
Seven other parties were to climb on the Cumberland Peninsular that year; among them; Pete Livesy and Jill Lawrence from the UK, a team of Japanese climbers and Charlie Porter who was to solo an audacious line on Asgard.
We eventually got off the DC3 at Pangnirtung, having languished for a while in Gander , being put up by a teacher Sunderland on a VSO tour with the Inuit. We had had an interesting couple of days flow hopping in the bay outside his prefab butler house before the weather let us move on.
In Pang we met up with our freight which had been shipped ahead to the Hudson Bay store and arranged for some canoes to take us and our kit up the Fijord. Kevin and Dave (I think) took the manly option of hiking in over a couple of days, with the required ‘super heavy’ loads.
We set up camp at the head of the Fijord, the scenery was unreal, huge walls shot up from the alluvial bed of the valley, the huge tongue of a hanging glacier curled out of a cwm opposite the camp, while just to our South, Overlord’s three pillars stood guard over the fijord. The base of Ulu the team’s objective was tucked away in a cwm above us, but the steep upper wall could be seen, and it did look impressively steep.
I recall we spent a day sorting out the freight and stores and then the ‘A Team’, (which did not include me) assembled for a poke at Ulu. We all assisted in ferrying gear up to the base of the wall – an impressive hike with some steep scrambling, and then the Punters – Dick (my Journo friend) and I headed back to the main camp.
A few days later the others returned, all a bit crestfallen, having got so far up the wall, the cracks that would link the lower wall to the upper chimney system stopped. The prospect of a substantial bolt ladder dissuaded them from continuing, and they had bailed.
So a somewhat dejected group hung around the campsite for a day or so. One of the ‘senior members’ Ken Rawlinson had sensed I was itching to go at something and generously suggested we should have a go at the Central Pillar of Overlord
Overlord towered above the camp area and comprised of three distinct and huge pillars come buttresses. The left hand one, the least steep of the three had been climbed by a Japanese party the year before. the central pillar had been attempted earlier by Doug Scott, but we were aware that they had retreated when Dennis Henneck? had been hit by stonefall. The right hand pillar was as we were aware, virgin. If Dennis is out there perhaps he could fill in some detail?
Anyhow, we opted for the central pillar, Ken pulled together the rack, which I recall was memorably light, 'you've got to give it (the mountain) a chance Steve', he said with a wink. So with a few nuts, sling pegs and crabs, off we went. We set off up the pillar and the climbing naturally drew you to a line on the right hand side - there, after a few pitches of stepping climbing up slabs and grooves we found the first of a number of pegs and nuts, marking the descent route used by Scott's party the year before.
Being summertime we just climbed until we started to get weary, pitch followed pitch and at about 1/3 height we came across a generous rubble covered ledge that was suitable for a bivi. I think it even had some moss! We cleared space for our bags ate some grub and crashed out, pretty exhausted.
At some point however, I was awoken by a strange sensation, accompanied by the loudest noise I'd ever heard. The ledge was shaking violently and it was clear that the cliff was being rent apart. There was little to do and nowhere to hide, I curled up in my bag making myself as small as possible, while for what seemed an eternity the mountain shook, the vibrations being interspersed with what were clearly massive impacts close to our ledge.
Eventually the roar subsided, what followed was a smattering of large, but modest in comparison crashes and explosive bangs. I eventually plucked up the courage to poke my head out of my sleeping bag to see two huge columns of dust rising up the couloirs either side of our pillar. The air was thick with the smell of sulphur and almost felt electric, quite possibly static in the dust. Ken too had surfaced and was out of his bag, wide eyed looking at what had passed. We stood gawping at the clouds of dust, slowly rising up the full height of the south couloir. He had just started to gabble something out, when the relative silence was broken by a noise even louder that the one we had just experienced. Snapping our heads to the right we saw that the tip of the hanging glacier opposite had broken away and was crashing to the valley floor. I'm guessing multiple thousands of tons of ice ended up in a huge cone below the fracture, this was spectacle heaped on spectacle! A second or so later we felt the blast of displaced air followed by a relative silence.
I can't recall what we said, probably something very English like 'that was loud'. We had been very lucky in the selection of our bivi ledge, it was on the crest of the pillar and a vertical wall above us gave some protection, I don't think any stonefall hit the ledge, a miracle given what had broken away.
It took most of the day for the dust to settle, and for us to gather our wits about us and continue. We concluded that there musty have been an earthquake to have dislodged materials on both sides of the valley. Later in the trip we met a Japanese party who had been on Thor when it hit, they had been lucky to get away, and off the wall unscathed.
We were on the route for another two days with another bivi two thirds of the way up, throughout Ken was in charge, pointing me in the right direction. The quality of the climbing was outstanding, sustained 'VS' (5.6) interspersed with occasional E1/2 (5.9/10). The main difficulties culminated at the top of the pillar. A hanging belay at the base of a slender ramp that cut up the face for a hundred feet or so. The junction between the ramp and wall was fractured by a good finger crack which guaranteed success. This was important, as by now, 40 odd pitches up, we didn't have enough kit to reach the first of Scott's absiel gear. Up was the only option.
So with great relief we cleared this obstacle, then the breche beyond, and the penultimate pitches which brought us to the summit snow field. From the valley, this sliver of white looked tiny. Up close it transformed into a 200' 45 degree slope of granular ice. We had however neither axes or crampons! So I set up a rudimentary belay, sitting on a perfect edge of dry granite, with my legs dangling above a 4000' cavernous drop, and the small of my back pressed into the ice. We tied both 9mm ropes together, I gave Ken my Stubai hammer, and with two of these (and in EBs) off he shot. Cutting buckets for his feet as he went, he carefully worked his way up. Eventually cresting the slope he rolled over the lip and disappeared. It was a nerve wracking half hour to say the least. I took my socks off and put them on over my EBs, and with him walking down the glacier I set of up the line of holds.........
The walk down the glacier in EBs wasn't sooo bad, but lordy, had we cut it pretty fine! Ken had been phenomenal; unflappable, good humoured and never less than 100% certain we would make it. (That said, the relief in his eyes when he saw the crack in the back of the ramp pitch was pretty apparent).
After a couple of days recovering we began shuttling loads up the Weasel Valley with the aim of establishing a camp at Summit Lake, In the interim Dave and Kevin climbed and named Mt Northumbria, and Dennis Lee, and Kevin (I think) did a new line on Turnweather which I can’t find documented anywhere. As we shuttled loads up the valley we passed underneath Thor and met a rather shaken Japanese party who had been trying the face when the earthquake struck. Already stressed by the scale of what they had taken on, the poor rock they were encountering and difficulty of the climbing, the earthquake had become an understandable ‘last straw and they bailed.
Some endless shuttling of loads followed, with extended rest days waiting out heavy rain and sleet. There was enough time, and daylight to get through Woody Guthrie’s biography and Lord of the Rings. The latter was made all the easier to read given we were on the edge (so it seemed ) of Mordor. There was much crossing the braided steam that dissected the valley always exciting as you could hear, and feel the deadening thud of leg breaking boulders being pushed down stream by the force of the water. After sorting myself out after one such crossing I was picking up my rucksack – a Karrimor haulbag, when, with an audible phhhhhhht, the yoke holding the straps on, separated from the pack. Leaving me with a large, very heavy, red tube – a rucksack no more! Thankfully someone had a sailmakers awl and some hefty waxed thread, and after a few hours of work the pack was functional once again.
We eventually, after a lot of laborious shuttling got ourselves established at Summit Lake and began to explore.
I teamed up with Dennis Lee and we headed up the glacier (dry that year) that led to the base of Asgard. I recall a series of towering walls and buttresses opposite Asgard and we walked along looking for a likely line. Eventually we settled on a pillar with a crack, which led to another crack line in a steep wall and thus to a chimney system, then the clouds and who knows what.
Access to the pillar was protected by a steep slope of neve, perhaps 50 degrees and a couple of hundred feet. We short roped and moved together up this kicking steps as we went. I eventually met the junction of ice and rock about 100 feet to the left of the pillar. Nature had conveniently left a six inch gap which I stuck my arm down and waited for Dennis, (who was hot on my heels) to join me. With my arm down the back of the gap I began kicking steps across to the corner, which I had just about reached when everything I was standing on gave way with a loud crack - and off I went, down the slope holding on to a large shield of ice.
A second later I came on the rope and Dennis joined me (with our rudimentary belay) and we shot off down the slope. I managed to get my axe out from between my shoulder blades and began to brake, Dennis accelerated past me and took the lead in our unwanted race to the glacier. My braking was having some effect at slowing us, but couldn’t stop Dennis going over the final, short vertical wall that led directly to the glacier. It did however, provide him with a soft catch and as I slid down to the lip I found him standing, shaken, if not stirred.
Relieved, I slid to the edge of the wall and jumped down beside him and neatly punched a hole through into a crevasse he was standing on! Doh!
I don’t recall how I got out, I do recall the small hole I was heading for, anyways, eventually I got out and we sorted ourselves out; put our crampons on and headed up the slope to the base of the corner. Despite what had gone before, what followed was pure delight, several pitches of perfect hands on a vertical wall led up towards a chimney system, little edges outside the crack were made for boots all at about 5.8/9.
However we eventually made it to the base of the chimney system to discover our dénouement. It was a horribly flared Bombay leading to an offwidth system. The largest piece we had was one No 9 Hex – It just wasn’t going to happen. So we set up the first of several abseils and beat a retreat.
As is usually the case, what had taken several hours to get up seemed to take minutes to get down and before we knew it we were back on the glacier heading back to the Summit lake camp.
More bad weather followed, days of rain and sleet followed and we generally sat under a tarp trying to stay dry. I fell into an extended topor in the tent, which didn’t go down well with the rest of the team. These tortured group dynamics are traditionally skimmed over in British climbing literature, and I will follow that line here, other than to say nearly 40 years later that some of them were right tw#ts…..
Anyhow when I came out of hibernation Dennis and I attempted a quick ascent of the Scott Henneck route on Killabuk which was behind the camp, unfortunately a storm stopped us several pitches from the top. We endured a miserable, wet bivi in a shallow cave below the corner chimneys which led to the top – and eventually bailed.
Soon after we began the long slog out, and met on the way in a bloke walking in who had a big reputation, and an even bigger beard – Charlie Porter, shuttling loads en route to Asgard – Now there’s a story. The rest was by comparison an uneventful journey home.
Sadly back then I didn’t own a camera, and I have but one slide from the entire trip, of Overlord. Is there anyone out there with images of Overlord they could mail me?
I’m aware the Central Pillar was repeated by a Canadian Team in a continuous 24 hour push, which was perfectly feasible
I’d also love to know more about Scott and Henneks attempt on the Central Pillar, was it in fact an injury to the latter that forced them to bail (I think they climbed the Right Pillar the following year – what’s the story there I wonder) I’d also be interested to know what lay above us on Killabuk……..
Does anyone out there know I wonder?
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Oct 22, 2012 - 01:48pm PT
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Nice! TFPU!!!!
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gunsmoke
Mountain climber
Clackamas, Oregon
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Oct 22, 2012 - 01:48pm PT
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Wow, the Taco's most belated trip report ever? Awesome.
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nopantsben
climber
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Oct 22, 2012 - 02:12pm PT
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absolutely first rate, like a million bucks. thanks a lot!!
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Oct 22, 2012 - 05:43pm PT
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I teamed up with Dennis Lee and we headed up the glacier (dry that year) that led to the base of Asgard. I recall a series of towering walls and buttresses opposite Asgard and we walked along looking for a likely line
That would be these walls and buttresses:
And from the north:
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Blakey
Trad climber
Sierra Vista
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 23, 2012 - 03:50am PT
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^^^^^
Hey up,
Thanks for those, I could'nt even remember any names of the peaks! My recollection is that we could only see about half the height of the Buttresses because of cloud. Certainly a lot more snow in your photos than we experienced, we took skis, but never used them.
What did you get done up there?
I've recently made contact with Dennis (after about 30 years of not being in touch) I'll pint him to this and see if he can chip in.
Thanks for the input.
Steve
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Oct 23, 2012 - 04:01am PT
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Thanks for the TR! My friends and I talked about attempting a trip there in '76. Thank god it didn't pan out, the odds are good we wouldn't have survived it with our collective experience at the time.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Oct 23, 2012 - 04:13am PT
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hey there say, blakey... great trip report share, on this
1975 share, :)
thanks so very much!
:)
yep--love the baffin island stuff...
:)
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Oct 23, 2012 - 02:34pm PT
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What a great write up!!
If only we had some input and photos from Dennis?
Gawd, this is the stuff that I live for here on ST!!!
Thanks a million!
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Oct 23, 2012 - 02:58pm PT
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Didn't Dennis post here a couple times?
Maybe I was shrooming again?
Can someone find him a scanner if he's an old luddite like me?......
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Oct 24, 2012 - 01:14pm PT
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G'damn, isn't there someone who can holler at these guys to MAKE Dennis scan something?
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Blakey
Trad climber
Sierra Vista
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 24, 2012 - 01:51pm PT
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There's got to be stuff out there, lying in the back of the man drawer, along with broken penknives, forgotten dreams and fluff.
These stories need telling, the photos need to live.....
Post Up!!
Steve
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Oct 25, 2012 - 09:27pm PT
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Steve-
Enjoyed that immensely. I remember devouring those Mountain Magazine articles about the first big wall climbs on Baffin Island. Great you made it there while still in your teens. What a trip.
You are right. These tales and photos of vintage adventures warm the heart like a dram on a cold night. Better to share them here than keep them tucked away in the memory or old slide tray.
Rick
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 25, 2012 - 10:04pm PT
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That was great. We need some of the other greybeards to chime in and tell old stories lest they be lost. There are a lot of legends and not so legendary who drop in here.
Just stories of how things were at the time are interesting.
Boy. Porter was ahead of his time.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Oct 25, 2012 - 11:18pm PT
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Boy. Porter was ahead of his time.
Somebody -- Robbins? -- said back then: "Charlie Porter is inside the RURP and looking out."
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Blakey
Trad climber
Sierra Vista
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 26, 2012 - 05:42am PT
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^^^
Kevin was there, unfortunately we've lost contact of late, though I have tried to reach him, but with no success.
Please send him my best, and tell him to get in touch!
Steve
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Vitaliy M.
Mountain climber
San Francisco
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Oct 26, 2012 - 11:23am PT
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Thank you for posting. Hope to visit that place some day.
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Nohea
Trad climber
Living Outside the Statist Quo
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Liked it very much, lets get this back to the front page.
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hoipolloi
climber
A friends backyard with the neighbors wifi
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awesome.
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Blakey
Trad climber
Sierra Vista
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 5, 2012 - 04:52pm PT
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Can any of you folks tell/show me how to post this or move it to the TR section, where it should have started - were I not A BIT DIPPY!
Cheers,
Steve
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