Ivnarssuaq – The Incredible Orange

Ivnarssuaq Great Wall – ‘The Incredible Orange’ E3 5c, 4-7 August 2013

Two weeks ago Ian Faulkner and I found ourselves on top of the most awesome route we’d ever climbed, on a plateau atop a pillar which, until a few minutes before, had probably never seen any humans. Huge, narrow ravines carved their way right around the pillar except for a 3m-wide bridge (of sorts) connecting us to mainland Greenland and presenting an alternative to doing twenty abseils ending up in the sea.

A few days before, all six of us had gone sailing around the far end of Uummannaq Fjord looking for walls, following a tip from the skipper of the Gambo, a scientific research ship we’d come across in Uummannaq. He’d told us of huge unclimbed faces with rock that looked clean and solid – a determining factor in an area with no shortage of huge cliffs but a certain lack of faces whose holds wouldn’t come off in your hands. Ivnarssuaq is a network of cliffs rising straight out of the sea and cut through by deep and scary zawns, looking a bit like 600m-deep versions of Huntsman’s Leap. The biggest face, which we dubbed Ivnarssuaq Great Wall, rises almost completely vertically for 800m before slabbing out towards a 1270m summit. Ian, binoculars in hand, declared that he could see a line near the central feature of the face, a huge corner which petered out at two-thirds height below a forbidding-looking roof crossed by a crack system.

The Incredible Orange E3 5c on Ivnarssuaq Great Wall

The next day Clive was pushing the bows of the Cosmic Dancer away from the side of the cliff with the boathook as I belayed Ian up the first pitch from the dinghy, which we were using as a giant fender between the boat and the rock. Expensive trundling was avoided.

We were planning on a 4-day Alpine ascent, unsure that our usual tactic of “keep going without stopping until you get to the top” would work in this case. The nights were starting to get a bit darker and colder, we were starting to feel the cumulative effects of previous efforts and something about a looming, plumb vertical unexplored 800m face suggested that a bivy bag and a stove might come in handy. So it was trad rack and big rucksacks, all unnecessary weight left behind. We’d debated at length whether to take one or two #4 Wallnuts and exactly how many Friend Zeroes would be useful. We got so wrapped up in the details that it was only when we were a stone’s-trundle from the cliff that Ian realised that he’d left his climbing shoes behind. A quick return trip to basecamp and back and we were finally set.

Maybe this way? Ian questing rightwards for a way up

After waving goodbye to the CD from the top of our first pitch we located our line up the first part of the corner: some solid-looking flakes trending left. Looked ok. I set off on lead and had a predictable nightmare trying to new-route E1 with a 15kg rucksack. Ian took the next pitch, a further left-trending slab which looked a bit easier. On closer inspection it turned out to be one of those deceptive overhanging slabs without much in the way of holds. When I followed this E2 5c pitch I found a thoughtful present waiting for me below the crux: another 15kg bag to add to my own. 5c had never felt so hard.

The fourth pitch took us to a stepped, broken ledge below a big black eye-shaped mark on the cliff. 5pm, after a 1pm start. Bivy? It was likely to be the last significant ledge for a while and I had half a kilo of pasta in my bag which could do with disappearing. We dug out some Russian-style bivy spots (hastily assembled, sloping, uneven and narrow slots very close to the edge; to be contrasted with Swiss-style bivy spots, which look as if the climbers brought a JCB and a spirit level with them), cooked some food and dutifully set our alarms for 3am, 9 hours away.

Tom about to round an arete on Day 1

After 10am rolled past the next day we both woke up and thought it might be a good idea to go climbing. Some scrambling pitches were led to avoid a gear-less squeeze chimney which looked like it was the wrong side of desperate and we found ourselves below a charming steep triangular gully which we’d hoped was a wider chimney, or at least had a few more holds than it was currently displaying. Definitely Ian’s turn to lead. This time the bag was left at the belay.

E2 5c Ian reckoned, although I was too busy fighting with kleimheists and prusiks with one bag on my back, another on my front and one foot tangled in a stirrup made out of a cannibalised extender to notice. With my jumaring leg on fire I dumped both bags at the belay and decided to give Ian the pleasure of the next lead as well.

The corner continued with us swinging leads, mostly at or above 5b. A pair of humpback whales trawled lazily around the icebergs receding beneath us, the sound of their spouting echoing up the rock walls. The cliff below us was so steep that dislodged rocks would tumble silently through space for many seconds before splashing into the sea hundreds of metres below amid a great cawing of disturbed seagulls. The wall above us seemed to curve away into the distance, saving up who knew what insurmountable difficulties.

The rock quality began to vary. Hitherto solid if a bit dusty, it sometimes veered without warning towards the consistency of wet cornflakes. At one point Ian found himself holding on to a disintegrating jug while smearing on a slab with a tendency to shed layers like an onion, with the last runner, a yellow cam, quite some way to the left. ‘Tom, watch – ‘ Snap went the hold. Crackle went the slab as a falling Ian sheared flakes off it like pumice scraping down dried skin. Pop went the cam, carving twin grooves through the rock as it went. 10m lower down Ian came to a halt and decided that traversing into the next corner along while protected by his last runner was a good option. Sketchy pockets and flaky footholds; a moment or two of apprehension as the potential for swing increased; then relief as a a solid crack appeared a few metres to the right. It might be overhanging, it might have a hanging belay looming a few metres ahead but at least it was staying put. E3 5c for the pitch. My lead looked straightforward: step right into the next corner, go up.

Long way down – Ian seconding on Day 2

Whenever we thought something like that, you could almost predict the result. The next corner along became steep and hard. Down-climb a tad, step gingerly right into the next corner along: that’ll go. It’s wide and there’s a capping roof a few metres up, but it’s got holds and gear. Get to the capping roof, find that hand-jams and undercuts don’t work so well on wet cornflakes, panic. Feel your forearms start shaking of their own accord under the weight of the bag and the procrastination on the overhang. Step shakily back left on blind smears to plug some more gear in. No way up here: back right under the cornflake roof. Downclimb again, calves and forearms burning. Step even further right onto a solid-looking black slab with the occasional sidepull but no gear; not that you could have placed any anyway, with both ropes committed above and to the side of you. Oh well, you’re safe enough for now. Go a few more moves up and right. Definitely not reversible now, you’re committed. The ropes are dangling in a big loop horizontally out now, the drag increasing between you and that last cam in the crozzle – there’s a long, scything swing waiting if one of these smears pops, likely followed by a cam falling on your head. Suddenly there’s a move to do. You need to step up and left onto a sloping foot-ledge, but there aren’t any holds to pull you back right. The bag swings brutishly behind you, reminding you what’s likely to happen if you try to swing left and catch your balance hands-free. There’s a tiny fingernail-sized crimp way out left. No way out but up.

‘I don’t want to BE here!’ I shout, then pull on the crimp so hard it slices a fingertip. Body weight up and left, slap around for a sidepull, nothing. Scrabble for the next smear, keep it going, reach over a blind ledge, feel a jug. Relief courses through you. A short scramble, a nice belay and a good sit down. E2 5a?

The relief was short-lived. A few metres up the next pitch, Ian shouted down, ‘There’s a loose flake coming down, don’t worry, it should miss you by miles!’ Or at least I think he did. With almost comic timing I raised my head to shout ‘What?’. A palm-sized rock clocked me right on the crown of the forehead, just under the rim of my helmet. I dropped my head and watched the rock spin silently away before obliterating itself on last night’s bivy ledge. Spots of bright blood dripped off my nose onto my shoes.

‘You ok?’ Ian called. ‘Just a second!’ Quick selfie to survey the damage. Lots of blood, but nothing white and I felt pretty compos mentis. I’d managed an eerie blood-stained grin for the camera too. I figured that I was unlikely to pass out before Ian finished the pitch at least. ‘I’ll be alright Ian, I’ll just sit here and drip blood for a bit!’ If the rock had been a bit bigger I wouldn’t have known anything about it. As it was, getting a headwound of unknown seriousness 500m above the sea and at least 12 hours from a safe place to lie down wasn’t ideal.

That grin! No brain showing…

After a few minutes it was apparent that it was only a surface injury. We carried on swinging leads up the corner until 3am, when we found ourselves on top of our corner on another stepped, broken ledge directly beneath the black and forbidding roof. We were shattered. Pitch after pitch of sustained 5b, and now this: the lovely crack systems we’d spotted from the boat loomed wide, dark and overhanging up the side of the roof and into an impossibly steep hanging corner which looked inescapable. Another Russian bivy spot built by rolling large rocks a few centimetres into the void to splash far, far below, a quick meal of mashed potato flavoured with last night’s pasta and we were bracing ourselves into our disintegrating slots for the night.

Tom at Russian bivy spot. Absolutely no sleepwalking whatsoever.

The 4-hour watercolour sunset ceased as we settled down. The sun rose above the mountains opposite and turned the entire face golden. A couple of hours later it had slipped off the face to shine on the enamel-white icebergs drifting lazily below. The pair of whales were still diving and surfacing far below, the height difference revealing every underwater detail of fins and tails as they navigated broken ice passages in the submerged parts of the icebergs. My head hurt. So did my feet and fingers, and my back. Everything hurt. Part of me wondered why we’d travelled so far to this amazing wilderness in order to punish ourselves so severely. Eventually I drifted off to a fitful sleep punctuated by dreams of falling.

The next day Ian proposed that we avoid tackling the horrendous roof with its nightmarish overhanging offwidths, in favour of questing rightwards at the level of our bivy ledge in search of an alternative line of weakness which we thought we could discern on Ian’s slightly blurry, foreshortened photo of the cliff. My lead. Move after move on thankfully compact black rock which turned gradually from scramble to easy climb to heart-in-the-mouth technical smearing with very spaced gear. An upside-down Zero; 8m further on, a couple of equalised micro-nuts; so it continued. E2 5b. Eventually I could go no further and definitely couldn’t come back, so dragged the ropes up to protect Ian. I was worried. There was a weakness above us, but I could only see 30m further up. It could very well turn blank and leave us stranded in the middle of this overhanging headwall. We were committed now; onwards and upwards.

A couple of pitches higher up, the smooth surface of the sea below was split by a ripple as the Cosmic Dancer rounded the corner to check up on us. Clive spotted the two Rab-coloured climbers easily from the deck and told us the good news via radio, ‘It looks like you’re nearly there!’ Really? News to us! We were busy worrying about an overlap 40m above us. A few minutes later Ian powered through it to find…

Tryfan. Or at least the granite version, if Tryfan was placed on top of 70 stacked granite versions of Stanage. The wall had slabbed out to become a relief-filled VD for the final couple of hundred metres. Within an hour we were standing on the top.

Victorious summit poses

We’d hoped that our pillar was connected to the mainland but the 3m-long “bridge” we found was stretching it. Tottering blocks hovered above 400m drops on either side, and the bridge swooped down steeply for 5m before rearing into an overhang beneath a perched boulder on the other side. The weight of our worried gazes seemed to dislodge small pebbles from it which rolled clattering into the darkness of the zawns on either side. We seriously considered abseiling the entire route into the sea.

Spot the holds among the choss – the tottering
bridge linking pillar to mainland

It turned out not to be so bad once you’d chucked the loosest bits off into the chasm beneath. I placed as many runners as I could find in as large a variety of places as I could, then stepped into the overhanging move. There were some holds, some of which stayed put long enough for me to yard on them. The huge perched boulder was a bit wobbly but behaved itself admirably under the circumstances. We were free!

Just a delightful five hour scree scramble down to where the Cosmic Dancer could pick us up and we were done. At 4am we collapsed into our bivy bags on the edge of a bog and slept like the dead. For me the route was probably the most awesome bit of rock I’ve ever climbed – plumb vertical 800m out of the sea on an unknown and unclimbed cliff, unbelievably sustained. ‘The Incredible Orange’, 24 pitches, 9 of them at E1 or above, 15 pitches at HVS or above, 800m total. Not bad.

Tom Codrington