BBC Radio Oxford ‐ Drive Time with David Prever, Friday 16 August 2013, about 1751
DP: For the past few months we’ve been tracking the progress of Tom Codrington from the Oxford University Mountaineering Club. He’s been climbing previously undiscovered rock faces off the West Greenland coast. There are pictures of Tom and his friends climbing up stupidly sharp rock edges up on our Facebook page. Tom flies back home tomorrow, but we’ve got him on the line for a quick chat now. Hello Tom, nice to talk to you.
TC: Hi David, how are you doing?
DP: Fine, thank you. A little bit of a delay on the line, but not as bad as it was last week. This time last week, where where you, just remind us again.
TC: This time last week we were on Ikerasak mountain in north-west Greenland, which is a mountain on an island in a fjord near the icecap, which has some big rock faces that haven’t been climbed before, that we fancied a go at. So, I tried to call you from there but unfortunately the satphone wasn’t quite up to the task.
DP: Were you on the side of, you were literally on the side of a mountain with a sheer rock climb, weren’t you, a sheer face?
TC: Yeah, at that point I was just above the rock face, with the ridge rising above us, yeah.
DP: Looking back on the adventure now, are you happy with all that you’ve achieved?
TC: Yeah, very happy. We’ve had a very successful time. We’ve done a lot of very cool things. We’ve also done a fair amount of suffering, which I could have wished to avoid, but you know, now that you’ve done it, it sort of adds a bit to the adventure I guess.
DP: What was the worst moment for you, worst and best?
TC: Worst and best are actually quite close together. We, er, Ian Faulkner and I, we climbed a pillar which hadn’t been discovered before, which was about a thousand metres high, and about six pitches up Ian dislodged a rock by mistake, which came and hit me pretty much in the face…
DP: Oh my goodness!
TC: … yeah, that was a bit of a scary moment, because obviously you know, you’re 600 metres above the sea and it’s going to take 12 hours to get anywhere, so having a serious injury is really not what you want to do. But luckily, it just sort of glanced off, just gave me a bit of a cut. But it was a bit of a scary moment. … The high moment was a few hours later, when we sort of turned a corner and found out that the whole mountain, which had been really sheer up to then, suddenly was becoming a lot easier and we could see the top, and after three days of effort we were going to get to the top of this pillar. That was a pretty good moment.
DP: How long is the journey home going to take you?
TC: The journey home is by plane. We sailed here from Canada, to bring all the stuff, but we don’t have time left in the season to sail back, so a lot of stuff is being left here and we’re just getting home by plane, which will only take about a day and a half.
DP: You’ve been keeping, writing a blog of your trip. Can you just remind us where we can see that, and how we can follow all that you’ve been doing?
TC: Yeah, if you go online to http://www.oxfordgreenlandexpedition.com, all one word, then you can hear all the accounts of all the climbing we’ve been doing, and all the adventures we’ve been having.
DP: I bet you’re already planning your next trip – you must have been discussing it with your friends and colleagues there.
TC: Yeah, we’ve had some, we’ve had a few ideas, yeah. But I’m afraid we’re going to have to keep them under wraps until a lot later I think, unless someone else goes there first.
DP: There is that. I bet you don’t want your families to know either…
TC: [laughs]
DP: … they’re going to be glad to have you home, aren’t they?
TC: They’re going to be glad when I’m back in London, yeah, I expect so, yeah.
DP: Will your ordinary life seem a bit dull after all of this? I imagine it will to a certain extent, after such excitement and such adventures, getting back to the humdrum of every day. Going to be a bit mundane, won’t it?
TC: It’s a change of gear, it’s certainly that, but it’s going to be very nice to sleep in a bed for once. I think it’s been 10 weeks since I slept in a bed. I’m quite looking forward to that. Don’t ask me how long it’s been since my last shower!
DP: How long has it been since your last shower? [Both laugh]
TC: Er, four or five weeks, not counting swimming in fjords.
DP: [Laughs] Oh no. [Laughs] I’d rather not sit next to you on the plane journey home!
TC: Neither would I!
DP: Did you, we talked a lot about this sleeping on a ledge thing. Did that happen, did you do that?
TC: Yeah, yeah, we did. Ian and I on that climb I just told you about, when I got hit by the rock, we had to bivvy twice, that is, sleep on the face. The ledges, we only found ledges which were about just under a foot wide …
DP: Golly.
TC: … so, yeah, it was quite good fun, because you had to clear some rocks off your ledge to make it vaguely level, and you just kind of pushed these rocks and watched them plummet silently right down into the sea, three or four hundred metres below.
DP: And when you woke up on the bivvy, or whatever, on a ledge on a sheer rock face, that moment when we all have in the morning, where you’re not quite sure where you are, open your eyes and think – my goodness.
TC: Yeah. No. You never quite forget, because you have to brace yourself a bit to stay in your spot, so it’s not, you kind of doze quite a lot, and don’t really go to sleep properly…
DP: Yeah, I bet.
TC: … you wake up quite a lot during the night having dreams of falling [laughs]. So, luckily you never get quite that disorientated.
DP: Tom, you’re quite mad but it’s a joy to speak to you and I’m in awe of what you’ve achieved. Do come in and see us, won’t you, in the flesh, when you’re back in Oxford.
TC: Oh, thank you David, yeah, that would be nice, yes please.
DP: Lovely. Nice to talk to you Tom. You can follow, if you go to our Facebook page, facebook.com/bbcoxford, it’s there, and remind us of your website again.
TC: It’s oxfordgreenlandexpedition.com.
DP: Lovely. It’s a joy to speak to you. Have a very safe journey home, won’t you.
TC: Thanks. And have a good weekend.
DP: Thank you. And you too. That’s Tom Codrington from the Oxford University Mountaineering Club on their trip to West Greenland. Quite extraordinary.
[5 mins 34 secs]
Oxford Greenland Expedition 2013 