Page 16 - AMA Summer 2023

GUESTWRITER
(L to R) Nigel Vardy, Nigel Crosby and John Hudson; the first summit
shaking. It was all very impressive and humbling, if a little unnerving at the same time. It was the most unusual and unique start to any mountaineering expedition I have ever experienced.
Two days later, after the day-long drive from Reykjavik to Isafjordur, our team of four climbers (Nigel Crosby, John Hudson, Nigel Vardy, Simon Yates) embarked on the Yacht Lorana in the last stage of our journey to Greenland’s east coast. The captain – Vicente Castro returned from the shops to welcome us on board and to inform us that we would be sailing that evening. I had first set foot on the yacht in 2006 when it had a Belgian owner and captain – Marcel de Letter. At the time it was based in the Beagle Channel, at the other end of the Atlantic in Tierra del Fuego. Over the following ten years I returned nearly every summer season to taking groups and climbing for myself in the Cordillera Darwin. Some of the happiest periods of my life have been spent on the yacht. Then, in 2017 Marcel sold the Lorana to Vicente, who decided to take it north and charter groups to Greenland. Vicente sailed solo for much of the journey via St Helena, Ascension Island, the Caribbean and the last hop from Bermuda to Iceland, where
we met and made our first trip to Greenland in 2018, followed by another in 2019. Then Covid stopped play for two summers.
In many ways using Lorana in the north paralleled what had happened in the south. The first couple of trips allowed recon- naissance to work out the best places to anchor, approach and climb peaks, as well as finding good objectives. That knowledge
Ingvar and Simon: Molten Hot!
combined with a prolonged spell of perfect weather made 2022 special.
Our crossing of the Denmark Strait mostly by motoring through the mist passed uneventfully and by the second evening we were at anchor in the right-hand fork of Jacobsen Fjord making plans to go straight on the hill the following morning. It proved to be a long day. Vicente dropped
16 / ARMY MOUNTAINEER