Page 24 - 2019 AMA Winter

EXPEDITIONNEWS
was over two hours away and across the Greenland Icecap...exciting times indeed!
The next day we deployed to a nearby island and set to work delivering the AMF course based around the unnamed peaks surrounding the Apusiaajik Glacier. If an instructor could dream up a perfect training environment to deliver an AMF course, then Apusiaajik would be it. A superb base camp, short (enough) approaches to the glaciers, relatively benign glaciers and spectacular peaks with enough technical interest to keep everyone’s minds focused. Truly a magical few days and definitely the first time I’ve mountaineered with a loaded rifle.
With the team now fully into ‘expedition life’ we were picked up by local Inuit hunters and transported north via boats, the trip up to the Karale Glacier was mind blowing, with huge narrow fjords, massive icebergs and glaciers tumbling down to the sea....the only time our eyes where averted from the endless mountaineer- ing opportunities was when the excited shout of ‘whale’ was heard! Unbeliev- ably we had chanced upon two feeding
humpback whales, words fail to describe the joy in seeing these leviathans in their natural habitat.
Phase Two Base Camp was on the south side of a huge fjord, unnamed on our maps. Surrounding us on all sides where glaciers and directly opposite the campsite a glacier calved into the fjord all day and all night (which was actually light due to being so far north). It was
‘...we were incredibly remote, in a little explored area, with very poor maps coupled with the fear of falling into crevasses or being eaten by a bear’
at this point that I actually felt pangs of anxiety, we were incredibly remote, in a little explored area, with very poor maps coupled with the fear of falling into crevasses or being eaten by a bear, both very real possibilities in our minds. With this in mind, I chose to keep our margin for risk very much in the manageable bracket
by using our first day to recce a large glacier to the west with a view to checking it complexity and identifying access and exit points for later routes. What ensued was a ‘quality mountain day’ with three glaciers crossed and 20km covered over moraine and ice. Upon returning to camp we exchanged information with the other instructors who had been turned back on their objectives by a very complex crevasse field high on the mountain. With this info tucked away we set out the next morning with a ‘just have a look’ mentality. We could still see the other teams tracks from the previous day and just before their high point, I spied a subsidiary peak that look accessible with a little route finding. After carefully traversing the glacier we reached a beautiful snow arête that led to a short scramble to the peak. With no name on the map, we decided to name the peak Point Albion and the snow arête, The Hammersley Arête, named after, the now demolished, Hammersley Barracks in Aldershot where myself and Bruce had completed our RAPTC Probationers course. On the descent from Point Albion back to Base Camp, I spotted a shapely peak that looked like it might be accessible with a nose for route finding and a bit of luck. After relaying this information to the other instructors, it was decided that all three teams would make an attempt the next day. Incredibly the hope for simple access turned out to be as good as we could have hoped for, with a physical but technically easy approach up dry glaciers before crossing a hanging glacier to reach a rock ridge. This ridge turned out to be the Crib Goch (ish) of Eastern Greenland and led to an isolated subsidiary peak with huge drops on three sides, incredibly we had bagged another virgin summit, our second in two days. Point Cadell was named amid much back slapping from the entire team who made it to the summit one after the other.
By this stage of the expedition, bodies were starting to flag, however I had
24 / ARMY MOUNTAINEER