Early start this morning, you know, eightish, there’s a few out there shouting ‘that’s not early’. What you have to remember that there is no such thing as late here in Greenland. As the sun sets at 23.45  and rises at 02:30, but it doesn’t get dark… Hence the reason that there is no such thing as late, as you will see.

We are climbing (I put the word climbing in there intentionally, as in no way did it resemble walking) Paarnartivartik, apparently only climbed about three times before. It guards the entrance like a great white sentinel to a corrie of about ten peaks all but three unclimbed! The walk in takes about three hours with terrain ranging from hidden green meadows with a slow meandering river winding its way through, to dam great bolder fields and loose scree. We start to climb the ridge on dirty horrible loose scree, but that then turns to massive slabs of glacier smoothed granite, which zig zagged up for 400 or 500 metres. Then came out the rope and for the last 300 metres we climbed up to the summit, which looked over the magnificent corrie below us and the mountain ranges which appeared to go on up the coast for ever, whilst the great ice cap dominated the inland scene.

We were, of course only half way and we’d been on the go for over seven and a half hours, doesn’t bode well for getting home by tea time! Well in the end we missed both teatime and supper and in stead had a midnight feast of Sirlion Steak, stir fry vegetables and rice… a me to die for.

We had been on the go for a little under 14 hours and walked 13km. Not a good average speed. Just to digress a second, but approximately five weeks ago I tried to walk with a couple of very good friends 50km, from Staines to Henley, after 40km I decided I’d had enough. I just wasn’t up to it, it was too far for me, I just don’t like walking long distances. Caroline and Andrew went on to complete it and I have nothing but admiration for their determination to complete the walk. One day I’ll come back to this point as for me it shows the very essence of why I walk. Back to Greenland, I was buggered, there was no doubting it, as I walked into camp five minutes after the rest of the group, but I was also elated and high with what has to be one of the greatest mountain days I’ve ever done… and that steak made the physical pain disappear with every bite!