What Sort of title is that I can hear you all say? Well, it’s the new name for what was a previously an unclimbed peak. For those of you of Irish descent, such as Stephen and Britta the second word will pose no problem and for those of Inuit descent will know what the first word means, for the rest of us, both words are absolute gobbledygook! To translate, it means Mount Aoife (Pronounced Eefer). The name of my new Grandaughter, born while I was in Greenland. My present to her is to name the previously unclimbed mountain that our small team reached on Monday 25th July after her. Very much looking forward to seeing her. Apparently I now have to climb four other unclimbed peaks and name them after the other four grandchildren! I could be getting a little to old for this, though.
The day started with the repeat of the glacier walk as the previous unsuccessful attempt on the Sunday but instead of heading for the natural col we turned right up a steep section of the glacier to a ridge. The snow covered ridge walk was easy and straight forward for a couple of hundred metres, then the ridge suddenly narrowed to a steep arête of 70 degree slopes of 500 plus metres on both sides, with one side finishing with a further 500 metre near vertical fall to the sea. This arête lead steeply to the rock band that we knew would be the crux of the ascent. And it was. The fist obstacle was the small but significant crevasse where the glacier pulled away from the rock band. Then there was the climb up a short but vertical face to a steep scree slope that lead to the short summit ridge that was covered in snow. Both Leifur and Bjorgvin attacked the face at two different points. Bjorgvin changed his route a couple of times before successfully penetrating the rock bands defences, James and Dave followed. Leifur persevered on a line until he too broke through with Mike and I following. It has to have been one of the most exposed rock climbs I’ve ever done, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t in the El Cap league. A fall would have always been arrested by the rope even in the lead climbers case, but to look down and see close to 500 plus metres of fresh air can give one the willies! We then crossed the snow arête to the summit… only to find that the summit was a perfect ‘U’ shape, which was unseen until the last few steps of the arête. What to do, the two ends of the ‘U’ looked to be of similar height and the bend in the ‘U’ was extremely exposed. To be sure we had to do both, not what we had expected to have to do, especially as both summits were narrow and exposed. We placed a small cairn on both summits to prove our first ascent.
We summited at 16:00 after starting at 08:00! But as the saying goes ascent is optional, descent is manditory. The descent, however, was fairly uneventful and straight forward, except for being lowered 30 metres down the vertical rock band onto the snow arête below. It was great fun swinging on the end of a rope while looking at uninterrupted views of some of the most stunning virgin scenery of Greenland.
We arrived back into camp at 21:00, not one of us regretting such a long day. A day I’ll treasure for the rest of my life, summiting a hard won peak with James, just as I have spent days with Matthew trekking in some of the biggest mountains in the world. These days get rarer as my children grow older and have families of their own and they want to create memories with their own children. But I will cherish these times as I cherish all those times in the mountains with my Father.
As always, at this point it’s homeward bound to my patient and loving wife.