donderdag 9 oktober 2014

Greenland Big Wall Kayak Trip - Expedition in pure autonomy


Last few weeks, people have been asking me about my adventures of the summer 2014. Finally here it is. It’s been time now to share with you some stories, lessons, experiences and amazing images of my latest trip together with Tim De Dobbeleer towards the south of Greenland.



One month ago Tim and I returned from our Greenland Big wall kayak trip. We’ve spend five weeks in the remote and intimidating fjords trekking, kayaking and climbing in different areas. At the end of our trip we chose the adventurous way to return back to Belgium. We joined a British sailing crew on their sailboat for a journey of eleven days crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

In many ways the trip was successful. A combination of an incredible environment, exciting kayak experiences, great local people, perfect weather, first class granite rock, humongous walls, good stories and several ups and downs made this trip more then worth it! Going from one place to the next in between big fjords and high mountains was thrilling. We covered huge distances using inflatable kayaks in the cold fjord’s seawater while on the other hand we hiked 23 kilometres true a long valley carrying 200 kilogram of gear. To fulfil this last task each of us had to carry three heavy bags going back and forward hiking every distance five times in total. We could climb two great existing lines in the famous Tasermiut Fjord and climbed two smaller first ascents near Torsukattaq Fjord. The environment is intimidating, remote and is hardly touched by human. We searched for autonomy and we could find it in these South-Greenlandic fjords and valleys.

But, in all this wonderful atmosphere it was sad not to succeed in our main goal, namely to discover and free climb new big rock faces and lines on unclimbed or yet climbed walls. In the last few years I discovered there is a great amount of big walls that still remain unclimbed. I’ve got a taste of this kind of climbing expeditions on my trips in North and South America. The love and passion for big walls grew. The Greenland Big wall kayak trip offered us the chance to do what I had been dreaming off. But sometimes dreams don’t come true, sadly, because we were so close.

The real Autonomy!
Coming up: more posts on the process of our trip, including facts and thoughts on the disappointing note of it all. And of course I’ll share with you the lessons I’ve learned on this adventure. Most of all, this trip was a big lesson about undertaking this kind of big endeavours. It was a lesson for Tim as well as for myself which I would like to share with you as a climber, explorer, student, human,… 

During the following week I will update my blog every other day with a new chapter. Slowly, the long story of the Greenland Big wall kayak trip will finally be revealed into six blogposts (chapters) containing amazing pictures.

I hope you’re as excited as we were the 14th of July 2014 when we left Belgium to discover the adventures that lay ahead… I would like to thank our sponsors in advance: Petzl, The North Face, Avventura, K2, Five Ten, Millet, Trek'N Eat, Care Plus, Brunton, kayakshop Arjan Bloem, KBF, BVKB, Klimclub Hungaria and Sportpraktijk Vanden Auweele.

“Chapter 1: How an idea turned into ‘big wall’ reality…” will be revealed soon…




Below you can find the GoogleMaps map and itinerary of our whole trip. Chapters 1 to 6 can be followed easy using this map to picture our whole expedition.

Enjoy and dream with us…

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