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.
.tiff)
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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