Thurs 11:47
It’s w@nk out there ….
Fri 1:15 pm
The weather finally lifted yesterday. Aftechilling til 4pm we set off for the ‘Alpine’ region to the south, for a 3 day recce trip. We headed straight across the glacier and hit many superglacial streams, some of which were massive – no chance of crossing, and it was raining still. Had to cross 3 big bands of moraine, all very loose, and we all found it hard ( full mountaineering kit 3 full days of food). After 7 hours we made it to our recce camp – just up from a very big wonky boulder that I climbed up and proudly wee’d from 
(dodgy picture of me doing the buisness in my diary!)
Now sat waiting for it to cool down, so the ice can re-freeze properly, listening to Doc C snore and wondering about emptying the bladder again. We think there’s a route through the big icefall up onto a series of glaciers that me and Phil worked out will take us through to the highest peak round here. Today’s going to be a big day!
Saturday 0:25pm
Well, I was right there. Just woke up – yesterday was a 16 1/2 hour day. A bit full on. Successful -we got the beast – but HARD!
We left recce camp at 4.30pm, still a bit warm but not meltin too fast. Found a route INTO the icefall very quickly, then spent about 3 hours trying to find a route through. Pretty dodgy at times, loads of massive (50′) seracs, hopping from block to block of shit ice over damn big holes. Finally realised we couldn’t get through so decided to pull out, and try on the left hand side of the icefal, through some loose moraine/mud/rock. This was far better after we’d got onto it, and led us round and above the icefall.
The glacier above was heavily crevassed and after about an hour we found a route through it, leading us into the alpine bowl proper. Awesome big wall climbing all around. Headed for our intended route – the second incoming glacier from the right, with a large boulder at the bottom (henceforth known as “Brew Boulder”).
We’d taken 5 hours to get here. Had a bite and a drink, then followed a thin strip of medial moraine up onto the next glacier, leading us into some more big crevasses (we were on wet glaciers now (i.e. hit the snow line and could not see where the crevasses were so easily), snow cold enough to hold …. mostly!), then a long, long snow plod up several kilometers of steeply rising ground ,with quite deep snow (knee depth) in places.
As I was leading the second rope (me, Chris Mosely, Ali, Terminator, Stu) I was really glad that I wasn’t breaking trail – I was knackred just following the steps! Eventually crossed the bergschund and got to the col at the head of the valley. Had a 5 min breather in the cold, then kicked right and headed for the top. The temperature had dropped a lot now, the sweat (so much for gore-tex boots at stupid amounts of money!) in my boots was starting to freeze and I lost feeling in my toes … as we approached the snow dome we realised we were on the Greenland ice cap and could see for a good distance all around through the cloud, but most importantly we seemed to have hit the midnight sun (0230am), and the sun – which was directly in front of us as we headed up – was a glowing orange circular haze, lighting our way. Stunning, very impressive.
Gained the top, for shaking of hands and hugs. Photies, got a GPS reference. Peak named as “Commandment Peak” – Phil came up with that as there was 10 of us stood on it! Height set at 2117 on my GPS – slightly different from that on the map. Noted how cold it was, as I could put 90 degree kinks in our rope and hold it up so that it kept its shape. Bit cold. Then, with no degree of uncertainty, ran away.
Realised how tired I was on the way down, kept falling over. Our steps had frozen, and so were throwing our footsteps off with each step, making my now defrosting toes scream in pain with each step (nb, with hindsight we should have lost crampons for the long plod down, would have made walking far easier). After 2.5 hours we were back at the brew boulder, had a VERY strong sugary coffee which picked me back up again, then got back through the crevasse field and moraine / icefall pretty easily apart from the very last section – downclimbing some grade 1 ice. Ali was having issues with it – her axe and points were not going in properly – we were so tired it was getting hard to concentrate properly. She got down fine with just one small slip, which threw her confidence a bit, but Chris M was a star in talking her down – and to be fair had been keeping an eye on me all day too. ‘Nuff respect to him for that.
Back to the bottom, finished at 0900, ate, then slept.