Greenland Part 7

12 May

Time to get back in the powder again...
We skinned back up past our tracks from a few days ago, and headed up the next available line. Still holding perfect powder on pitches up to solid 50˚ we were stopped at 2/3 height by an impassable crevasse. Still, plenty of space to get some more faceshots...

Hiking the steeps:



Guy dodging slots:



Simon in the soft stuff:




13 May

Our last full day on the ice. Unbelievably the weather was still good, though the mornings had been progressively colder (-30C this morning), so time to finish the trip in style. We skinned back up towards Gunnbjorn Fjeld then hung a left aiming for a new peak (pt 3220m) on the ridge between Cone and Pk Osterreich. 3 days previous Oli & I had spotted a couple of potential lines dropping the far side of this onto the Dome/Cone glacier.
A bit of tentative peering over cornices and we located the slope we were after. An icy sideslip in on a 50˚ slope took us back onto some more great spring snow on a wide open face.

Pk Osterreich:



Oli in action:



Simon:



Guy:




Looking back at our line:



And that was it. 9 perfect days of skiing, 11 days of perfect weather in a row. No polar bears, only Guy & Steph's snoring disturbing the peace of the Arctic 'night'.
Next day the Twin Otter was back, and we flew back out with fantastic views of the coast and the pack ice, still present for a good few miles off the coast: