65:38.91N 37:22.59W

Our last day on the mountains didn’t look promising with the peak we had our eyes on the evening before being completely obscured by cloud after the first couple of hundred metres. We had a slow breakfast and at about 11.00 decided to give it a go as the cloud had tended to lift during previous days of bad weather. Tracy and Karl generously agreed to do boat duty (probably expecting a rapid return of 4 very wet explorers!) The target for Mike, John, Gringo and Ollie was a 700m peak adjacent to our anchorage with what looked like mainly solid rock faces, sloping slabs and only a small amount of scree, that we had looked at the previous day.

The damp atmosphere made some of the black moss covered rock slippy but we made good progress up slabs and along gulley’s to the first plateau at around 300m, but the visibility was down to 50m or less and route finding involved a little guess work. Fortunately we had been able to see the general shape of our route the day before (see photo).

We donned helmets fairly early in our ascent as protection from loose rocks dislodged by those leading but only decided to rope up and climb one 40m pitch. As we got higher the sun looked as if it may break through but our visibility was still limited to our immediate surroundings. We reached the top after three hours with a vertical drop to our left that we could not see the bottom of due to cloud and a peak, still in cloud, that overhung the drop. Not one to look over the edge of given the cracks in the rocks!

After photos on the top and a brief stop for chocolate bars and a drink we started our decent, the cloud still covering us. We retraced our steps to the ropes we had left from our short climb on the ascent. As we gathered our gear together following an abseil down the cloud started to clear and we started to see the snow covered jagged peaks on the other side of the Angmagssalik fjord. As we descended the cloud cleared and we could see a fjord full of small islands and coves, a perfect place for a kayak trip. Karl collected us in the dingy and we were soon enjoying the last of our Arctic Char by the warm stove on Umiak. A great last mountain.

John