Berg

Hear Wally's Call from Greenland

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The second Alpine Ascents expedition is underway in a rather confused, but I would have to say, ultimately, a very auspicious manner. Things are going great. We had a beautiful day for our first day yesterday.

Todd referred to the decision about whether he or I would stay. We were down to the wire on that one. We both had very mixed feelings about it. It's always nice to fly out to a hotel and get a shower, but I saw Todd wistfully looking around at the great adventures that could have happened here as he boarded the plane.

It was really down to the wire. Todd's back had been bad for the last few days of the trip, and we knew that was a concern, and I was planning [unintelligible]. I had a crown fall out as I was eating Gummy Bear candy and pretty much popped out. If this crown goes back in the right way, you're fine, but otherwise, your back is going to have to get better.

So the dental work that took place as the plane was on the way from Iceland yesterday was a little bit high pressure. We really needed that crown to go back in, but Todd did beautiful work on it, and I've got a new dental life here and things are going great.

The plane landed, and it was a great reunion for me with some old friends. Willi Prittie, who I haven't guided with since 1994 on Denali; Stephen Boyd, who, with his father, Jim, was on Kili[manjaro] with me last year; Sal Pomponi, who I first climbed with on Everest in 1993 and, subsequently, or since then, I've been on Elbrus and Kili with him. We all were hugging and happy to be together. New friends, Skip Sammis is here and Richard and Ursula Tracy are here.

This happy looking crew [unintelligible] is thrilled to be on the glacier. We eagerly took off for a short ski tour up the glacier in beautiful conditions. [Unintelligible] one little hitch though. Stephen did not join us on the ski tour because the airlines managed to lose all his climbing gear and personal equipment before he got to Iceland. He went out to the mountaineering stores in Akureyri, which are actually not bad, replaced most of that gear, but planned to use Todd Burleson's skis on this trip.

In the haste to reload that Twin Otter, of course, Todd Burleson's skis got flown back to Iceland, and I was immediately trying to communicate via relayed phone message back to Iceland on the radio to the plane to turn around and bring us those skis.

It hasn't been quite that fast, but fortunately, the airline, the air service, needed to pick up another group on a glacier nearby here—some Finns, and they assured me before the afternoon was over: 'your skis will be there tonight.' And sure enough, about 10 o'clock last night, the Twin Otter returned, did a quick landing, and threw some skis out on the glacier. And we're all totally equipped and ready to go with a great expedition here.

I wish I could tell you that the weather has changed definitively, but we did awake to clouds this morning and wind from the south, which has typically meant less than ideal weather here on the glacier in Greenland for us. But it's going to be a great day for us to go out and do some skills review and practice. This will be ice axe/self-arrest skills, skiing technique up the glacier, Ursula's asked for some knot review. We already saw yesterday when we went for a ski what beautiful skiers Ursula and Richard both are, but we are going to review our rope technique with them at their request and get ourselves ready for a peak climb as soon as tomorrow I hope, weather permitting.

So we'll keep you posted with our adventure as it gets underway here. My big goal for this trip, besides as Willi said last night, we'll all come home friends, with all our digits, having done a safe trip—that's the first goal. And I'm sure that's going to happen; we're having a great time. But my goal, besides doing another nice peak climb or two here, is to get a view of this impressive ice cap to the north of us, toward the interior of Greenland. We've got enough clouds on this trip that even when we've been up high, I haven't gotten a real good view of it yet, but I'm thrilled about that opportunity coming ahead in the next few days.

We'll keep you posted...probably a dispatch tomorrow, and we'll let you know how it goes on our peak climb.

— Alpine Ascents Guide Wally Berg, MountainZone.com Correspondent

EXPEDITION DISPATCHES