Berg

Hear Wally's Call from Greenland

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Greenland is definitely a wind in your face kind of place. I don't mean that negatively. As a mountaineer, if we didn't enjoy wind in our face, we wouldn't last long. I've enjoyed being out in the mountains in this kind of weather always, and it is not crystal clear, blue skies, but as I told Todd before he left and tell Willi now that we've been here, Greenland actually has very good bad weather. And what I mean by that is: the conditions are always moderate and mild, even when things are rather inclement. The ambient air temperatures are not that cold. We've had clouds all day, some snow, some wind, but it's really been a great day, especially for what we were doing today which was skills review and practice and getting our gear ready for more serious climbing later on.

For me, it was especially a treat because I'm with Willi Prittie again. Willi is the master. I mean that. He is a fella who's developed the curriculum and the teaching style that's responsible and behind, and is really the heart and soul of the best mountaineering instruction program I know of in the United States now, the Alpine Ascents North Cascades program. It's great for me, as a guy who works internationally mostly and just gets people up peaks hoping they learn skills from people like Willi beforehand, to get back with the old master and watch his excellent teaching style and learn some more of his tricks and get reviewed myself. Willi's the best teacher of mountaineering skills I've ever been around.

We went over our rope technique for glacier travel today. Some people wanted to review some knots. We did all that kind of stuff. We looked more carefully at crampons and other equipment. And we went up and had a wonderful ski tour. And we did self-arrest practice. We practiced our snow climbing technique, and the whole time I was talking a great deal about ski touring technique, skiing efficiently, as we're going to have to do when we begin moving with these packs.

And then to cap the whole day off, we had a beautiful ski back down some moderate angle slopes in really creamy, buttery, new snow. So, beautiful day...we're sitting out here—again it's very cloudy, but quite warm temperatures—enjoying an early evening in east Greenland.

I'll call you tomorrow and report whether we're able to start our first peak climb, but if it's as moderate as it was this morning, we'll probably at least start up and give this thing a try and continue to hone our skills and enjoy being out here on the glaciers. Talk to you sometime tomorrow.

— Alpine Ascents Guide Wally Berg, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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