Berg

Hear Wally's Call from Greenland

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Willi and I are standing here right now, about 10 o'clock in the morning, looking at high, overcast clouds and fortunately no wind. Today, we're going to go off and try to do this peak climb that we did on the last trip. And this peak, you may remember, is one that—the first ascent was made by Todd Burleson and the Alpine Ascents group two years ago. It's been repeated a couple of times by our groups—beautiful little climb.

One interesting thing about it that I'll report to you as the day goes on is: you may remember when Todd and I took the group up some time ago, we had some concern about avalanches with the new snow.

Whenever you travel to a new area and you're dealing with a snowpack there and you're not familiar with it, you always wonder what's going on, but one constant is slope angle between 30 and 45 degrees. And we were on a critical slope angle, maritime snowpack, I was unfamiliar with it, but we had some concern about this slope. And in fact, that was a valid concern with the subsequent new snow we've had since then. Willi and I looked over yesterday afternoon and noticed that, in fact, this slope had slid. The very one we went up some time ago. And furthermore, a similar slope, same aspect, slope angle, above there have already slid or look like they're going to be safe. And we'll make the judgement as we go. And we'll watch the weather and give you a report of how this peak climb goes either later today or tomorrow morning.

— Alpine Ascents Guide Wally Berg, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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