In 2023 Kev Oliver joined a small crew to sail from Greenland's west coast into the heart of the Northwest Passage, to Resolute Bay. This is his account from that expedition, where "pretty challenging" ice conditions forced time at anchor but offered opportunities to explore some of these remote coastal mountains.
Mountaineering in the Greenlandic and Canadian Arctic is easily enabled using a liveaboard yacht. In the summer of 2023 I got the opportunity to join Will Stirling on his beautiful traditionally built wooden "Gentlemen's Cutter", Integrity. Will built the boat in 2012 to his own design and was planning to build on his considerable portfolio of Arctic sailing with a Northwest Passage transit from East to West. I was joining him for the middle leg from Ilulissat on Disko Bay, West Greenland to Resolute Bay, Canada.
We were keen to make the best use of any spare time along the route to explore the mountains of West Greenland and Devon Island. Integrity is 40ft, traditionally built of larch on oak and of the narrow construction typical of an 1880s English Cutter. So space was even more at a premium than on modern Arctic expedition boats. In the end, I took Jöttnar's hard shell jacket, salopettes, down jacket, mid layer and base layer topped off with a beanie, and used that for everything the weather threw at us, on open sea, in fjords and in the mountains.
The first week was relatively benign with light winds and a mix of drizzle with some sunny days. We were fortunate to pick one of the latter for an ascent of Sanderson's Hope, a kilometre high mountain that rises out of the fjord at nearly 73 degrees north. Whilst not a difficult peak to ascend, the névé filled snow gullies and gendarmes added to the interest. Mountaineering at this latitude in summer offers remarkable flexibility with timings — we could start literally whenever we wanted with no fear of becoming benighted.
The iceberg-filled fjords close to the Greenland ice sheet saw our boat weaving and sometimes pushing its way through floes of frozen sea and freshwater icebergs in a tangled yet serene maze of ice. Many an hour was spent sitting atop the main mast gaining a better view of the distant pack and the dangerous, yet beautiful, bright blue submerged ice. A drone was used both to photograph the boat amongst this naturally sculpted world and to scout for leads and patches of clear water ahead.
Having come so far north to avoid the ice in Baffin Bay, we found ourselves at the Devil's Thumb, one of the most recognizable features of West Greenland — a blade of rock with sheer 600ft cliffs on three sides. With only a single short rope, few placements and two virtual novice rock climbers as companions, and being so remote, I aborted our summit attempt after a pitch and a half. Downclimbing or abseiling on dodgy anchors swayed the risk-reward balance too firmly into the risk category.
The long passage across Baffin Bay from West Greenland to Devon Island was elongated by the need to circumnavigate a tongue of pack ice that extended far north and unusually late in the season. On the third morning, as the fog was just lifting, I realized how deceptive distances can be. I saw an iceberg emerging from the mist which seemed about the size of a family car and a few hundred metres away. As the fog lifted it turned out to be probably 500m square and several miles away.
The final few days were spent moving west along Devon Island, a huge uninhabited combination of scree slopes and glaciated ice sheets, with sightings of a colony of walrus and a solo Beluga whale. We saw four polar bears, one of which we managed to get close to on the shore. His casual ambivalence to our presence highlighted his position at the top of the food chain. The only real signs of humanity are an abandoned Police Post at Dundas Harbour and the graves of three of Sir John Franklin's men at Beechey Island, dating from the decades-long search for the Northwest Passage.
I left Will Stirling and Integrity in Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island for him to complete the Northwest Passage with another crew.
Col. Kev Oliver is a Royal Marines veteran, having specialised in Arctic and mountain warfare. In 2009 he sailed and rowed through the Northwest Passage in a 17ft open boat, and co-authored a record of this voyage in 'Blokes Up North'.
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