On Stefan Glowacz’s next climbing expedition he’ll have to forego the companionable fun in the huts – due to the absence of company, fun and huts. The goal of his expedition on the almost unchartered Baffin Island: a wall that has been neither climbed nor mapped.
“It’s damn cold here.” If there were a travel guide for Baffin Island, there wouldn’t be much more content to this sentence. Because any other details about this huge, uninhabited island situated between Greenland and the Canadian north coast are simply unknown. For Stefan Glowacz, the German extreme climber, this is exactly what stimulates him: “To experience something that no-one before me ever has – and combine this experience with a top athletic performance.”Seven weeks in the dead zone
This top athletic performance will firstly consist of penetrating the island from Pond Inlet to Baffin Bay using sleds and snowmobiles – with three companions, extreme mountain climber Robert Jasper, photographer Klaus Fengler and navigator Mariusz Hoffmann. After about 240 kilometers of torture over never-ending ice, he will then climb one of the Querbitter fjord walls measuring over 1000 meters, of which only aerial photos exist. The way back, again over a hostile terrain of ice at temperatures of around -20 degrees Celsius, will be undertaken by the quartet without technical aid: on skis and with kites they plan to reach Clyde River, 350 kilometers away, within two weeks.
Many unknown variables
“We don’t know what’s awaiting us,” says Glowacz about the expedition beginning on April 24. There are still many extraneous questions open: “Do we have enough safety rope? Do we know enough about the quality of the rock? And will we really be safe enough from the polar bears with our Winchester rifles and mobile fences that we’ll put around our camp at night?” Each participant of the expedition will be pulling 23 kilograms worth of gear on a sled. “For seven weeks we’ll be freezing and reaching our limits,” the 43-year-old says. “But that you can also get used to.”
Stefan Glowacz
Baffin Island