Arctic Ice

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 short 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, a wooden boat builder who runs the Stirling & Son boatyard in Plymouth 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 of the transit from Ilulissat on Disko Bay, West Greenland to Resolute Bay, Canada. A traditionalist, Will likes to navigate using traditional compass, chronometer, sextant and spinning log, backing this up with GPS technology only where necessary for safety.

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 more modern designed Arctic expedition boats where in addition to provisions for several weeks, spare parts for the boat, climbing gear, tents, and potentially skis all need to be stowed. Against this backdrop I was debating packing my heavy and bulky foul weather sailing jacket and salopettes (great for long cold watches) and goretex shells and layers for use in the mountains. 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 and a rope used to surmount a small unstable cornice. Mountaineering at this latitude in summer offers remarkable flexibility with timings. We could start literally whenever we wanted with no fear of becoming benighted. When we returned to the boat around midnight we were lucky enough to have fresh fish cooked by our crew member who had remained at the exposed anchorage. Then we headed further north as the sun beat down through the early hours.

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 and “bergy bits” in a tangled yet serene maze of ice. Moving the boat successfully amongst this employed both a traditional and a more modern method of scouting ahead. Many an hour were spent sitting atop the main mast gaining a much better view of the distant pack but also a better view of the dangerous, yet beautiful bright blue submerged ice. Sometimes we used a piece of floe up to ten feet across, caught on the bow, to bulldoze a safe path through. Employing technology, a drone was used both to photograph the boat amongst this stunning naturally sculpted world and also to scout for leads and patches of clear water ahead, or sometimes necessarily behind us, retracing our path.

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 and a blade of rock with sheer 600ft cliffs on three sides and a steep ridge on the other. I had not brought much rock pro, prioritising snow and ice equipment. With only a single short rope, few placements for my abundant slings, two virtual novice rock climbers as companions and being so remote I aborted our summit attempt after a pitch and a half of relatively easy if somewhat loose rock. I regret not bringing a fuller rack and reaching this iconic summit, first climbed almost 79 years earlier to the day, by Baird and Longstaff. Downclimbing or abseiling on dodgy anchors swayed the risk reward balance too firmly into the risk category.

Our next objective was a little known peak on the island south of Kullorsuaq. After walking up scree we ascended a wet glacier which led to a ridge and eventually a pair of summits, the true summit containing a small cairn and a few hundred metres north a slightly lower summit atop a vertical cliff. This afforded a superb view over the Greenland Ice sheet and the many iceberg filled fjords leading to it, which we had partly explored.

The long passage across Baffin Bay from West Greenland to Devon Island in Canada was elongated by the need to circumnavigate a tongue of pack ice that extended far north and unusually late in the season. The start of the passage across was clear of ice but blanketed in thick fog making it very cold and damp. On the third morning as the fog was just lifting, I realized how deceptive distances can be in such circumstances. 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.

Another feature of classic boats is that they are quite literally covered in all kinds of tar, pitch, grease, tallow and other substances which you just can’t help but get on your clothes. This is why most classic sailors wear old dark sweaters and canvas jeans. As a mountaineer and sailor of modern boats, this somewhat saddened me as I had brand new Jöttnar clothing generously supplied by the company. Fortuitously, all these stains came out on washing, along with the usual dirt created by rusty anchor chain and four weeks of continuous wear.

"I realized how deceptive distances can be here. I saw an iceberg emerging from the mist which seemed about the size of a family car and a few hundred metres away. It was probably 500m square and several miles away."

I was reading “The Arctic Grail”, a comprehensive history of the quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole. Whilst interesting to be covering much of the same geography as these early pioneers I remain awed by their patience, privations and determination as they advanced slowly without GPS, without charts (filling them in as they went), and largely without boat engines and square rigged sails that could mostly only sail downwind. They had poor food, were plagued with scurvy and many endured consecutive winters beset in the ice. Many of the Royal Navy explorers shunned traditional fur clothing and relied upon wool which would soak up the abundant moisture. We can travel and enjoy the same terrain but we are blessed with so many advantages but with Google Earth there is little left to truly explore. Like many things though it depends on one’s perspective. There remain thousands of bays and channels in the Arctic that have never been surveyed, or where the most up to date chart has one line of soundings and the casual comment “Last surveyed in 1860”.

The final few days were spent moving west along Devon Island, a huge uninhabited combination of scree slopes and glaciated ice sheets but with sightings of a colony of walrus and a solo Beluga whale feeding on a shoal of fish. We saw four polar bears, one on the pack ice and one which we managed to get close to as he was on the shore, although he did decide to swim out towards the boat a short way. His casual ambivalence to our presence highlighted his position at the top of the food chain and superb adaptation to his environment. Having visited various parts of the Arctic, I knew something of its vast emptiness. Devon Island accentuated that feeling, its main rectangular shape being about 200 miles by 50 miles; about the size of Land’s End to Brighton to London to Bristol. Devon Island has nothing in common with its namesake county that I call home. Ice sheet topped thousand feet high hills seem devoid of interest from afar, but each contains waterfalls, valleys and castellated ridges of loose rock and huge scree slopes patiently and often precariously laid down, devoid of footfall. The only real signs of humanity are an abandoned Police Post at Dundas Harbour, complete with magazines and books from its closure in 1951 and the graves of three of Sir John Franklin’s men at Beechey Island. These date from just over a hundred years before that, in 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. Resolute is where I had completed a journey from the West through the heart of the Northwest Passage in a 17 foot open boat in 2009/10 as recounted in the book ‘Blokes Up North’.

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'.