Figenshau and Griber Kite to Couloirs in Greenland

Story by Michael Pearlman

Photos by Chris Figenshau

John Griber uses wind power to snowboard across the Kaarali Glacier in Greenland.

     In the spring of 2003, local snowboarder John Griber and local skier and photo-grapher Chris Figenshau spent a month in Greenland climbing and descending numerous, un-named peaks along the Kaarali glacier near the small village of Taasalaq. The group, which included skier Kasha Rigby of Salt Lake City and snowboarder Jim Zellers of Truckee, California, planned to use wind-driven kites to tow themselves across the glacier.

     Griber discovered the region from The Unknown Mountains of East Greenland, a book by Erwin Reinthaler and Hans Christian Florian. Florian, a Danish doctor and guide, lives in Taasalaq and constructed a small hut in 1996 to use for accessing the nearby mountains. Griber obtained much of the group’s information from e-mail communications with Florian.
     The team flew from the U.S. to Iceland, then to Kulusuk in eastern Greenland, where they chartered a helicopter to Taasalaq. There, poor weather delayed them for five days, which they spent playing chess and drinking what little beer they could afford (at eight dollars per can, beer and other goods are astronomically priced in Greenland). After the weather cleared, the group helicoptered to Florian’s hut.
     “Once we got there, we realized we were the first people to visit the hut this year, even though it was the tail end of the ski season,” Griber said. “There was a logbook there, and it only had 10 pages of entries dating back to when the hut was first built.”

Ahh- snowbaord mountaineering in a foreign land.

     After three days of skiing and snowboarding nearby peaks, the group loaded two 50-pound sleds and moved farther onto the glacier. The kites, however, proved useless.
     “We were fired up to use these kites because you can cover an amazing amount of ground, but every day was completely windless,” Griber said.
     Originally used for kiteboarding on water, the devices have recently become popular for glacier travel. Griber and Figenshau had experimented with them that winter, sailing across the sagebrush flats in Grand Teton National Park and on Togwotee Pass.
     “We got dragged around and made all the rookie mistakes,” Figenshau said. “It was definitely a trial-and-error type of learning curve, and there were times we realized the potential for major catastrophes.”
     Zellers and Rigby, who were using the kites in Greenland for the first time, called them “Kitemares.”
The four mountaineers spent a long day ski-touring to their base camp on the glacier. They found interesting peaks to climb and better wind conditions for kite travel during the week’s stay.
     “Every time we rounded a piece of rock, all these options would open up to us,” Figenshau said. “We definitely felt like kids in a candy store.”
     During the time they were stuck in Taasalaq, wet snow and rain fell in the mountains, creating less-than-ideal conditions for the steepest, most exposed descents. They encountered shallow instability at the beginning of the expedition, and observed numerous, small fractures on exposed faces.
     As the snow stabilized toward the end of the trip, the group made more than a dozen ski and snowboard descents. Having no specific objectives, they explored the mountains ringing the glacier, a fantasy-land filled with never-before-skied couloirs, faces and 3,000-vertical-foot runs.
     In the maritime climate, the temperatures dropped into the low 20s at night, and the moist, damp air felt even colder. Afternoons often brought fog from the melting pack ice, while nights were generally clear. The mountaineers were slowed by weather only once, when a storm that dumped a foot of snow kept them tent-bound for two days.
     An unexpected obstacle made their departure from the glacier quite challenging. Griber said the original plan was to kite back to the hut, ski to the sea, then continue skiing across the sea ice to Kumuut, where they would catch a boat to Kuulusk. “The only problem was it had all melted out,” Griber said.
     Under pressure to catch the one-flight-per-week from Kuulusk back to Iceland, the team was forced to drag the heavy sleds across rocks, and to ford rivers and creeks by shuttling the loads. Exhausted, they finally arrived in Kumuut and enjoyed the beautiful, three-hour boat ride to Kuulusk while the captain constantly negotiated the shifting pack ice.
     Video footage shot by Griber during the trip will be incorporated into a National Geographic television program that will air in the United Kingdom. Figenshau’s photos appeared in the November issue of SKIING magazine, and expedition sponsor The North Face will also use his photography.
—Excerpted from the Jackson Hole News&Guide

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Copyright 2004 by FPI (Focus Productions, Inc)., P.O. Box 1930, Jackson, Wyoming 83001. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publishers.

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