Greenland 2000

For those who don't know me here's a little background. I was relatively late in joining the hiking/mountaineering world. It was not until my second year of studying for a Ph.D. at Lancaster University that I joined Lancaster University Hiking Club. I quickly found I had what it takes to be a Hiker - a love for the mountains, some degree of fitness, the ability to put up with, or even enjoy the poor English weather, and the ability to navigate, when I put my mind to it. I quickly progressed in the Club, enjoying more challenging trips to Scotland and becoming a leader. I was the Treasurer for one year, and then became a general helper and adviser for my remaining five years at the university.

Whilst there I was introduced to scrambling, which naturally leads onto rock climbing. Also winter walking progressed into easy ice-climbing. Towards the end of my time at the University, climbing and scrambling became my main interests. Hiking was just a means to get to the beginning of the route and the day's fun. Then one September afternoon in 1998 everything got turned on its head by a fall whilst scrambling. I smashed my tibia and seriously damaged an ankle. This put a dramatic end to my days in the mountains for that year and raised serious questions about the years to follow. It was also about this time that my life at University came to a dead end. No more interesting research projects to work on. Instead I followed up on some of the job offers that had been made at the end of my previous project. This lead to me emigrating to Switzerland to join a Research and Technology group with many interesting projects to work on, lots more pay, and many more mountains to climb, if my ankle improved enough to allow it.

During 1999 I slowly limped my way back into the mountains. The going was hard and painful, but a Sunday in the mountains could be followed by a week behind a desk recuperating. I rediscovered my joy of Hiking that I had lost when taking up rock climbing in a big way. I also added a new mountain activity - mountain biking. The circular motion of pedaling is much less jarring than hiking up and down a mountain, but still allows you to get into the mountains and enjoy the scenery. Towards the end of 1999 things had improved enough, so I decided it was time to make one of my dreams come true, to explore some new mountains somewhere. The origin of this dream and why this turned out to be in Greenland is explained in the text.

Below you will find four links. The first is a mosaic of some of the better photographs. Hopefully it will give you a taste for what is to follow. The second takes you to the first day of the diary and the journey from Switzerland to Iceland, and (as the days progress) to Greenland and the mountains we climbed. The third link is to an aerial photograph we used for navigation, which shows the mountains we climbed. The last link is to a table listing the mountains we climbed in chronological order.

• Picture Mosaic
• Day by day account
• Aerial Photograph
• List of Ascents