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| Sea kayaking North Wales, Anglesey - wind against tide on the Menai Straits. |
A lot has gone on since my last blog, three years ago about Stand Up Paddleboarding (SUP) around Menorca. What's happened since then and what's new? Over the next few weeks, I'll aim to update and share some information about what's been going on. Then I'll move to one blog once a month.
What I can tell you now is, 2017 was a pretty fantastic year!
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| Kayak and Climb - NW Greenland Expedition and the area we paddled into |
Kayak and Climb - NW Greenland
Back in March 2017, I first mentioned my opportunity to go to NW Greenland. Good friend Olly Sanders had been many times before to Greenland, while for me it was to be my first time. The plan was to spend 20 days self-contained, locate new rock climbs and climb them!
Once afloat, I found the first few days trying. I was used to having a goal with either a linear journey with a defined finish or a circumnavigation, which meant getting back to the start. We were looking for suitable, stable and firm rock to climb and ideally, bigger and more prominent rock faces so that multi-pitch routes could be created and climbed. Some days we paddled less than 10km, and we may have landed 4-5 times to walk into possible climbing venues. If we found something, we then looked for a campsite. The exploration I started to enjoy, it was a different approach, it had less pressure, and I began to relax.
What did we do for food? We shipped out to Greenland a 220lt barrel, with our crampons, ice ace, climbing racks, rope and 20 days of 2 person packs of food. The food packs included breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner and were double bagged and tightly bound in gaffer tape to reduce their size. A fun element at the end of the day, was when we pulled out the next day's rations as neither of us knew what was in a pack. The variety was the key!
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| Roger Chandler - 'Looking on Greenland kayak and climb expedition ' -photo by Olly Sanders |
We both were shocked by the amount of plastic we found on beaches and on one beach that we stayed for a few nights, we filled 7 IKEA bags of plastic. We burnt some of this, and more robust plastic we buried at the top of the beach. Sadly our feeling was that this had mostly come from local villages, where the waste tends to be burnt or not as the case may be. We also discovered, due to the location of the waste disposal facility rubbish can easily fall into the sea.
Seeing icebergs close up, from a sea kayak is pretty unique ( it was on my list of 50 things to do in my 50's) and the rock structures in the area are truly stunning. During the 20 days, we saw no whales but spotted a couple of hesitant and distant seals, many sea birds and of course the wonderful Arctic fox on our last nights camp was exceptional.
In total, we climbed three single pitch and three multi-pitch rock climbs (Olly did the leading), with two further summits achieved and my connection to the Arctic was born!
I want to thank again the support we received from the Arctic Club and Olly for asking me, in the first place. You can see a further account by Olly regarding our expedition here.
It took me another two years to create a short film from my footage!
My next blog will look at the classic, sea kayak surf and tide race training courses, based on Anglesey, Wales. The opening photo above is of Anita over from Switzerland, enjoying the waves. We will consider what goes into a session and why the courses have become such a success.
