Since we failed due to the rain on our first attempt, we rested some days in the base camp until July 15, when we walked up again to the base of the Ulamertorsaq West Face.
Of course the goal was the same: Making the first free ascent of Piteraq, a new school aid route of 1200m length. For several reasons I was not very psyched of redoing the lower pitches: Dangerous runouts, 65m pitches where we had to prolonge the ropes and crumbling rock. As the last three pitches are in common with the already existing route War & Poetry, we decided to climb War & Poetry to the top and freeclimbing the remaining pitches reaching from above.
From July 16 to 18 we climbed the route War & Poetry. I was happy to onsight all hard pitches and we understood the name of the route: half of the pitches are super nice splitter finger and handjam cracks while the other half is offwidth and chimney climbing. The bivy on the top was just amazing. A sea of granit pinnacles sticking in the sky surrounded us while far north the massive ice cap is ruling the view and the open atlantic lies in the south. We were deeply touched by this scenery .
July 19 was our moment of truth. Would it be possible to freeclimb the remaining three pitches of Piteraq?
The rappeling was already scary since it included some exposed traverses. The first two pitches turned out to be medium hard offwidth climbing and went pretty fast. Anyway I started to feel the days on the wall and i hoped the last pitch will be fast business as well. But what a disappointment! The first ascenders have had bathooked up a featurless vertical shield. It was impossible to freeclimb. While rappeling I found a natural line which would be climbable but in the end it lacked on a 3m traverse to reach this feature. I was so disappointed because a pitch like this was exactly what I was dreaming of: hard and sustained climbing on good rock, retrying and working for the success. But there we were, the 5. day on the wall, no more food, no more strength. It was the pitch I was looking for but it was the worst moment when it came. Of course it was nice going down and enjoying base camp but the feeling of unfinished business got stronger and stronger. Anyway the time for bigwall climbing were over for this trip. Bernadette invested so much energy and efforts to support me on her first bigwall ever. And she did so well. It was time to do something else, because greenland is so amazing and unique, it`s a pitty to hang only on the walls and ignoring its beauty beside.