Whittaker, Villanueva-O’Driscoll & Team Establish 5.13d R Big Wall in Remote Greenland

After a 43-day expedition beginning on July 29, Pete Whittaker, Seán Villanueva-O’Driscoll, Sean Warren, and photographer Julia Cassou have returned from forging a new path up Greenland’s iconic 3,300-foot Mirror Wall: Ryu-shin (5.13d R A2+). The trip was Villanueva-O’Driscoll’s second attempt, after he fought up 12 airy pitches with Nico Favresse, Ben Ditto, and Franco Cookson last year.

But this expedition was stricken with tragedy before it even began. The climbing team originally included the Japanese big-wall ace Keita Kurakami, and Kurakami’s close friend and climbing partner Takemi Suzuki. Just two weeks before the team was to set sail, Kurakami, 38, died of a heart attack. Suzuki subsequently decided to stay home in Japan.

Whittaker and Villanueva-O’Driscoll didn’t know what to do. Not only had they lost a dear friend, they had also lost a headstrong climbing partner who they hoped would excel on the Mirror Wall’s sheer, often dangerous pitches. “Seán and I were asking ourselves, ‘Can we even do this?’ ‘Should we even do this?’” Whittaker said.

The pair decided the best way to honor their late companion was to go ahead with the mission. With little time to salvage the trip, the pair began asking around, and landed on Cassou, who had climbed with him and Villanueva-O’Driscoll in Patagonia, and Warren, an experienced big-wall climber. Both Cassou and Warren responded with an emphatic “yes.”

The team went on to christen their line Ryu-shin in Kurakami’s honor. The name translates roughly to “dragon heart” or “heart of the dragon” in English, and was the name of Kurakami’s shakuhachi flute, which he brought with him on many climbs.

Whittaker, Villanueva-O’Driscoll, Warren, and Cassou reached the Mirror Wall by sailboat, setting off from the port of Ísafjörður in northern Iceland. (Whittaker told Climbing he mainly spent the five day journey lying in his bunk “or standing on deck staring straight out at the horizon” to stave off seasickness.) The team arrived at Ittoqqortoormiit, on the southeast coast of Greenland, picked up a rifle for protection against wild animals (mainly polar bears), then sailed east towards the Mirror Wall. From there, they spent a week hauling 65-pound loads across the glacier to the base of the wall, and started climbing on August 11.

Ryu-shin’s first seven pitches climbed up a pillar on the right side of the wall to reach the face proper. Whittaker described this early climbing as “adventure-y, maybe 5.11, a little bit loose and chossy, just soaking wet. Not great.” Atop the pillar, the team reached a large ledge system and made their first camp. Above, the wall looked blank. “We were just aiming for small grooves, little face holds, following this right-facing corner system in the center of the face,” he said. “A lot of slab moves, hooking, some bird-beaking, with a few R-rated pitches.”

Ryu-shin was characterized by high-consequence climbing, both free and aid, oftentimes switching between the two tactics mid-pitch, going from technical 5.12 to microscopic hooking. “I had one moment where a hold snapped on me in the middle of the most runout part of the most runout pitch of the route,” Whittaker recalled. Luckily, the climbing on this pitch wasn’t particularly hard, so Whittaker stuck to the wall, “but I would’ve taken an absolutely horrendous, monster fall if I’d gone off.”

After a second camp atop another pillar 450 feet higher, the team reached Villanueva-O’Driscoll’s previous highpoint, where the indistinct corner system ended. Warren, the aid specialist, linked discontinuous edges and cracks at A2+, the most spectacular a thin seam protected by bird beak pitons. Warren dubbed this pitch the “Magic Salathé Flame” describing it as a mix of the climbing of Magic Line, the exposure of the Salathé Wall, and the atmosphere of Eternal Flame.

After Warren’s aiding, the team pulled into a continuous crack system that took them free all the way to the summit on August 22. Difficulties eased to 5.11 for most of these final pitches, but required a wide skill set to climb. “This crack system started as fingers, then gradually opened up as we got higher,” Whittaker said. “I probably used every crack technique in the book, from tips-fingers all the way up to squeeze chimneying.” The team free climbed up to 5.12c en route to the summit, but after a rest day at their high camp, spent five days redpointing several aid pitches, including an extremely runout 200-foot 5.13d slab freed by Whittaker.

In all, 22 of Ryu-shin’s 25 pitches went free. The remaining three, and a short section of pitch 12, were aided at A2+. Though the team didn’t examine all the aid pitches closely, Whittaker estimated Ryu-shin could be freed at 5.14, with the “Magic Salathé Flame” pitch the likely crux. “The whole thing could probably go free with more time, but it’s hard to get a long period of time up there,” he explained. “The season is short. By the time you’ve waited for ice to break, sailed in, and hiked your loads in, you don’t have much time before the sea starts freezing and winter storms come in.” In fact, the day after the team rappelled off the wall a winter storm hit, and the following day they awoke to find the entire top half of the face covered in snow.

Whittaker believes the trip was such a success thanks to the team’s shared risk tolerance and commitment. No one was being needlessly reckless, he said, “but no one was holding back, either. Everyone was putting in big performances every day.”

“Of course, I’m pleased to make a summit,” Whittaker wrote in a trip report shared with Climbing, “but more importantly I’m very happy we threaded our way through such an environment with safety and having a good laugh at the same time … Sharing the summit with Seán, Sean, Julia and Keita in our minds was, to put it bluntly, blummin’ brilliant.”

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