One of My Best Expeditions Included Big Wall First Ascents—And I Didn’t Lead a Single Pitch

The wind howls through the mast, making its cables vibrate like guitar strings. Seven of us are sitting shoulder to shoulder around the small table in the middle of our 15-meter aluminum sailboat, mugs of tea trembling with every gust. Outside, the boat is thrown sideways again and again. We’re stuck in a harbor—once more.

Three years ago, this was my reality for weeks. We had left France with the ambitious goal of reaching Greenland’s east coast by sail, but the North Atlantic had other plans. Low-pressure systems lined up one after another, forcing us to wait, to doubt, to renegotiate our expectations daily. Under good conditions, we would have been there in just a few days. Instead, we found ourselves stuck in the Faroe Islands wondering if we would ever climb at all.

That first sailing-to-climb expedition to Greenland demanded more patience than anything I had experienced before. We were eight friends—sailors, climbers, a photographer—an all female crew trying to complete a distant international expedition by fair means. When we finally reached Greenland after six weeks at sea, we had just 10 days to establish a new big-wall route before turning around. It worked, somehow. But it taught me a lasting lesson: traveling by fair means demands time, commitment, and constant problem-solving—along with the humility to give up control.

This summer, I returned to Greenland. Again without boarding a plane. But this time, everything was different. I was traveling with the Swiss Alpine Club expedition team, a group of five young women—Naomie Bürki, Pauline Laubscher, Gianna Müller, Lea Schneider, and Melanie Tenorio—who I had trained for two-and-a-half years for an exploratory expedition exactly like this one. Together with Ramona Volken, we were there as mountain guides—although “coach” probably describes the job better. We weren’t guiding clients to summits. We weren’t there to lead every pitch or make every decision. Our goal was to support the team with our decades of experience so they could run their own expedition.

In the days leading up to our departure, I began to feel anxious. I have been a mountain guide and professional climber for most of my adult life. I am used to leading the hard or scary pitches without protest, to shouldering the responsibility of objective hazards, route finding, and rappels. In this new role, coaching others to now make those decisions, could I hold back when things felt uncertain? Could I resist stepping in with solutions? Could I accept not being the one who goes first—especially in unknown terrain, where I still carried responsibility?

We left Basel by train, hauling big wall bags through stations, sleeping on buses, improvising connections. Five intense days of movement—train, bus, ferry—until we reached Iceland.

“Extremely fast,” I said, thinking back to my first expedition, when it took four weeks to get here. “Depends on how you look at it,” someone replied.

In Reykjavík, we met Vicente Castro and boarded the expedition sailboat Cavalou. Two days later, we were sailing west toward Greenland into rough seas: Sleep became fragmented, meals optional, and even going to the toilet a challenge as the boat slammed into waves.

At night, I lay on a half-wet mattress on the galley floor, wrapped in my sleeping bag, cold air sneaking in through a broken zipper. Above me, someone stepped over my legs to take over watch. Time dissolved into a blur of motion, noise, and exhaustion. Gianna had been confined to her bunk for 58 hours. Every movement made her sick. Eating was impossible, drinking barely manageable. Seasickness is pure survival.

Have I romanticized this too much? I wondered.

Then, after four-and-a-half days of nothing but water, the horizon changed. Small, dark silhouettes emerged. Mountains. In front of that, icebergs drifted, sometimes the size of huge buildings. Ten days after leaving Switzerland, we reached Greenland’s east coast, a magical moment.

Graah Fjord became our home for the next 10 days. A remote, untouched place, accessible only by boat. Big granite walls rose straight out of glaciers offering a big playground to explore. Some rock appeared broken and hinted at dangerously loose climbing, while other walls had clean, solid slabs riddled with attractive cracks. After a day of hiking the young women decided to try two different objectives.

From the first day on the wall, my role was truly tested. The question I had carried with me across the ocean became real: could I manage my stress while the women ventured onto untouched walls—knowing I was still responsible for the expedition? Melanie tied in and started up. I stood below, my eyes fixed on her, following every movement, every pause. Instinctively, I was ready to step in, to say something, to intervene if needed. But she climbed with focus and calm, just as we’d practiced over the last two years, moving steadily upward, finding features to place protection. When her voice finally came down—“Belay!”—something inside me softened. This was exactly how it was meant to be. At the stance, we exchanged grins. The golden granite was delightfully solid, the climbing better than expected. Six pitches later, we fixed our ropes and rappelled back to the boat under the midnight sun.

The second team hadn’t been as lucky. After three pitches, they were forced to retreat because of loose rock, too dangerous to continue. But the setback didn’t dampen their motivation. They spent the rest of the day preparing for a new objective: a beautiful rock pillar they had spotted nearby. Two days later, after nearly 1,000 meters of climbing up to 7a (5.11d), they topped out—at the exact same moment we finished our line on the opposite side of the glacier. After just five days, we stood on two Greenlandic summits, looking down into the fjord stretching beneath us in deep blue silence.

Success was tangible—but what struck me more was the atmosphere within the team. Living together on a small sailboat, in cold, exhaustion, and uncertainty, is the perfect breeding ground for conflict. Yet it never came. Before the expedition, we had worked with a sports psychologist from Oneday to build trust and communication skills. And now, it showed. When tension appeared, someone would notice. “I think we need to talk,” someone would say. We’d sit around the table, asking simple questions: How is everyone feeling? What’s hard right now? What do you need?

Problems dissolved before they turned into conflicts. That trust created a warmth I had rarely experienced on expeditions.

We managed to open two more long routes in the Graah Fjord, before using a bad weather day to move our floating base camp south into the Skjoldungen Fjord. There the steep, 1,000-meter east face of Mount Queen Lilliana caught the girls’ eyes and motivation—a proud line, ambitious and committing, aiming higher than before. We established a basecamp on land and carried our gear to the wall. For four days we worked our way up often overhanging terrain, linking between slammed-shut crack systems and tipe-toeing around precariously loose rock.

On the fourth day, I was ascending a fixed rope with a heavy pack when a rush of air passed my face. Then several fist-sized rocks exploded against the wall just below me. I froze. When I reached Naomie at the belay, she was preparing to lead again—hollow flakes, loose blocks, no improvement in sight. Something shifted inside me. This wasn’t about ambition anymore, our objective was becoming too dangerous. “We stop here,” I said. Four days invested. So much motivation. Tears flowed. It was the hardest decision of the expedition, but everyone understood.

We still had time left in our trip. In the days that followed, the team completed two more first ascents, each involving a night on the wall. Ramona and I supported from behind—hauling, jumaring, managing logistics. I was never sent ahead to bail the girls out. I didn’t lead a single pitch.

And yet, when we topped out for the final time, watching the fjord glow beneath us, I felt deep, quiet happiness and fulfillment. This had been one of the most meaningful expeditions of my life— not because of what I climbed, but because of what I allowed others to do.

Summary of routes

Imaqa (5.11d/7a C1; 1,000m) on Les Droites, Graahs Fjord; Team: Naomie Bürki, Lea Schneider, Ramona Volki

Ilumorpooq (5.10b/6a; 670m) on Les Droites, Graahs Fjord; Team: Pauline Laubscher, Melanie Tenorio, Gianna Müller, Caro North

Namenlos (5.11b/6c; 600m) on Les Droites, Graahs Fjord; Team: Lea Schneider, Naomie Bürki, Caro North

3 Cime (5.11b/6c; 757m, not to summit) on Naammassineganngitsut, Graahs Fjord; Team: Melanie Tenorio, Giana Müller, Pauline Laubscher, Ramona Volken

I’m About to Lose Control and I Think I Like It (5.11b/6c C1; 745m) on Caval’ou Wall, Skjoldungen Fjord; Team: Gianna Müller, Naomie Bürki, Lea Schneider, Ramona Volken

Geraldine (5.11b/6c A1; 740m) on Caval’ou Wall, Skjoldungen Fjord; Team: Melanie Tenorio, Pauline Laubscher, Caro North

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