MEC Envoy Joshua Lavigne returned to Baffin Island this summer with his younger brother Delano, hoping to scale some new lines and free some old ones. He recounts how they narrowly avoided a certain and serious epic on Mount Turnweather, and how the roles of student and teacher can be reversed between brothers.
Every journey has a beginning, a point where forces come together and encourage us to adventure into the unknown. This adventure – to climb a granite big wall in the Canadian Arctic with Delano – started in 2005, when we travelled to the Northwest Territories to attempt the remarkable Lotus Flower Tower. That was Delano’s first big wall and our first grand adventure together.
On the Lotus Flower Tower trip, I recognized that we had a bond that went beyond our fraternal contract. Our trust in each other (an innate part of our relationship) emboldened us to live a life of meaning through the discovery of ourselves. Our partnership has become something that’s not defined solely by climbing or kinship but by an interchangeable student-teacher connection. This is why we plan adventures together, and why we found ourselves stepping off a plane in Pangnirtung, Nunavut, ready to journey toward the granite walls of Mount Turnweather.
We walked across the gravel airstrip, pushed by the Arctic air blowing in from Cumberland Sound, and entered the one-room airport. A young Inuit boy and his father, Rikki, immediately greeted us with wide smiles, eager to get us on our way. After three days of travel we were also eager to load our bags onto Rikki’s boat and start our journey towards the mythical granite walls of Auyuittuq National Park.
Within two hours of arriving, we happily took our first steps towards Mount Turnweather. The tundra quietly yielded to the weight of our feet, absorbing the sounds of our presence. We, too, absorbed the sounds, smells, and sights of the expansive landscape, acclimating to our new home. The sound of water surrounded us, running off the cliffs of Overlord Peak looming above, trickling under the thick tussocks of moss blanketing the valley floor, and gushing through countless glacial moraines.
Photo: Delano Lavigne.
We moved along methodically, finding and holding our own pace, and turned north and up the Turnweather Glacier. The path was undefined and fresh with fallen rock, but awarded us with a reasonably straightforward approach. Over the next four hours, we passed meadows painted pink, white and yellow by wildflowers; unnamed and unclimbed walls; and exposed crevasses that ran deep under our feet. With our knees weak from the weight of our packs, we were happy, if not forced, to stop every hour.
Photo: Joshua Lavigne
Eventually we arrived at what would be our home for the next two weeks: an unassuming island of rock haphazardly strewn on the glacier. It offered us a place to sit, find shelter, and stretch out on the sea of ice, and had inspiring views of the 900m northwest face of Mount Turnweather. Once settled in, we walked unencumbered up the glacier to get a better look at our objective (a welcome respite from the labour of the previous days). We studied the walls and made every effort to learn its hidden secrets, those that would permit us passage to its towering summit. With dismay, we quickly noticed that the wall was wet. In fact, all the walls were wet. The snowy winter and late summer cast mild doubt over our ability to free-climb in these unfavorable conditions. Nevertheless, we returned to our tent ready for a rest day and optimistic that a few days of good weather would dry the stone enough for us to free-climb.
The team’s camp was situated on the Turnweather Glacier on an island of rock surrounded by ice just 800 metres from the base of the wall. Photo: Joshua Lavigne
On our rest days, heavy clouds, thick fog and generally cold temperatures greeted us. But, feeling the need to stay physically and mentally fit, we managed to get out and completed what were likely two first ascents. The first was a scramble up an unknown upside-down, bowl-shaped peak to the northeast of our camp. The second was the east ridge of Gauntlet Peak (Violett’s Ridge 400m, Grade V, 5.8 FA). That day of rock climbing gave us a sense of the free-climbing conditions in suboptimal temperatures. Although the belays were cold, the climbing was reasonable. Even with a bit of wet rock, free-climbing Mount Turnweather still seemed possible.
When the time came for us try Dry Line (5.10/A2, established in 1996 by Jia Condon and Rich Prohaska), we’d already spent a day establishing five new pitches. We opted to find our own variation to the original route, as the line Dry Line seemed to be a bit of a falsity. We awoke to gray skies but relatively stable weather that was sufficient enough for an attempt at the wall. What was unclear – and a little foreboding – was whether or not the conditions would hold for the two days we’d need to free-climb 24 pitches of unknown terrain.
Equipped with gear, food, warm clothes and bravado, we started up our fixed lines and were soon treading through a handful of classic alpine granite pitches, wet, loose and traversing – ranging from 5.8 to 5.10. We pushed our line to the top of a pillar perched above an overhanging void on the left and a blank wall to the right. Here, we faced a decision: either rappel and do a large pendulum to the right to an unknown crack, or piece together a precarious and unprotectable traverse to an insignificant seam. Delano opted for the pendulum. I opted for the traverse.
Delano looking for options on the west face of Mt Turnweather. Photo: Joshua Lavigne
As I stepped off the perch and climbed away from the ledge, I turned back to assess the hazard. I looked down at the fall and then up at Delano. I could see concern in his eyes, but we said nothing and he steadily held the rope. The weather had started to deteriorate, and clouds blew across the horizon. Wind numbed my fingers, pitched the rope back and forth across the wall, and heightened my awareness of the consequences, while the outcome remained unclear. This was the moment that separated recreation from adventure, the known from the unknown.
Photo: Joshua Lavigne
The intricacies of the pitch unfolded, and my experience – along with a little luck – delivered me to the belay unscathed. Delano followed, pushing himself through the cold and the cruxes, arriving at the belay without falling. He was elated, his eyes opened to the rush of exploratory free climbing on an alpine big wall. I worked through another pitch of exciting and committing 5.12 climbing. My enthusiasm rose in a crescendo of perfect jams, engaging face climbing and splitter cracks. I stood 60m above my brother with a feverishness for more. Delano, on the other hand, hung from the belay below with anxiety and an unknown fear pulsing in his veins. He was grappling with an unfamiliar voice in his head, a voice urging him to go down. With a pain in his heart but no hesitation in his voice, he yelled up from below and stated unequivocally, “I want to go down.”
At first I was confused. “Just as things were getting good,” I thought, but I couldn’t ignore his conviction and I trusted his decision. I responded to his voice, to his mountain sense, and before long we were retracing our steps to the base of the wall.
Joshua, climbing through 5.12- R section of the crux pitch on the attempt on the west face. Photo: Delano Lavigne
Under clear skies and a setting sun, we moved along the glacier. The mood was unsettled yet reconciled. Unsettled as we waited for a change in the weather that would validate our retreat. Reconciled because neither of us held the decision we’d made against the other. We settled into our sleeping bags and waited for the rain but it never came… until the next morning when it started to storm. Wind, rain and cold pounded our tent for 14 hours. Had we continued climbing, we would’ve been 800m up the wall – an unbearable thought. Delano’s intuition had saved us from a certain and serious epic. When we were adventuring up into the unknown, I might’ve been the teacher and Delano the pupil, but the roles had been reversed when it came to making the intuitive decision to retreat and avoid an epic.
Joshua (right) and Delano (left). Photo: Joshua Lavigne
Mount Turnweather ended up being another adventure together where we had to trust each other, and let go of our egos. In the process, we discovered ourselves beyond what would be possible individually.