I love this picture. When I look at it, I am overcome by the strange combination of terror and hilarity. The contrast makes me laugh every time.
See the guy in the middle of the picture? That’s my husband. For the last five minutes, he’s been slowly descending a snowy slope from a ledge where he is afixed by the long rope attached to his harness. Creeping downwards, he’s been testing the ground below with his ice-axes, assessing the steepening snow and the blue ice emerging under the crunch of his heavy crampons. Now he has stopped at the top of the ice cliff that he intends to climb down. The ground has fallen away beneath him. And above him he can no longer see his climbing partner straining against his weight. The rope – as far as he can now see – disappears into the bank of snow above him. He can’t even hear her calling down to him anymore, so he’s relying on his hand-held radio to communicate. He peers over the edge in the fading light at the silvery-blue frozen wall, the freezing water far below lapping at the icy rind around its foot. I can tell, even from this distance of a hundred metres away, that he’s now terrified. Which I find hilarious.
It’s easy for me to laugh, sitting comfortably here in the snow, drinking my coffee. I’m not the one hovering over the abyss. This, I am well aware of, but I cannot resist chuckling to myself, watching my poor husband take in the horrific task before him, leaning out into the void, listening to the creak of those spikes under his boots, feeling them shudder disconcertingly as his weight shifts on the ice. Ideally he would be climbing up, not down, something he intends to do once he gets to the bottom. But at the bottom of this ice wall is the frigid sea. So, by necessity, he has to abseil down first, relying on his climbing partner far above to safely lower him, a partner who he can no longer either see or hear. It’s not an ideal scenario to attempt an ice wall that you’ve never tried before.
He lowers himself, inch by inch, leaning out, testing his axes in the ice that curves away beneath him. But the growing darkness, the sheer depth of the cliff below, and that rope juddering across the packed snow above him, with its now invisible source far above. It’s too much. I see him utter something into his radio, and begin back toward the top.
I must admit relief. I don’t really want to see him do it either. It’s a terrifying vision, whatever your perspective. Ice climbing is a bit hit and miss in Nuuk. Some winters there is no ice. Sometimes it’s a bit dodgey. Sometimes, like this time, it’s spectacular. Stunning walls of thick blue ice just waiting to be tackled. But this monster. Well, it was just a bit too stunning this time around.
