“The gods Were Watching Over Us Up There”: American Team Establishes Three Baffin Island Big Walls
A final sliver of Arctic sun curved away from Mount Asgard’s 3,700 foot wall and left Miles Fullman, Sam Stuckey, and Brandon Adams, scrambling for extra layers in the evening shade. There were no clouds. There was no wind. The only sound was the jingle of gear as the trio gently felt their way through a vertical labyrinth of corner systems and chimneys. At the end of each pitch, they hauled their camp higher. Eventually the sun returned. After four days of this rhythm, they pulled themselves over the summit plateau, having made the first ascent of Memento Mori (5.10 A5 AI2; 3,600’). Standing wordlessly on the summit, they gazed out on their previous ascents from the last four weeks from a new vantage. Ragnarok (5.11 A5 2,500’) on Frigga 1. Fenrir (5.11 A2; 4,500’) on Mount Loki. Then they embraced and began the long descent.
Over the course of 52 days this summer, Americans Miles Fullman, Sam Stuckey, and Brandon Adams had one of the most successful Baffin Island expeditions in recent memory, establishing three gigantic new big wall routes and scampering up a previously established fourth. Fullman, Stuckey, and Adams are all Yosemite big wall veterans. In 2023 Fullman, a member of Yosemite Search and Rescue, made a rare repeat of the famed Yosemite Triple Crown—which involves climbing El Cap, Half Dome, and Mount Watkins in under 24 hours—with Tyler Karow. Adams, a Yosemite Climbing Ranger and the subject of a 2019 Climbing Magazine profile called Addicted to the Vertical, “is one of the last climbers who’s still breaking speed records regularly on El Cap,” according to Fullman. And Stuckey has climbed difficult routes across the world, including a new route on the Black Canyon’s Painted Wall (Act 1: VI 5.11 A2+), a repeat of the hard and historic Reticent Wall (5.7 A4+; 2,700ft) on El Cap, and expeditions to Pakistan, Wadi Rum, and Patagonia.
I caught up with Miles Fullman a few weeks after he returned from the arctic to chat about their expedition. Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.
THE INTERVIEW
Climbing: When did you first hear about climbing in Baffin Island? Has this trip been a longtime dream or did it surface on the fly?
Fullman: I got into climbing by dreaming of big walls, and Baffin is one of the premier locations for that type of climbing, so it’s always been this mythical place in my mind, with endless, massive cliffs rising straight out of the frozen ocean. Climbing in Yosemite Valley really cemented that vision, and it’s something that Brandon [Adams] really shared as well.
When I was a kid, my dad kept National Geographic magazines, and the one from my birth month, January 1999, had an article about a first ascent on Great Sail Peak, featuring Alex Lowe, Jared Ogden, Mark Synnott, and Greg Child. There were some amazing photos and I remember thinking about how rad that would be. It was surreal and rewarding to finally experience it for myself.
Climbing: Describe the pre-trip planning elements. When did the expedition become official with objectives, partners, and commitment?
Fullman: It’s been in the works for a really long time. Brandon and I had been talking about going for a couple years, but I was always on the fence about making the logistics work out. Last fall, we were sitting in El Cap meadow after breaking the speed record on New Dawn (5.9 C3+; 2,500ft), and he told me about this guy named Sam [Stuckey] who was really psyched, too. He wanted to know if I was in or out. So I was in. I didn’t know Sam very well, but Brandon had climbed Continental Drift (5.9 A4; 2,500ft) with him, and they had been friends for a while. Brandon vouched for Sam, and I’m glad that he did, because we got along really well.
In March, we shipped all of our gear and food to the small town of Pangnirtung. After that, our outfitter, Peter Kilabuck, snowmobiled it to Summit Lake, which is where the Turner Glacier begins, and cached our gear there. The shipment was a nightmare because we sent it all from Salt Lake City, and while the gear cleared customs, the food did not. Eventually, Sam ended up flying to Ottawa and frantically buying a bunch of food, throwing it in buckets, and shipping it from Ottawa to Pangnirtang. That saved the expedition, because we wouldn’t have had the time to hike in all of our food to base camp during the trip.
To mentally and physically prepare for the trip, I spent all spring in Yosemite getting strong and trying not to get injured. As training for harder aid, I climbed Sea of Dreams (5.9 A4; 2.,500ft) with some other friends. And I got to climb with Sam a bunch to get to know him better.
At the start of July, we flew to Ottawa, then flew to Iqaluit and onward to Pangnirtung. From Pangnirtung we got a boat ride up the Pangnirtung Fjord . We were really lucky with our travels; Canadian North is notorious for canceled and delayed flights due to weather. Until the day before we arrived, the fjord was completely filled with ice, meaning the boat couldn’t take us to its end. This would’ve added an extra 30 miles of walking over scrappy terrain with 90 pound bags. But then there was a super windy day and it miraculously blew out all the ice in the fjord, leaving open water. So the next day, Kilabuck dropped us off at the end of the fjord. From there, we made it to the cache in just a couple days and set up our first base camp on the Turner Glacier underneath Frigga 1—about 35 miles from the drop-off point. We anticipated hiking further up the glacier, but Baffin had a snowy winter, which meant we were postholing up to our thighs on what’s typically hard glacier ice, so we stopped early.
Climbing: Arriving in the Arctic was probably overwhelming. How did you fare with the cold, remoteness, and intensity of that place?
Fullman: It was certainly overwhelming, simply adapting to the sheer wildness of that environment took some time. We really got to witness the landscape change throughout the summer: watching the snow melt and the glacier dry, the ice disappear out of the Weasel River and Summit lake. It was cool to spend enough time in the area to become comfortable.
Climbing: After arriving in base camp, did you beeline it straight to the first objective, or did you spend some time climbing smaller stuff to get acquainted?
Fullman: We had two main objectives in mind when we arrived: a new route on Frigga 1, and a new line on the south tower of Mt. Asgard, which we had seen photos of. Because of the deep snow early in the summer, we started on Frigga 1, as it was the closest wall to base camp. Straight away after arriving, we spent a few days ferrying gear two-and-a-half miles to the base. Then we started up. It was an intense warm-up!
Frigga 1 is this incredibly aesthetic, 2,500-foot overhanging sword of clean granite. There was only one route previously established on the wall, a route by Wally Barker and John Rzeczycki called Slith the Frightful (VI A4+; 2,500ft). We initially planned on climbing a route up the steepest left face, but after hiking further up the glacier, we scoped another line that had perfect corner systems all the way up the prow of the right side. As we climbed, we discovered we were somewhat in line with a previous Japanese attempt, so we ended up finishing their unsuccessful line with a few variations. It is a phenomenal route, and we’re very pleased with it. Near the top of the wall, we established a high camp and fixed a few pitches above it. The next day we summited and rappelled.
After climbing Frigga 1, we moved base camp over to the base of Mt. Loki, which was close to the start of our planned line on Asgard’s south tower. Asgard was our main goal, but we were stunned to see an obvious line on Loki’s unclimbed east wall. If the corner system was anywhere else in the world, it would be a world-class free climb. So we fixed the first three pitches on the first day, then blasted all the way to the summit of Loki in one huge day. Brandon led most of the lower wall while I micro-traxioned behind him and Sam, free climbing mostly amazing 5.11 and falling only a few times. The crux pitch is a perfect long finger crack that we estimate going free around 5.12+. Our route, which we called Fenrir (5.11 A2; 4,500 ft) joins the Nettle-Shelton route (5.10+) at the ridge and follows it to the top. From Loki’s summit point, the view of Asgard and the seemingly endless Penny Ice Cap was incredible. I hope that some people reading this will get excited to go and free the whole thing!
Immediately after descending from Mt. Loki, we shuttled gear over to the base of Mt. Asgard’s South Tower, where we fixed a couple pitches on the lower buttress, right of Sensory Overload (5.11+ A1; 3,940ft). The two other routes on the South Tower start from a snow bench 1,000 feet up, accessed via a snow gully. We wanted to climb the rock directly up to this bench, so our whole line ended up clocking in around 4,000 feet of vertical climbing. We spent 5 days climbing and descending our route on Asgard—Memento Mori (5.12 A5 AI2; 4,500ft)—which turned out to be really hard aid climbing with incipient, thin, discontinuous features. Brandon really took the lead through these sections; he’s just so good at it. Brandon’s probably the best aid climber of our generation, and it was an honor to watch him hook farther and farther away from protection. The pitches up there are seriously hard—it’s a very proud route that suited the strengths of our team really well. There are sections with desperate, pure aid; sections with tons of mixed aid and free climbing; and then the upper third is mostly brilliant, splitter free climbing, which I led on the last day.
It felt as if the gods were watching over us up there, I mean we’d rappel thousands upon thousands of feet without getting the rope stuck or the weather collapsing. Yet as soon as we made it back to our tent after each climb, the skies would open up and we’d be confined to our tent.
After Asgard we slowly made our way out of the valley, and it was surreal to see plant and animal life again after going so long without any. We were super low on food, so we left a week early, and the hike out was pretty dire. Despite this, Sam was really psyched to climb Mount Thor on the way out. Brandon and I were skeptical about crossing the Weasel River to access the base, but Sam was sure we would find a way. And he did. At a sandbar camp near the shore, he waded across a weakness. So we picked up our gear and quickly romped the classic South Ridge (5.8; 3,000ft), a relatively easy line with lots of soloing and simul-climbing. We had so much fun summiting and gazing across the glacier to the climbs we previously ascended. It was a phenomenal way to end our time in the Baffin, after which we crawled back to the boat pickup and made it safely back to town. There we spent an unplanned week in Pangnirtung, talking to the Inuit locals about how they survive there year-round. We got to try some arctic char, some narwhal, some beluga whale. It was very special. None of us felt that we just went climbing in the Baffin. Rather, it seemed as if the climbing was one part of our broader experience with the local people and the wild location.
Climbing: Now that you’ve returned home, what are your plans?
Fullman: I’m pretty excited to go back to the Valley. For now I’m also working on regaining the 20 pounds I lost, eating ice cream and doing some bouldering—but I know my alpinist memory will soon make everything rosy, and I’ll get the itch to return somewhere wild and rugged.
Related: “Psychological” New 5.12 on Remote Greenland Big Wall
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