I've managed to corral a few folks as keen as me to get out and climb some of the local rock near Pangnirtung. The rock around here is a bit loose, not the solid granite that I'm familiar with in Squamish. During exploration of the hills behind Pang, I managed to come across a very large boulder, which for easy of describing, I'm calling the Big Buddha. The rock was split by several crack lines and it also had a nice overhang leading into a final crack. The cracks were fired quickly, but with lack of pro for the overhanging line, we set up a toprope and dogged our way up a nice .11b/c face line.
The real prize was the Kalunuk Crack, which was situated at the top of a couloir that I skied earlier in May. To get to it, we had to set up anchors from the top and rap in. Of course, along the way, we dislodged all sorts of blocks and loose crap to prevent them from denting our fragile skulls. When I first saw the crack, it looked like it was a hand to fist crack...closer inspection yesterday proved otherwise. The crack went from off-fists to straight offwidth. Yep, came to Baffin to get schooled in the offwidths!
It turned out that there were enough features for feet on the edge of the fissure that there wasn't too much blood left and a good day was had by all.
The term Kalunuk is a term the locals use for southerners, or caucasians. It means "bushy eyebrows / big belly". It is believed the term was coined from the first whalers coming into the area in the 1800's. It can be taken in a derogatory way, but it isn't always meant in a demeaning way.
Kalunuk Crack. 5.10a. Off-fist to offwidth. June 22, 2007, Chris Gooliaff and Bryan Chruszcz. Both of them had a great time grunting up!
No comments:
Post a Comment