Big Kumura, New Route in Tasermuit Fjord 5.10+ C2 R

• A trip report written by Jacob Kuchler

The day after arriving in Tasermuit Fjord, Mason and Liam returned to basecamp with news of a potential new line on Ulamertorssuaq and three days of good weather. The route they had spotted was on the North western face and would take a line just left of a gully up low angle terrain and lead us to an option of buttress’ and cracks on the headwall.

The following day we hiked the last of our gear to the base of the route intending to establish the pitches off the snow field and up the lower broken terrain. Liam started us off steeping across the shrund onto a couple of Stella pitches. The rock quality deteriorated significantly on the following two pitches, low angle slabs the consistency of feta cheese.

We climbed up through slabby terrain separated by small buttress’ and cracks until dark and set up our first bivi 7 pitches up. 

Navigating some of the not so inspiring lower terraces.

The following day consisted of much similar terrain, I started us off by leading up through a couple short cracks and some fun friction slab pitches. Mason took over for the second half of the day and took us up to the big sandy ledge and the upper headwall, here we decided to head straight up the crack system on the face in hope of cleaner climbing, unfortunately reaching our crack system we discovered it was heavily vegetated and our progress slowed to a snail's pace for the rest of the day. We managed to get two and a half pitches up the face with a combination of gardening for natural pro in the crack and hook moves up on the face, but not without Mason taking a 10 meter whipper when a hook blew, me and Liam were huddled at the belay trying to stay out of the way of plants and dirt that was raining down on us when we heard a blood curdling scream from above, looking up just in time to see Mason falling through the air until the rope caught him 10 meters below where he'd been a minute ago. With the gear in the crack running out he had started hooking his way up the face to a belay stance, just in position to put a bolt in for an anchor his hook had blown sending him backwards down the face.

After regaining his high point and establishing a belay we decided to call it for the night and set up camp. Checking the forecast on the Inreach we found the bad weather was coming 12 hours earlier and we were due rain by the following afternoon. In the morning we decided to head down since we still needed to establish the rap line for the following attempt. 

Liam starting up from Mason's high point on attempt two of the Big Kumara. Vegetation was frequent up the first half of the seam.

2 days later we were walking back up to the wet looking face hoping to be able to regain our high point in preparation for potentially 4 days of good weather. We moved fast up the lower terrain even with the wet conditions, establishing a direct variation to pitch 3 and 4 that climbed some nice flake features and avoided the low angle cheesy rock. Reaching our first bivi in good time we stopped and fixed for the following day.

Mason leading up into the seam on the head wall. Flaky rock but exciting adventurous climbing.

Setting up high camp

Feeling good in the morning and with Mason needing to give his hands another day to heal, I started us off. Climbing a couple of more direct variations to speed us up including a quite nice offwidth squeeze pitch we got to our previous high point mid afternoon. Liam took over here racing up a pitch of new terrain before getting stifled by a deep section of mossy cracks that took the evening to clean out to a climb-able condition. Spirits were low that evening and checking the Inreach forecast didn't do anything to relieve it, what had looked to be a 4 day forecast had turned into potential showers for the following two evenings with rain within 48hrs. With the rock fall being more regular than the first attempt none of us were particularly keen to spend much time on the lower slabs.

We decided that the best option for topping out in our current window was to ditch the bags and jug with two packs. Setting off the next morning we were not particularly optimistic, with lots of climbing still to go. Mason started us off, leading up through the mossy cracks and into a beautiful clean system for the next couple of pitches, pushing us most of the way to the top of the tower.

When the crack finally improved. 60m 4# and 5# crack.

At 6pm I took over the lead, steeping off the stance into a right trending flake. I followed it upwards until it ran out, wacked 2 cams in the top off it, pulled out the drill and began to bat hook my way rightwards across a blank sea of rock. After about 4 meters I saw what I hoped was a crack and not wanting to waste any bolts took a deep breath carried on, on only hooks. Reaching across I discovered a clean .75 crack and sunk a hand into it. Not being able to pass up the beautiful free climbing in front of me, I tied my ladders up, moved the drill to the back of my harness and raced up a short system leaving a cam at the top for a pendulum and then raced up another wonderful splitter to stance. After a short chimney pitch I reached the top on a tower and we were back in free climbing terrain. We raced up five pitches of easy climbing reaching the final short headwall at sunset.

Jacob stepping out onto the face. Up and right we found a magnificent splitter.

Not being able to find a dry crack system to break through the headwall, I resigned myself to two wet aid pitches in the darkness and a saturated 5.5 slab to top out. Mason and Liam joined me at 1:30am on the summit. Feeling a second wave of energy come over me I offered to lead the first block of rappels. Cranking the tunes and descending into the darkness with the drill.

Topping out 1.30am. Very tired but stoked!

The sun rose at 4am and Mason took the lead. He led us back down to the bivi and big sandy ledge while Liam and I alternated dozing off at the belays. We reached the ledge at 8am for dinner/breakfast 28hrs on the go.

Between us I don't think we got more than 30 minutes sleep on that ledge, we could hear the constant sound of rockfall in the gully to our right. At one point being woken to the sound of a fridge sized block ricocheting off the slabs and snow field we had climbed up days prior.

None of us were eager to leave that ledge but the idea of staying up there with rain coming in was far less appealing, Liam did an exceptional job of leading the lower rappels for us. 6 hours later we were at the base of the route after an extremely nerve racking descent. After a gear sort on the snow field we walked back to base camp, clocking in at 38hrs.

Once we left big sandy the rock fall quietened off significantly, but we all agreed we had really got away with something on this route, during the descent on the final day we passed large rock scars meters from where we bivied the first night. A couple weeks later at base camp we watched a monstrous rockfall rip down the same gully leaving dust in the air for the next 20 minutes.

Approximate line of ascent.