Mt. Asgard, Mt. Overlord, Mt. Turnweather, Ascents. To travel north of the Arctic Circle, journey five days amid otherworldy landscapes to the base of a 4,000-foot granite monolith, then ascend an unending system of solid cracks to the summit in the company of good friends: this is a wondrous thing for a climber, and a great gift of life. Over our 43-hour round trip on the northeast buttress of Asgard’s North Tower, the arctic sun never set on Rich Prohaska, Jia Condon and I while we established Line of Credit (5.10 A1, 4,000'). We placed no bolts and three pins and climbed 23 pitches with the use of a 60-meter rope.

On Mt. Overlord, we climbed the Central West Buttress (5.10 A1, 4,000'), the prominent diagonal buttress leading to the center of the west face. Old fixed lines were discovered on the lower portion of the climb without evidence of passage higher up*. The climb took 36 hours round-trip from the Overlord shelter; descent was made via the glacier and valley directly north of Mt. Overlord. Excellent views of the tide rolling in and out over many kilometers of the Pangnirtung Fjord were visible.

After ferrying loads the 12 kilometers to the north face of Mt. Turnweather, Jia Condon and Rich Prohaska chose a prominent feature right of the center of the face. We spent eight nights climbing Dry-Line (VI 5.10 A2+, 3,000'), getting precipitation on virtually every day, and being pinned by a snow storm for a day during the descent. We found the rock quality to be mostly good. The climbing was mostly easy aid with a little hard (for us) free climbing. We bolted most of the belays and rappelled the route.

Sean Easton, with Rich Prohaska, Canada

*This climb appears to share much ground with the 1975 British (Ken Rawlinson and Steve Blake) route (see AAJ 1976, p. 468).