Tasermiut Fjord, Nalumatorsoq, Stupid White Man. On July 20 Jørgen Becher, Steffen Laetsch, and I completed an ascent of Stupid White Man on the south-southwest face of the Left Pillar of Nalumatorsoq. The same team made an attempt on this line during August 2005, climbing the first four pitches, mostly free with a 6b offwidth. Bad weather meant that this was as high as we got. Returning in 2007 we started up the line on July 4. Above our previous high point the climbing is primarily in finger cracks, and we needed to do a considerable amount of gardening. Progress was slow, particularly as we were hand-drilling our bolt placements, about 40 in all. Due to our speed, we decided to climb the hardest parts on aid and free the whole route later. However, it took us 10 days, with seven nights spent on the wall, to complete the ascent. Our schedule meant that the last possible climbing day was the 20th, the day we reached the top, so we were unable to try a free ascent.

Two weeks later two Poles, Maciek Ciesielski and Wawrzyniec Zakrzewski, free-climbed most of the pitches on which we had used aid [see below]. However, they didn't reach the top, due to bad weather. They felt a free ascent would rate 7b, but we believe that to be an overestimate.

Stupid White Man starts up the first pitch of the 1996 Thomas-Turn- er route, Umwelten, then takes a crack line to the left to the top of pitch 12. Here it crosses Umwelten and climbs a dihedral-chimney system to the top of pitch 15, where we rejoined Umwelten at the belay. Here we replaced two old loose pegs with bolts. We then moved left, climbing just 5m left of Umwelten to the summit ridge. (At the top of our 16th pitch we saw a two-nut anchor just to the right.) Opened in capsule style with portaledge camps, the new route has seventeen 30-50m pitches and 640m of climbing. Most belays have two bolts, so it is possible to rappel the route. Difficulties are sustained at 6a-6b, with nine pitches requiring A1 aid.

Michael BAnsch, Germany