In 2016, the Julbo eyewear maker ran a competition, with the winner having the opportunity to climb somewhere in the world with mountain guide and technical adviser Christophe Dumarest. An accomplished “amateur,” Antoine Rolle (a member of the French national mountaineering excellence group), was selected from 40 candidates, and in August 2016 the two visited the Fox Jaw Cirque, north of Tasiilaq.

After a day spent scoping a line on the right side of the Molar, Dumarest and Rolle set off, only to discover, partway up pitch two, a sling. Had the route been climbed? The large corner above offered no real crack and appeared improbable, and the two decided the previous party had given up at this point. Dumarest finished the pitch, dubbing it the Psycho Corner (7a).

Higher up, their fifth pitch provided a 7b crux. At the top of pitch seven, one rope length below the top, they descended. After a rest day, they reclimbed the route and finished the eighth and last pitch to the summit. The 450m climb was named Le Privilege du Renard and graded 7b (7a obl). This route appears to be quite close to the 1998 Briggs-Libecki route Lovin’ All the Right Places (465m, IV 5.10 A2+), and may be the line attempted in 2014 by a British pair who retreated due to wet rock and runouts they deemed unjustifiable.

– Lindsay Griffin, from information gathered by Rodolphe Popier and Marc Daviet, France

Editor’s note: The Fox Jaw Cirque has for a long time been the accepted name for a collection of gneiss spires in the Trillingerne Group, on the east side of the Tasiilaq River Valley. However, back in 1975, when it was visited by Tony Howard and Mick Shaw (U.K.), it was known to Greenlandic people as the Organ Pipes. Howard and Shaw most likely made the first ascent of the Molar, via the couloir separating it from Milk Tooth (a.k.a. Baby Molar), finishing up the north face at around UIAA IV/V.