Whittaker, O’Driscoll, Warren and Cassou climb new route on Mirror Wall, Greenland
- Thursday 3rd October 2024
A four-person team comprising Pete Whittaker, Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll, Sean Warren and Julia Cassou have recently made the first ascent of Rhy-shin (F8b, R A2+) on Mirror Wall, Greenland.
Following an unsuccessful attempt in 2023 Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll returned with renowned crack climber Pete Whittaker, big-waller Sean Warren and French climbing photographer Julia Cassou for a rematch on the remote objective.
O’Driscoll emailed Whittaker with an invite to the expedition saying 'I'm not 100% sure it'll go, but I'm curious enough to at least go back and give it another look’. Given that Whittaker had harboured ambitions to try Mirror Wall himself, the invite from O’Driscoll was enough; “I jumped at the chance” Whittaker said.
However, two weeks prior to the team leaving for Greenland, another expedition member Keita Kurakami tragically passed away. Following Kurakami’s sudden death, Takemi Suzuki, another team member and friend of Kurakami’s, pulled out of the expedition reducing the team to just four members.
Pushing ahead with the expedition the team followed the same line as the 2023 team had attempted. Reclimbing the line, the 2024 team reached the previous highpoint after six days of climbing. Whittaker described the climbing up to this point saying: “During this period, repeating Sean's leads from last year continuously impressed and challenged me; big runouts with mid-lead switches between hard free climbing and thin hooking, which from below, crossed pretty sparse looking sections of rock. Sean was even shaking his head in disbelief at some of his 2023 leads.”
O’Driscoll successfully climbed beyond the 2023 high point after which Warren lead some hard aid pitches which gave entry into a crack system which ran to the summit. This is where Whittaker’s crack climbing prowess came to the fore. Whittaker explains how this went saying: “a full array of techniques from tips to squeeze chimney needed to free climb them successfully. Having enjoyed plenty of rain and cold cloudy days during our push thus far, after eleven days on the wall we were able to bathe in some summit sun, finally.”
The climbing wasn’t over then however, as Whittaker explained: “On our push to the summit we climbed the route to a standard of 7b+/R/A2+ (which is the mandatory grade for just getting up), with sixteen of the twenty-five pitches going completely free. On the descent, we spent another week on the wall and freed six more pitches up to 8b, with many more sections of R rated climbing. Three pitches were left un-freed.”
The 2024 team recognised the contribution of the 2023 team which comprised Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll, Nico Favresse, Ben Ditto, and Franco Cookson.