A throwback to when Will Gadd and Sarah Hueniken explore Newfoundland’s rugged Atlantic coastline in search of unclimbed Sea Stacks. The geological landform consists of a steep and often vertical column or columns of rock in the sea near a coast, isolated by erosion.
Gadd has spent much of his career searching out remote and difficult features to climb, from ice bergs and glaciers to decomposing rock formations.
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There are often opportunities in adversity, the trick is to see them… This is an @christianpondella shot from the summit of Kilimanjaro, and these crazy fins are some of the last remaining pieces of once massive glaciers. On this trip @huens and I wanted to climb ice on the summit of Africa, but we were totally unprepared for the devestating glacial collapse (“recession” doesn’t do the scene justice) we encountered. These fins are sort of “normal” at the toe of big glaciers where the sun and heat melt them out, but not in the middle of what used to be a glacier measuring in square kilometres, not square meters . These towers are all that are left of glaciers that were once truly massive. Not once in all my ice climbing travels in the last 30 years has anyone said, “It’s so much colder now than it used to be!” Our climate is changing radically, and because I climb ice I see the effects on a global, personal scale. My biggest project in a decade involves learning more about the interior hydrology of some of the biggest glaciers in the world. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a difference. On this trip we thought we were screwed because we couldn’t climb or shoot what we came for, but in the end these images and this story were far bigger than just climbing. Had we been stuck on just climbing huge ice faces we wouldn’t have seen this ice or the more important story. There is always a way forward if you’re willing to look for it and think differently. What is the way forward as our climate changes at a speed none of us have never experienced? What do these changes mean for our descendants? I want to help answer some of these questions. Huge thanks to @huens, @christianpondella, @pablo_durana , @redbullcanada, @arcteryx, @scarapna, @smithoptics, @sterlingropes, @blackdiamond
A post shared by Will Gadd (@realwillgadd) on Jun 7, 2018 at 10:48am PDT
Newfoundland Sea Stacks
