Chossriders

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Chossriders

Story by Leo Houlding 

Photography by Hamish Frost

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“Yo, Captain Faff, how do you place a copperhead again?” Boomer asked over the radio.

“A really bad nut placement is a bomber head,” I replied. “Just paste it in with the chisel.”

“Got it.”

Boomer began hammering above, the metallic tapping swallowed by the powerful updraft. He was dangling in space, 2,000 feet of air beneath his feet; above lay the steepest, blankest section of the Beak’s headwall. 

The Beak is a 2,300-foot-tall formation on Baffin Island. It had taken us a week and 15 long pitches of shockingly loose terrain to reach Hawkshead, a raptor‑shaped ledge two‑thirds of the way up which I named after my favorite local microbrewery in the English Lake District. Now only the clean sweep of the headwall barred access to an upper pink feldspar corner system we had eyed from below, and, beyond that, the summit. 

Gale‑force gusts howled up the face, spinning Boomer’s aiders into a tangle around his head like streamers. I cowered inside three down jackets on Hawkshead Ledge while holding the rope, eyeing the five‑season sleeping bag in the shelter of our portaledge, maddeningly just out of reach.

“I’m out of beaks and I can’t feel my toes,” Boomer’s voice crackled again. “I’m going to build a belay here and come down. Send up the drill.”

“Good call,” I replied. “Try to get a bolt way right—looks like the free line goes up the arête.”

I got to know Erik Boomer in 2018 at the Kendal Mountain Festival, a raucous tribal gathering held every November in my hometown. We were both presenting stories of our outlandish adventures, and after the usual rounds of films, talks, and handshakes, we ended up at the same sticky table under low light with too many empty pint glasses and too many people talking over one another.

 

 

Boomer had a reputation as one of the finest whitewater kayakers of his generation, equally at home on hostile rivers and long, self‑supported Arctic journeys. Sarah MacNair‑Landry, his partner, was there too, a leading polar guide from Baffin Island with deep roots in the eastern Arctic and a lifetime of cold travel. Their multidisciplinary approach epitomized the broad, competent, and playful adventure ethos I had always deeply admired.

Boomer’s outrageous résumé and suggestive name belied his nature. He was neither loud nor brash, but rather chill, funny, confident, and unusually attentive to whomever he spoke, be they famous or a fan. We started swapping stories. I had been living my best life: chasing daring dreams, building expeditions around free big-walls, gradually drifting from Yosemite toward larger and more remote objectives. Boomer and Sarah were just getting into climbing, looking to add yet another discipline to a toolkit that already included whitewater, kite‑skiing, dog sledding, and long polar travel.

At some point in the evening, buoyed by beer and enthusiasm, I offered to furnish them with a proper climbing rack, on one condition: They had to learn how to use it, and one day we had to tie in together on something worthwhile. They laughed, agreed, and accepted my gear gratefully. Looking back, that night was the start of a friendship and mentoring exchange that never ran in one direction. I was slightly older and the one handing over cams and ropes, but Boomer and Sarah were already developing something far more valuable: a deep relationship with Baffin—its seasons, its travel, its people, its possibilities. By the time Boomer’s toes went numb on The Beak, in Sam Ford Fjord, in May 2026,it was clear that whatever I was to teach Boomer about rock climbing would only be one side of the exchange.

Sam Ford Fjord, or Kangiqtualuk Uqquqti in Inuktitut, holds near‑mythical status among big‑wall climbers. A vast fjord network on the northeast coast of Baffin Island, it contains a concentration of massive, vertical sea cliffs unmatched nearly anywhere in the world. Giant walls rise directly from the frozen sea or dark water—depending on the season—and have for decades drawn a particular kind of climber: those with a tolerance for hard aid, serious cold, high adventure, and great uncertainty.

In the early 1990s, Conrad Anker and Jon Turk paddled into Sam Ford together, climbed some of the first big routes—including Stump Spire, named after Conrad’s late mentor Mugs Stump—and brought back stories that hooked my generation. Years later, Conrad became a mentor to me, instrumental in my early Yosemite days and later my partner on Everest in 2007. Jon played a similar role for Boomer. They teamed up for a 110‑day circumnavigation of Baffin’s neighbor, Ellesmere Island, which began Boomer’s polar-exploration career.

Mark Synnott, Mike Libecki, and Russ Mitrovich, among others, added their own chapters and lines to Sam Ford Fjord, undertaking month‑long ascents on the very tallest, hardest walls that defined it as a premier big‑wall venue, home to more grade VII routes than almost anywhere. This was not splitter granite in California sunshine but Arctic big‑walling: double boots, discontinuous seams, iced-up ropes and unstable rock. In Sam Ford, everything takes longer, costs more, and demands an unwise capacity for suffering.

For years, I kept Sam Ford in the mental folder marked “one day.” I was busy feeding my El Cap habit and learning how to suffer lightly and efficiently on comparatively comfortable big walls. After many Yosemite seasons and first free ascents including The Prophet (5.14a X), on El Cap, and the West Face of Leaning Tower, that day had come. A first trip to Baffin brought me to Mt. Asgard, a landlocked behemoth 300 miles to the southeast of Sam Ford, near the Davis Strait. We climbed and BASE jumped from Asgard during the continuous sunlight of summer.  It was the toughest, most formative month of my life and underscored how much more immersion in epic landscapes and the life-defining commitment of major expeditions meant to me than mere lines and numbers on a topo.

But the main reason it took me over 20 years to make it to Sam Ford was timing. Free climbing there is far more constrained by climate and logistics than other places. From November through mid June, the frozen fjord is an efficient “road” for snowmobiles, but the temps are far too cold for serious free climbing (or any climbing, really); by late summer, after ice break up, boats can get in but the weather turns unreliable. I split the difference, aiming for a spring attempt: somewhat reasonable temps, long daylight, and we could still snowmobile in on the polar highway.

Berghaus had backed my more questionable ideas for nearly three decades by the time this trip materialized. We’ve been through a lot together: major climbs and first ascents from the Amazon to Antarctica, Everest to El Cap. A relationship only lasts that long if there is genuine trust on both sides. I come up with slightly unhinged plans, Berghaus helps make them possible, including products we’ve designed together for exactly the sorts of places most gear has no business being. 

This Baffin trip would be the first proper outing for some new pieces from the Extreme line I’d been working on with the Berghaus design team. Spring in Sam Ford is an unforgiving test environment: minus‑many starts, brutally abrasive geology, and savage wind, interspersed with sudden swings into tolerable warmth when (or rather if) the sun hits. We had bright, light but burly shells that could cope with spindrift and driving gale‑force gusts, insulated layers that made long hanging belays bearable, along with unorthodox tricks such as battery‑heated socks and hand warmers inside crack gloves, anything that might help stave off frozen extremities and enable free moves.

A trip like this requires folks with particular skill-sets. My first call was to the multitalented Arizonan Wilson Cutbirth—one of my most trusted partners. While most of my big‑wall free ideas came to life in a ground-up style on El Capitan, for years Wilson and I wondered if the heavy-handed “siege‑free” El Cap tactics embraced by others had any business on a Baffin wall in May. That he is a master of this world—strong on the sharp end and obsessively good at keeping the chaos of complex rope systems under control—made him the perfect partner.

In addition to Wilson, Boomer and Sarah were obvious expedition partners. They already had a snowmobile in Clyde River, the closest community and site of the nearest airport to Sam Ford, just100 miles away. They had spent more time than anyone I knew exploring the region. They knew locals we could contract to help with logistics and understood the travel, the weather, and the subtle timing of those high‑Arctic transitions. What I could bring was my big‑wall free‑climbing pedigree and an equal appetite for extreme adventure.

What formed around that idea was not a pure climbing team so much as a multi‑skilled, fun-loving expedition crew. Sarah and Boomer were already planning an April trip into the fjord to explore big icefall climb potential. Wilson was in. Hamish Frost—a highly competent Scottish winter climber and photographer-filmmaker extraordinare—agreed to join only after I requested he bring his portable but punchy DJ rig and sound system. A few more first-class adventurers joined to help tell the story and enjoy the ride.

If climbing Sam Ford big walls in spring is slow-paced masochism, its skiing is high-speed adrenaline. One of the great ski landscapes on earth, there are huge, scary, steep couloirs splitting the cliffs for thousands of feet, including the unequalled Polar Star, perhaps the queen line of them all. The possibility of mixing big walls with steep skiing, snow‑kiting, partying, and snowmobile access—it was too good to pass up. May 2026 was a go.

Day three. Boomer’s voice came over the radio. 

“Wilson caught an edge. He’s falling.”

Wilson, Boomer, Hamish, and Andrea Ference had just dropped into Model T, while Jake Holland, Richie Link, and I skied Bronco, two parallel couloirs on the Ford Wall. Sarah and Marta Misztal kite skied below. The ski conditions were shit—hard, boilerplate snow on sustained 40‑plus‑degree terrain.

We were all still in no‑fall terrain ourselves, which created a strange and deeply unpleasant split in attention. I waited for Boomer to say more. In the long seconds that followed, my mind ran through the consequences: a serious injury, an improvised rescue, the six‑hour snowmobile haul to Clyde River. I wasn’t yet considering the implications it might have for the rest of the trip.

“He’s still tomahawking. It’s not pretty,” Boomer continued 20 second later 

Boomer watched as Wilson cartwheeled and slid 2,000 feet until the slope mellowed and he slowed to a stop.

Then, to massive relief, Wilson’s voice came over the radio. “I’m okay… I think. Everything hurts, but I’m okay,” he said, shocked and shaky but evidently alive. Although he escaped major trauma, and somehow managed to walk back to camp, he injured his left shoulder and right knee badly enough that it soon became clear his climbing trip was over before it had really begun.

His accident was a sobering start to the expedition. It is one thing to talk abstractly about risk and consequence, another to hear your friend tumbling to his peril out of sight. With Wilson down for the count, I asked Boomer if he was up for the challenge to climb as a pair. In the years since he and Sarah got their first rack, they’d kept their side of the bargain rather more thoroughly than I anticipated, making around 10 big first ascents in the area. So, unsurprisingly, Boomer said he was game—no hesitation.

 

 

The Beak was the obvious objective from the beginning of the trip. Twice the size of Yosemite’s Leaning Tower but with the same outrageously overhanging profile—but dropped in a frozen Arctic fjord—the Beak looked almost too perfect to be real. Its protruding, pink-streaked east face ran clean from the ice at the base toward the snowcapped tip of the prow, the whole thing jutting out like a stone ship about to set sail. Anywhere else, it would be the main event; here it sat in front of much bigger neighbours and somehow got away with being merely spectacular. BASE jumpers had already appreciated its geometry. The east face offers a prodigious drop and relatively easy access from the rear. For climbers, though, it had remained neglected. In a fjord of superlatives, the merely spectacular can be overlooked.

That suited us. The Beak seemed like a realistic objective in the time available. It was large enough to feel serious but small enough that, with luck and effort, we might have a chance to complete something meaningful—to establish and free as much of a hard route as possible during a short, fickle weather window, before sea-ice break-up. Our vision was not some noble alpine ethic; it would involve fixed ropes, bolts, portaledges, and all the usual big-wall paraphernalia, deployed unapologetically in service of free climbing. 

We studied the Beak hard. Telescope sessions from the base, recon drone flights along the face, prolonged discussions over hearty breakfasts and evening cocktails backed by the rumbling electronic bass from the sub-woofer during Hamish’s DJ sets. The compact gray gneiss on either side of the main weakness looked technically promising, but almost entirely devoid of usable crack systems. Any free line there would require heavy bolting and likely substantial top‑down work. The only obvious natural pathway was the line of pink feldspar that split the wall straight to the top. It was beautiful from a distance and, according to all available intelligence, deeply suspect up close. Still, it was our best bet.

The logistics of getting onto the wall were absurdly simple compared with the seriousness of the climbing. We towed the haulbags to the base behind the snowmobile, and unloaded everything on frozen sea ice at the foot of the giant unclimbed prow.

On May 17, Boomer and Hamish climbed the opening block of pitches in full Scottish winter mode (for more on what that means, see Hamish’s photo essay on Scottish winter climbing in Summit Journal 325). Shade and wind kept temperatures seriously low; the climbing was lower‑angle but the rock highly unstable. 

 

 

“It’s the loosest thing I’ve ever climbed,” Hamish remarked back on the ground.

Loose rock is one of those universal climbing truths that nobody seeks out but everybody deals with at some point. It’s dangerous, mentally exhausting, and often profoundly unpleasant. And herein lies a perverse, strangely-pure attraction to the committed adventure climber,anything goes, can you get up as safely as possible, through a medium that is actively trying to disassemble itself?

On the lower apron of the Beak, that question defined everything. Every ledge held piles of rubble. Every crack system was choked with stacked blocks waiting for a wrong touch like a game of Jenga. Protection was dubious—not because there were no cracks, but because the cracks themselves appeared assembled by committee. Free climbing—with falling out of the question—was often the only option. Yes, there were hundreds of feet of excellent climbing, even a handful of perfect pitches; but the prevailing nature was one of negotiated instability, including hands-down the single most terrifyingly loose and longest pitch of my life. All 400 feet of it—a giant, there-and-back traverse utilizing our 300-foot tag line to rope solo after the lead line ran out. And no safe anchor of course. Our saviour was the continually diagonaling nature of the line, protecting Boomer from the continuous barrage of falling ordnance.

Over the course of a week, pitch by pitch, we crawled up the weakness toward Hawkshead Ledge. The process was painfully slow, involved a lot of trundling, some massive traverses, and occasionally bordered on the ridiculous. 

Originally, Hamish, along with his mixing deck and cameras, intended to join the climb to document the action, but after a few days on the route that idea was indefensible. The wall was simply too loose and too dangerous to justify having anyone, or anything, up there that was not absolutely essential. As much as I love dance music , our big-wall-DJ-cum-pro-photographer had  to stay behind and shoot remotely with a drone.

Somewhere during the lower labyrinth to Hawkshead, we started calling the route ChossRider, an ironic nod to the El Cap uber-classic. We breathed a sigh of relief at Hawkshead Ledge, a spacious podium strewn with rocks and easily big enough to host a portaledge camp. Tucked beneath the main shield of the headwall, it offered a rare moment of genuine comfort. With cunning bolt placement, long ropes, and clever rigging tricks borrowed from Wilson, we fixed lines down and hauled loads up the lower half on relatively solid rock—just clear of the minefields—in one long day.

Above Hawkshead, the character of the route changed. Right off the ledge, high‑consequence hard aid led through the clean sweep of gneiss to form the two crux pitches. The question mark now was to whether the route would go free.

“Boomer—I think this is your lead,” I said. His time to fulfill the second half of the bargain in exchange for the rack I’d given him years before—namely that we tie in together on something worthwhile—had arrived in more extreme fashion than he or I ever anticipated.  

In brutal conditions, he embraced the learning experience with gusto, painstakingly working his way through complex terrain for two pitches during three days of worsening weather that eventually halted play entirely. They were likely his hardest and best aid leads ever.

We spent the next 36 hours hiding from awful weather, life-threatening had we not been tucked up in the sheltered warmth and absurd comfort of our portaledge. 

“If this is Type 2, I’ll take it,” Boomer laughed over a game of cards and Haribo candy. Outside, the wind roared. We chatted at length about spirituality, meaning, and the philosophy behind such hair-brained adventures. For all the seriousness above and below, that storm‑bound pause, going deep with Boomer, was one of the real highlights of a climb that was in fact far more enjoyable than these descriptions may suggest.

When the storm abated, we were tight on time. I looked hard at Boomer’s two audacious aid pitches, working sections on the fixed lines. I could see a clear and high-quality free variation that, with the addition of half a dozen bolts and another day or two of the previous week’s conditions, I was confident I could climb. There was even an impressive boulder-problem crux dyno. But the weather refused to play ball during those crucial days, denying my free aspirations.

We decided to prioritize the summit over the style. From Boomer’s high point, I took the lead again and, after a few awkward aid moves, gained the pink dihedral and far easier terrain. From there, the climbing flowed. Though never entirely trustworthy, the pink rock was steeper, cleaner, far less chossy, and much more like a real route than a demolition job. One pitch in particular, graced by morning sun and glove‑free temps, burned itself into my memory: a long, gently overhanging dihedral with just enough jugs and jams to make the onsight possible. Likely not more than 5.10+ elsewhere, that grade grossly undersold the difficulty up there.

We tested every hold twice. None of the gear was bomber. We shouted “Rock!” so often it became conversational. And through all of that, there were still moments of genuine joy: laybacking on unexpectedly good edges high above the fjord, stemming through steep corners in cold but workable conditions, the sun circling endlessly without ever quite setting.
A final sting in the choss scorpion’s tail forced us back into anything-goes aid mode. A bit more French freeing, some tension traverses, a thank-God bolt, sketchy steep snow in gloves and rock shoes—and finally the abrupt summit. Boomer and I were awash in relief and fatigueIt was not the pure free ascent I had imagined when we first traced lines across the wall from camp, but neither was it some apologetic compromise. It was a hard, honest expedition route solved in the style the mountain and the weather allowed. We had both fed our rats and had our fill.

Boomer, for his part, was completely at home in the business. No big speeches, no theater. Just methodical progress, an enthusiasm to learn, and a willingness to get on with whatever was in front of him with a grin.

“It’s pure, unadulterated adventure. Just me and you, up here, way out there. Nobody else cares,” he said at one point. 

The descent was serious, as it always is in these unforgiving places, but went smoothly. By then the emotional shape of the climb had already solidified. We had not merely climbed the Beak; we had been taught by it, and by one another.

There is a direct line from Conrad Anker to the decisions I made on Hawkshead Ledge, and another from Jon Turk’s Arctic journeys to Boomer’s outlook. Conrad and Jon climbed together in Sam Ford in the 1990s; decades later, Boomer and I found ourselves sharing a rope on the Beak. That, increasingly, is what mentorship looks like to me: not a ladder but a network, an exchange of skills, values, and perspectives between partners and across generations. Sometimes I was the one teaching Boomer how to place a copperhead; sometimes he was the one showing me how to stay light, attentive, and unburdened in the middle of serious ground.

Ultimately, we established a serious mixed‑style route, freed a great deal of it, and left an open  project hanging in the middle of the headwall—which, like every other route in the fjord, will almost certainly never be repeated. ChossRider was loose, cold, complicated, engaging, breathtaking, and beautiful  in equal measure. Somewhere in the middle of it all—between brand-new jackets and very old friendships, between mentors on the page and partners on the sharp end—the Beak gave us exactly what we were looking for.

This article was published in partnership with