Shark's Tooth, first ascent in Greenland by Ruchkin and Mikhaylov

A month ago Mikhail Mikhaylov from Kyrgyzstan and and Alexander Ruchkin from St.Peterburg in Russia succeeded in the first ascent of the spectacular Shark's Tooth in eastern Greenland via their 1200m high line, "Dance on Tiptoes".

The experienced climbers established base camp on the Apusinikajik glacier in mid-April and were then forced to sit out some bad weather before finally setting off on 02/05. The duo climbed the North-West Ridge alpine-style over a period of four days, overcoming 21 pitches and 1210m of virgin terrain with difficulties up to VII A2, 6c. They reached the hitherto untouched summit on 05 May, where they spent "a whole hour admiring the surrounding unclimbed peaks and the endless number of beautiful new routes for the future."

After the expedition Ruchkin commented on mountain.ru: "You wake up each morning in Greenland feeling the same thing - that you've overslept! At this time of year, it's always daylight there! When we first arrived it was terribly cold, our first impression was that we were sadly mistaken and that we'd have no chance of climbing anything. Everything was simply too much; too much snow, temperatures down to –20C, extremely high humidity and strongs wind all seemed to reduce our chances to zero. The bears, their traces and rented guns added an element of suddenness to our expedition and brought us into a higher state of readiness. We went to sleep and put aside a loaded gun, signal pistol and smoke bomb to scare away our "white guests". We lived, slept and ate looking constantly on the lookout to see if "the guests" happened to be heading our way. Luckily they never came!"

Mikhaylov and Ruchkin have been climbing together since 2003 and in 2004 they were members of the succesful Russian expedition to the North Face of Jannu, which culminated in Ruchkin's summit in May along with Dmitry Pavlenko. This climb was awarded with the Piolet d'Or 2004 - not without criticism - while in 2010 Mikhaylov and Ruchkin received a Piolet d'or nomination for their ascent of the NW Face of Gongga Peak (6134m) in China.

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