Original subtitles

♪ ♪

(heavy breathing)

ALEX: God!

(metal rattling)

(metal rattling)

Ultimately what's at stake with climbing is always your life.

♪ ♪

You could die in a lot of different ways on a wall.

♪ ♪

You know, it's like, you can only roll the dice like that

so many times.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

The first picture I saw of Ingmikortilaq,

it looked like death.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(whirring)

(whirring)

(unintelligible radio chatter)

Look at the walls over there.

This is, this is crazy.

Now I'm starting to get very excited.

ADAM: Yeah.

ALEX: This is, uh,

definitely feels like the trip is starting.

Like, look at all this rock.

(whirring)

(whirring)

Greenland's an island in the North Atlantic

that's almost entirely covered by a vast sheet of ice...

...in some places up to two miles thick.

It's almost like a fantasy landscape.

It's like so big and so remote and so wild.

I may as well be reading The Hobbit or something.

It's like this is a totally fantastic setting.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

If we manage to climb Ingmikortilaq,

it'll be the biggest first ascent I've ever done.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Very exciting!

The first picture I saw of Ingmikortilaq

was low resolution and kind of far away.

It looked like the scariest wall I've ever seen.

It was like swirling black rock.

It was kind of like, how about this,

you know, can we climb this?

I was like, I don't know.

But in some ways, that's the best type

of climbing objective, when you're not totally sure.

It's hard to imagine that we're gonna have to cross

miles and miles of these piles of rock and boulders

to get onto what we think of as the real glacier

where, where it's exposed ice.

I mean, this looks like very difficult terrain to hike in.

♪ ♪

I've spent most of my life rock climbing.

♪ ♪

And I'm best known for my free-solo climb of El Capitan,

a 3,000-foot wall in Yosemite National Park.

JIMMY KIMMEL: That's Alex Honnold, everybody!

(applause and cheering)

MAN: No ropes, no safety net.

WOMAN 1: One of the most famous climbers in the world.

WOMAN 2: ...achieving something no human had ever done before.

WOMAN 3: Beyond belief.

MAN: The greatest climber in the world has achieved

the greatest feat in climbing history.

ALEX: There's been a lot

of real life that's happened,

outside of my climbing, since Free Solo.

Yummy.

(baby babbling)

It's like that.

SANNI: (laughs) Are you smiling?

(baby sneezes)

ALEX: Oh!

(sneezes)

SANNI: Bless you!

Accomplishing your biggest life dream

has sort of two sides.

(baby babbling)

There was a long time after Alex free soloed El Cap

that he seemed to me a little bit lost.

In that journey, I saw him be really depressed and frustrated

and also pick himself back up and figure it out.

ALEX: Ooh.

SANNI: Now he's found other ways to give back

and keep contributing to the world.

I think doing things around climate change is part of that,

and what a great direction to turn to.

This is your training.

ALEX: Yeah.

SANNI: The Greenland expedition is unique

because it is so remote.

A wall that has never been climbed,

a place where climate research has barely been done,

that lights Alex up in a way that nothing else does.

♪ ♪

ALEX: There's six of us on the expedition--

two other climbers,

a glaciologist, a local guide,

and a safety guy.

Oh, this is getting scenic, huh?

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

This is a pretty hard-core landscape in a way.

It's like a full-on river coming out the glacier.

♪ ♪

When it comes to climate change,

Greenland's one of the most important places on the planet.

It's gotten about five and a half degrees warmer

over the last 40 years.

More and more of its ice is melting,

raising the sea level around the world.

Ingmikortilaq is extremely remote.

And scientists rarely have an opportunity

to study the area around it,

so we're gonna take the long way to the bottom of the sea cliff.

It will be an expedition of about 100 miles,

gathering critical scientific data

in places that no one has been able to get to before.

♪ ♪

You know, I've definitely always cared about the world around me.

I would say that I haven't always had the opportunity

to actually do something useful.

What's wonderful about a trip like this is that, you know,

we have the right team in place

to actually do meaningful work as we go climbing.

Okay, team, we're sticking together.

It's pretty obvious that in July, Greenland is in full melt.

We got to cross the river somewhere in here.

It's pretty deep.

HEÏDI: It's very slippery rocks, okay?

ALEX: Here, Hazel. Let me take your bag.

HEÏDI: Woo! Good!

HAZEL: It's easy without a bag!

HEÏDI: Yeah, exactly.

HAZEL: Do you want poles?

ALEX: No, it's okay.

HAZEL: Nice.

ALEX: Great success, we all survived.

HEÏDI: Do you hear the water running?

It's amazing to hear how much water

is going through the system.

ALEX: From the scientific perspective,

the most important member of the team is Heïdi Sevestre.

Heïdi works for the Arctic Monitoring

and Assessment Programme.

She even won a Shackleton Medal

for her work protecting the polar regions.

HEÏDI: My biggest passion is ice,

to study how glaciers and ice sheets react to climate change.

I have with me a lot of tools to collect data

for all the scientists around the world.

ALEX: You're gonna make glaciologists out of all of us.

HEÏDI: (laughs) I hope so.

ALEX: Hiking up this massive 25-mile-long glacier,

we're looking, and listening,

for our first scientific objective.

♪ ♪

HEÏDI: Oh, wait, wait, wait.

ALEX: It's a really big hole.

HEÏDI: Yeah, let's go and take a look.

This is pretty loud.

(water rushing)

ALEX: Oh, wow!

HEÏDI: Woo! No way!

Ah, this is giant!

MAN: Whoa!

ALEX: Yeah, look at this. Look how deep it goes.

HEÏDI: Woo!

This is a big one, yeah.

HAZEL: Yeah.

ALEX: If you step on here,

you can see, like, all the way into the hole.

HEÏDI: Woo!

ALDO: How deep is it?

HEÏDI: Oh, yeah, I see it, yeah.

ALEX: It's deep enough that it just turns black,

so it's pretty far.

HEÏDI: This huge hole is called a moulin.

It acts like a drain funneling meltwater

into the base of the glacier.

(water rushing)

We were really lucky to be able to hear the roar

and be thinking, "Ah, okay, there might be something here."

I'm super excited but also slightly terrified.

ALEX: This is the abyss.

It's all pretty big and pretty, pretty intimidating.

This moulin should allow us to figure out

what's happening beneath the glacier.

So, as crazy as it might sound,

we're going to rappel down into it.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

HEÏDI: Glaciers are rivers of ice.

Normally they flow slowly,

pulled by gravity down towards the ocean.

But the more water beneath a glacier,

the faster it can move.

It's pretty much like when you take an ice cube

and you make it slide over a thin layer of water,

it will slide so much faster.

I want to find out if there's enough water

underneath the glacier to make it speed up.

ALEX: I'm definitely more used to climbing up rock

than down into ice,

but this is a rare opportunity to help Heïdi

get the data that she needs.

HEÏDI: Very few people have dared to enter into these holes.

It's really one of the most dangerous environments on Earth.

♪ ♪

ALEX: Aldo Kane is here for safety and logistics,

here to help the team make sure that we don't kill ourselves.

ALDO: Yeah, and bring it back out.

We're trying to mesh frontline hard-core adventure

with frontline hard-core science.

You know, they go hand in hand.

ALEX: Honestly, he's just so striking and handsome,

I just feel like he must be very capable.

My wife looked him up on Instagram before the trip

and was like, "Wow!"

You know, like, "Tell me about what it's like to be with Aldo."

I was like, "Okay."

ALDO: Clean this section here

and then run the ropes straight over the edge.

ALEX: Ah, that's not bad. That's a good toss.

ALDO: When you're standing on top of the moulin,

you can hear, crack! crack!

It's like gunshots going off, and that's the ice moving.

ALEX: Watch out, watch out.

♪ ♪

It just goes straight down for, like, so far.

Heïdi has these little cylinders called piezometers.

If we can drop them down to the bottom of the moulin,

they'll tell us how much water is down there.

I'm gonna go down a little bit.

I think the intensity of the moulin

really started to make itself felt as I got deeper.

(water rushing)

(rumbling)

Down in it, it felt very powerful.

Okay, so is that the whole...

HEÏDI: That was the whole thing, yeah.

ALEX: Yeah. Perfect.

It's very intimidating down there and so wet!

Meltwater should carry the piezometers through the ice,

all the way down to the base of the glacier,

where we'll leave them for 24 hours.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

ALDO: This is all super unstable now.

The change in weather, it's warmer, it's been raining.

You see that rock on the edge there?

ADAM: Yeah.

ALDO: So, all of the moulin

is just eating up everything on the edge.

The sooner we get them out of here, the better.

HEÏDI: It seems that the piezometers are stuck.

ALEX: Aldo! It's stuck!

HEÏDI: It's almost impossible to pull them back up.

ALDO: It's not ideal.

It's not somewhere you want to be hanging around.

HEÏDI: Let's see what we can do!

ALEX: It's like, if we actually get this out,

it'll be a miracle.

HEÏDI: Uh!

ALEX: It moved a little bit.

Oh, no, it's coming.

HEÏDI: Oh, is it?

Oh, yeah, yeah. Sweet.

ALEX: Aldo, you can pull up the cable!

ALDO: Okay!

ALEX: Okay, so, should we get out of here?

HEÏDI: Yeah.

ALEX: Okay.

Nice work!

HEÏDI: Yeah! Thank you.

ALEX: Bam!

(water rushing)

So, let's see what we got, huh?

HEÏDI: Mm-hmm.

Okay, we have 10,000 data points, which is very good.

And it has measured about 100 kilopascals,

which actually means that there was

about ten meters of water above it.

ALEX: 30 feet of water is a big pool at the bottom

of a, of a hole like that, isn't it?

HEÏDI: Yeah, yeah.

This much water under the glacier

can make it slide down the valley

and melt faster at lower altitudes.

Our results mean that this huge river of ice

is now one more we need to keep tabs on.

And when you know that around the world on coastlines,

there are about 700 million people,

you understand that actually what is happening to Greenland

matters to the rest of the world.

♪ ♪

(muffled voices)

(muffled voices)

♪ ♪

ALEX: Camping out here is no joke.

That's why we've asked local guide Adam Kjeldsen to join us.

He's spent his life dealing with Greenland's unique challenges.

ADAM: We're in polar bear territory now, yeah?

So, there's some things we have to be aware of,

things we have to practice.

ALEX: It's to deter the bear, not shoot the bear.

ADAM: All we do is about scaring the bear.

All the way back, yeah.

(click)

That's it.

Aim for something like the grass.

(gunshot)

ALEX: Whoa.

ADAM: Feel the kick, huh?

ALEX: Yeah, definitely feel the kick.

ADAM: Hopefully this is the last time you'll shoot.

ALEX: Imagine getting eaten by a bear. Like, that's crazy.

But I don't, I'm like,

has anyone looked behind us recently?

It's like, are there any bears around?

It's nice to have one perfect climbing wall right at camp.

MIKEY: Yeah.

ALEX: We need to keep in shape

so that we're ready for the big climb.

♪ ♪

Ingmikortilaq is about 4,000 feet tall,

which is about 1,000 feet higher than El Cap.

I have no idea what the rock will be like...

(laughter)

...which is why I've asked

two of the best climbers in the world to join me.

What? Are you doing two?

Whoa!

Mikey Schaefer, he has done first ascents

on all the major peaks in Patagonia.

He may be the most experienced first ascensionist on the team.

MIKEY: I did my first big wall before I could legally drive.

I've always been drawn to doing first ascents.

It's not like a conquering thing.

It is far from that.

I could care less about conquering mountains.

It's an interesting blend of artistic creation

yet extremely technical exploration.

ALEX: Strong, Hazel.

Yeah, really good.

Pop to the jug.

MIKEY: Nice.

ALEX: Really good. Come on.

ADAM: Hazel's bad-ass. (laughs)

ALEX: Hazel Findlay is a professional climber

from the UK.

Hazel is really experienced with this sort of first ascent,

exploratory adventure rock climbing.

HAZEL: I started climbing when I was about six years old.

My dad taught me how to climb.

And I think I just sort of found my love for adventure,

and that's what I've been doing ever since.

I do have a lot of experience climbing sea cliffs,

so I've got to kind of combine the experience

of big walling and sea cliff climbing.

ALEX: All the way left, way left.

HAZEL: Woo!

ALEX: Oh, God.

ADAM: We don't see much climbing in Greenland,

so watching them climb is,

yeah, I've seen it on TV,

but seeing it in real life, it's pretty cool.

ALEX: That was really good! That was a really good warm-up.

ADAM: Yeah, you call it a warm-up? (laughs)

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

HAZEL: Alex is so experienced a climber.

Nice.

He's probably spent more time on rock

than almost anyone in the world, I think.

ADAM: Hazel's out.

HAZEL: I'm out.

ADAM: She just tapped out.

ALEX: Just walked away?

ADAM: Yeah.

HAZEL: Nice.

♪ ♪

Nice, Alex.

And then the other reason he's so good is obviously

because he can keep calm, stay cool,

and not freak out when he's 1,000 meters

off the deck with no rope.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

ALEX: That's exciting.

(wind howling)

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

You gotta hug that ridge, Hazel,

like close enough that if you slip, you'll go into the...

HAZEL: Yeah.

ALEX: ...abyss.

HAZEL: Then I'll die.

ALEX: Yeah, yeah. You probably wouldn't die.

It'd be terrible, though.

We're still more than 70 miles from Ingmikortilaq.

Our route will take us across the Renland Ice Cap,

which is a huge expanse of ice

that's more than 6,000 feet above sea level.

We want to see if climate change is having an effect on it.

But to get up there, we'll have to make a first ascent

of a huge rock face that we're calling the Pool Wall.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

What do we think?

ALDO: This is a lot bigger than I expected.

♪ ♪

HAZEL: I'm favoring this left buttress.

MIKEY: Those cracks keep going all the way

almost down to the ledge.

ALEX: It's just really big.

It's one thing to be inspired by a wall.

It's another thing to actually climb it.

That looks very dangerous.

It's hard to know how far up we can get.

MIKEY: I mean, the Pool Wall

could be one of those lifetime achievement routes.

That's a 1,500-foot Arctic big wall that's unclimbed.

That's like pretty serious.

ALEX: What's gonna be even harder

is that we have to get the whole team up the wall,

including Adam and Heïdi,

who have basically never climbed before.

HEÏDI: Seeing it with my own eyes is actually pretty scary.

ADAM: Intimidating looking up and there's like,

what's that, 400 or 500 meters of mountain

kind of on top of you.

But I think I've found the best camping spot here, though.

Alex!

ALEX: Yeah.

ADAM: You like this?

ALEX: Yeah, yeah. That's your spot.

ADAM: Yeah, it's my spot.

(wind blowing)

HAZEL: Ah, it's so windy.

ALEX: This is getting better and better.

Can you see inside the tent? It's...

It's gonna be luxurious.

MIKEY: Pro tip, though.

Put stuff in your tent before you set it up.

HAZEL: I'm okay with it.

MIKEY: Doesn't fly away.

HAZEL: Yeah. Here.

Oh, no! No, no!

ADAM: Oh, God.

So long!

MIKEY: Oh, it could be gone.

What did you say up there, Mikey, about pro tip?

ALEX: Oh, you found it?

HAZEL: Yeah.

ALEX: Oh, great success.

HAZEL: It was in a lake.

But it's already dry.

♪ ♪

HEÏDI: Pool Wall is an important rock face

from a geological perspective.

During the last ice age, it was buried under the ice sheet.

Then, 11,500 years ago,

temperatures rose, the ice melted,

and the rock face we see today emerged.

If we can discover how fast that ice receded

from Pool Wall in the past,

we can improve our projections of how quickly Greenland's ice

is likely to melt in the future.

Knowing this could help hundreds of millions of people

prepare for sea level rise.

But to make these projections,

we need to get rock samples from all the way up Pool Wall.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

So, the cosmogenic nuclide dating,

it's all about creating a timeline

of what has happened here in the past.

You know when you're exposed to the sun

and you get a stronger and stronger tan,

the same thing happens to these rocks.

ALEX: Measuring how tan the rock is?

HEÏDI: How tan the rock is.

ALEX: Perfect.

HEÏDI: This is actually super important because today,

when we try for example to predict future sea level rise,

this is all based on things

we understand from past behavior of the ice.

Let me tell you, the scientists are so excited to get samples

from Pool Wall because they simply cannot do this.

(drilling)

HEÏDI: In? HAZEL: Yeah.

ALEX: You know, it's not just

my climbing experience that matters,

it's like us doing something that's meaningful.

(drilling)

ALDO: Ah, there we go.

Killed a battery, so that's two batteries in over half an hour.

This could add a few days onto the climb.

(drilling)

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

HAZEL: Gosh, it looks so different now.

ALEX: Okay, here's Mr. Rack for you.

So I was like, this is a really big rack.

Every wall has its own unique flavor or dangers.

It's hard to know until you're actually on it.

Okay, I'm climbing.

HAZEL: Make good decisions.

ALEX: Yep.

HAZEL: You're a father now.

ALEX: Oh, it's true.

HAZEL: You have dependents.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Nice, Alex.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

He keeps dropping a lot of rocks,

so my guess is that it's a bit chossy.

(rocks crashing)

ALEX: Arctic rock can be a real challenge.

Water gets into the cracks and then freezes and expands,

forcing the rock apart.

Hey, rock!

It's just a dangerous place to climb,

especially with the rest of the team below you

because it means things are constantly falling on people.

HAZEL: Big rock!

(crash)

ALEX: From here, it looks like this 1,500-foot climb

has three main sections, each with their own challenges.

This bottom section is full of loose rock.

The middle section looks pretty blank,

without many hand or footholds.

And above that, we'll only have some thin, vertical cracks

to follow up to the summit.

♪ ♪

Hazel, Mikey, and I will take turns leading...

Yeah, she's doing it.

...finding the safest route up the wall for the team.

HAZEL: Well, I'm not a fan of this way.

ALEX: There are a couple good feet to make that thing okay.

We've got 24 hours of daylight,

so we're going to push hard whenever the weather's good.

Getting a little tiring, huh?

MIKEY: Yeah.

Uh!

ALEX: Aldo is following,

making sure that our anchors and ropes are secure.

ALDO: Alex, Mikey, and Hazel are up there,

and they are pushing the route

probably to at least the halfway point,

and I've just started following the climbers up.

ALEX: Once we've gotten ropes to the top of the second section,

Heïdi and Adam will use them to join us.

I'm off belay, Mikey!

After a night camping on the wall,

we'll all make the final push to the summit together.

Okay, you're on.

You take turns, one person and then the other,

but sometimes you take your turn

and then you look up and you're like,

"Thank goodness I don't have to climb that."

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

HAZEL: This is not great.

ALEX: Hazel's encountered a section of very poor rock.

She's up there trying to find a way

to tiptoe around some very loose blocks.

From here, it looks like once you transfer to the right,

you're kind of in there.

HAZEL: Yeah, but I don't think I can transfer to the right

without standing on any of this.

ALEX: I believe in you.

HAZEL: I could see the rock was only attached to the wall

by this very small piece.

If this small piece of rock broke,

then this huge flake would come out of the rock.

I don't actually think I can get round this.

You have to be really careful.

It's not just about, oh, can I get past it?

It's just there's gonna be huge consequences

if I knock it off.

You would fall yourself.

You would most likely cut the rope.

And you'd probably also kill your belayer.

Oh, this is scary.

♪ ♪

ALEX: Up here, you have to trust your partner

and trust that they're making the right decisions.

Obviously Hazel's a good judge of bad rock.

I mean, are you sure you can't stand on that gently?

HAZEL: It's, it's really not good.

ALEX: Well, what about using face holds past it,

like little edges for the feet, but just kind of tiptoe around?

HAZEL: Yeah, that's what I'm gonna try and do.

ALEX: I've got you good.

I think it's really stressful for her,

and it seems a little scary.

She's fully standing on the scary block.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Yeah, Hazel.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

HAZEL: I think as climbers, you kind of learn to take

life-and-death decision-making and make it normal.

Oh, yeah.

ALEX: Nice, Hazel.

HAZEL: Often it's my mind that gets me up routes

rather than my strength.

That was cool.

ALEX: 500 feet up,

and we're through the loose rock.

Mikey will take the lead on the blank middle section.

It's raining. There's rain on my screen.

There's rain on my jacket.

There's rain on the wall.

MIKEY: It's dried up a little bit now.

ALEX: You can kind of see our camp between us.

It's really far away. Yeah, isn't that cool?

MIKEY: Right there.

ALEX: Yay! And then somewhere down here you should be able

to see Aldo working away at the route.

MIKEY: Cool. Okay, I'm gonna get to it.

ALEX: Okay, all right, get 'em, Mikey.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

MIKEY: This part's particularly bad.

ALEX: As opposed to the rest that was only pretty bad?

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Mikey's up there dealing with some sort of terrible,

terrible climbing, but at least we're making upward progress,

just carrying along.

MIKEY: Ah! I've got some really cold hands right now.

Uh! Uh!

Uh!

ALEX: Better rock to the right,

and there's another crack over there.

MIKEY: Yeah.

(snap)

Ooh!

ALEX: Oh!

You all right?

MIKEY: Yeah.

It's definitely not the sort of fall I would want to take

in the mountains normally, that's for sure.

A place like this, like, a rescue's pretty far away,

so a broken leg on the Pool Wall, like,

that becomes life-threatening.

I'm halfway down the pitch anyways, right?

ALEX: Yeah, yeah. No, no, I agree.

MIKEY: So, I think you're gonna be fine.

You can't say I didn't go for it.

ALEX: Yeah. No, no. I'm giving you full credit.

MIKEY: You're gonna give me full, like,

he wasn't a weenie up there.

ALEX: No, no, you're not a weenie up there.

You really got after it.

Basically Mikey took some very dramatic falls

and had to call in reinforcements

for the final 30 feet of the route, or the pitch.

But we're up here. We're getting it done.

There's definitely some pressure to figure this section out,

or else we'll have to give up on the route

and our chance to get up onto the ice cap.

Oh, sweet mercy.

HAZEL: Is it hard or loose?

ALEX: Both.

I'm gonna, like, need a minute to process

to try to, like, see where things go.

HAZEL: I'm watching.

♪ ♪

ADAM: How high do you think they are?

HEÏDI: Mmm, like 500, 600 feet.

ADAM: It's a bit scary to think of going up.

HEÏDI: Looks like it's about to fall on my face.

What's happening there? Do you see?

ADAM: Yeah, it looks a bit-- Can I have a look?

What is he holding on to?

HEÏDI: Wow, yeah, scary stuff.

ADAM: That's scary, huh? Want another look?

HEÏDI: Yeah. Wow.

ADAM: It's like watching a movie, huh?

HEÏDI: Yeah, pretty much.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

HAZEL: I'm watching Alex follow this crack.

And he's just hanging there, hundreds of feet up this wall.

And then he does this huge move left into space.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

ALEX: That was a risky move for sure,

but it's got us to a crack that goes a long ways up.

Okay, I'm out of here.

Tomorrow's gonna be a big day.

Heïdi and Adam are gonna start up the wall.

But first we have some celebrating to do.

TEAM: ♪ ...to you ♪

♪ Happy birthday, dear Adam ♪

♪ Happy birthday to you ♪

Woo! Woo!

(applause)

ALEX: Yeah, we have a gift for you.

Happy 40th! Pretty exciting, it's your birthday.

Sorry that you don't get to be with your family,

but at least you have us.

(laughter)

ALDO: Smells like a malt.

HAZEL: Ooh, I smell it from here.

ADAM: It's whiskey.

ALDO: Water of life.

ALEX: No, no. Did you get any?

HAZEL: Yeah.

ALEX: I, uh--

oh, it's so gross.

(laughter)

Adam's like, "What?"

MIKEY: It's good.

ALEX: But you have to sing for yourself in Greenlandic.

ADAM: ♪ Inuuissiortoq pilluarit ♪

♪ qanortoq inuummersorit ♪

♪ Inuuissiorninni taakkuulluta ♪

♪ tamatta nuannaarpugut ♪

♪ ullorsiortoq una ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Today's the day.

Today is the day I'm going big-wall climbing... (laughs)

...with a bunch of pros.

HEÏDI: Anxiety's definitely here.

I must say I didn't sleep very well.

And I can feel a, a sense of nervousness in the team as well.

MIKEY: So, getting started is always a bit weird

because there's, like, some bounce in the rope.

HEÏDI: Yeah, exactly.

HAZEL: I can't think of anyone who starts their climbing life

climbing a wall like Pool Wall.

It's just insane.

ALEX: These guys are complete novices,

and typically you don't learn how to climb a big wall

in a snowstorm in Greenland,

so today has to be about keeping everyone safe.

♪ ♪

ALDO: We're adding two more people into the mix.

There's two more people exposed to rockfall.

There's two more people exposed to making a mistake on the rope.

ALEX: We got some bags. The journey is beginning.

ALDO: You're pulling hundreds of kilos up the rock face.

The consequences of a mistake are ultimately fatality.

(rocks falling)

HEÏDI: Mikey, I'm gonna start going up.

(cawing)

ADAM: (speaking Greenlandic)

We've been here for a week, we haven't seen any wildlife,

and just minutes before we start going up,

we see two ravens playing in the wind.

It's really, really beautiful.

I'm hoping this is a good omen,

but I have to admit I'm pretty nervous.

ALEX: So, are you just going with one foot like that?

ADAM: Yeah.

ALDO: Clear, Mikey!

MIKEY: Thank you!

ALDO: Is anyone below?

MIKEY: Oh, yeah, now the whole party's below now.

ALDO: How you getting on, Heïdi?

HEÏDI: Whoa! (laughs)

They make it look so easy when they go up these walls.

It feels like the wall is falling on us pretty much

because it's so steep.

(heavy breathing)

I think I have another maybe 10, 15 meters to go.

Alex is waiting above patiently.

ALEX: Oh, yeah.

Getting there.

HEÏDI: I'm getting there, eventually.

ALEX: This is how you learn.

HEÏDI: Woo!

ALEX: Nice! Bam!

HEÏDI: That took a while, yeah.

ALEX: That's okay, you made it.

HEÏDI: It was pretty hard, and I was really exhausted.

ALEX: Should we choose a spot up here for core sampling?

HEÏDI: This could be a good one, yeah.

ALEX: Let's do some drilling.

HEÏDI: Perfect.

(drilling)

This is really groundbreaking data.

These rock samples will inform us,

how quickly is Greenland gonna lose its ice?

How quickly is the water going to rise?

(drilling)

When places like New York, Miami will be underwater.

(drilling)

ALEX: That's a big sample, actually.

HEÏDI: That is a great sample.

ALEX: It's really good.

(hammering)

The first time I've used a chisel on rock.

MIKEY: Wow! There it is.

HEÏDI: Hey!

Yay! We have a core.

It is good to see that, you know,

the cores are starting to come out of the rock,

and hopefully I'll be a bit faster on the ropes

as well by that time.

ALEX: It's a long ways to go to the top.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

HEÏDI: Oh, it looks super hard up there.

I mean, from now on, it's just totally vertical.

ALDO: Uh!

It's quite warm, isn't it?

♪ ♪

(crashing)

Whoa! Listen to that.

HAZEL: Do you see these death dagger icicles?

ALDO: The sun has come out.

It means that all of the icicles that have formed

over the last few days have started to fall off.

(crash)

MIKEY: Lots of "deathcicles" coming off the top.

ADAM: Ice! Ice!

(crash)

HEÏDI: Oh!

ADAM: Oh, it's coming here.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪