Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Flamingo, go
AN intrepid British couple scaled sheer peaks on one of the world’s remotest islands – then made their escape on a blow-up pink flamingo.
Jacob and Bronwyn Cook spent 40 days on Baffin Island with pals Thor Stewart and Zack Goldberg-Poch.
Their daring feats required the ultimate in skill but fun is at the heart of everything they do – which is why they took the wacky inflatable and even donned Viking helmets.
Whitewater expert Bronwyn, 28, capped their jaunt by riding the flamingo down tricky rapids in the Arctic. Jacob, 32, who began climbing at the age of seven at an indoor centre near his home in Archway, North London, said: “No one had rowed the river in and out to go climbing in that area. We were the first to climb some of the routes. But achieving firsts wasn’t our aim.
“It was to have fun. That’s why we took the flamingo because riding that showed the joy and absurdity of having a good time with friends.
“Bronwyn is an experienced whitewater instructor. But the other three of us didn’t last long trying to ride the flamingo before ending up in the water – we had to use the inflatable raft.”
Baffin, the world’s fifth largest island, lies off northern Canada and is home to Inuit people.
The four paddled and hiked 40 miles up a fjord, the Weasel River
We notched some world firsts, but this was all about fun JACOB COOK BRIT ON BIG ARCTIC ADVENTURE
Peak peril, then Brit & pals ride blow-up bird on rapids
and over glaciers to base camps. On one summit – as yet unnamed – Jacob and Bronwyn slept halfway up on inflatable mattresses dangling hundreds of feet high.
Making the most of 24-hour light, they also made the first 20-hour ascent of a new route on the south face of Mount Asgard.
Thor, 30, and Zack, 29 – in
Viking helmet – tackled two previously unclimbed peaks.
All four summited the world’s biggest sheer vertical wall on Mount Thor, over 1,250 metres.
Bronwyn took up climbing nine years ago while at Leeds University. She is one of the world’s top big wall free climbers.
She met Jacob at the uni’s climbing club while he was doing a four-year PhD. They moved to
Bronwyn’s native Canada five years ago and Jacob is a maths professor at a university in Squamish, British Columbia.
Now he has turned his footage of the trip – completed before Covid – into a film called Ocean to Asgard. It is part of the Banff Mountain Film Festival, which is touring UK theatres from Wednesday. See banff-uk.com.