Asgard Project Site Live

Berghaus has launched a dedicated web site covering Leo Houlding's ambitious Asgard Project - Houlding and a team of climbers are tackling one of the most difficult big walls in the world this August, with a film of the ascent scheduled to be premiered at this year's Kendal Mountain Film Festival.


The north west face of 1400-metre Mount Asgard on Baffin Island is one of the hardest in the world and the team will be trying become the first to climb a route on the wall without the use of artificial aid. Living on portaledges hung off the sheer, bank face, the climbers could be on the route for as long as two weeks.

The climb is being filmed by multi-award winning mountain film maker Alastair Lee and Lee and Houlding will be working together on the wall to produce a ground-breaking film. In addition, another Berghaus-sponsored climber, Carlo Suarez, will join Leo for the expedition.

Once the team's climbed the wall, the next step is a BASE jump descent using an advanced lightweight wing-suit, which Leo has been testing along with climbing equipment and systems on a series of practice climbs see video.

Houlding himself says:

"For me, this is the greatest challenge I have set myself to date.  I’ve been to the top of the world, suffered career threatening injury and completed some amazing adventures, but the Asgard Project is going to test me more than anything that has gone before.  To succeed, everyone in the team will have to be at the very top of their game from start to finish and I’m under no illusions that this is going to be extra dangerous.

The style of climbing, the equipment we are using, the nature of the descent and the speed at which we will be doing everything – all of those factors add to the risk.  Not only that, but the region is polar bear territory, so we’ll have to make sure we stay off their menu, which is an added worry.  But the training has gone really well so far and I can’t wait to get started on the main objective.”

Full details at www.theasgardproject.com complete with lots of video, images and information about the team and the equipment they'll be using on the climb.