Janet Bergman Explores New Routes in Newfoundland

Here’s a great blog post featuring Polartec Athlete Advisory Board member, Janet Bergman.

(Excerpted from The Alpine Briefs, the American Alpine Club’s blog).

Janet hard at work testing the technical features of her Polartec layering system

Newfoundland, new routes and exploration.

By Sarah Garlick, North Conway, NH; photos © Sarah Garlick and Kirsten Kremer

“What about Newfoundland?” I asked, spinning around on the bar stool to face Janet and Kirsten. “Aren’t there granite walls rising right out of the ocean?”

Janet Bergman, Kirsten Kremer, and I were sitting in my kitchen in North Conway, a few beer bottles and an old grade-school globe on the dark Formica counter between us. Kirsten was visiting from Alaska, and we were hashing out plans for our next climbing trip. Spinning the dusty globe to North America, I recalled vague images from a Climbing magazine article about Newfoundland: a climber run-out on a wind-blasted face; a steep rappel over gray ocean. And I remembered impressions from a novel placed there: the tiny, isolated towns; the bedrock landscape. And always, I thought, there were storms.

“I’ve heard it’s pretty wild,” I said.

Janet heading into unknown terrain, Chaleur Blow Me Down.

A year later, the three of us loaded my 1991 Toyota van with two and a half weeks worth of food and enough gear to handle big aid lines, blank granite slabs, and fifth-class traverses—all of which we’d been told we could encounter. But, like any good trip, the first crux would be just getting there.We drove 15 hours straight from New Hampshire to the tip of Nova Scotia, making the overnight ferry by less than 30 minutes. The ferryboat had eight floors and accommodated more than a hundred vehicles—even tractor trailers. Lucky for us, there was also a bar.

We landed on “The Rock” at dawn the next day and pushed the van for one more sprint to link another ferry leaving from Burgeo, a town literally at road’s end. Here, a few nice ferrymen Saran-wrapped a pallet of our gear and loaded it into the ship’s hold for a six-hour ride up the coast.

Read the rest of the story here.

Janet testing Polartec's new polypropylene fabric