Greenland was everything I wanted from it. The weather was atrocious when we arrived. The wind was blowing at 50+ mph, and it was rainy. It was unpleasant. We had to delay our start by a day because the boats couldn’t get out on the water in that kind of wind.
But we saw humpback whales in the bay right from the living room of the lodge. We could also see glaciers right from the lodge.
But then the weather cleared, and we headed out. We had a few windy and cloudy days that were chilly, but we had a solid week of beautiful weather. Some days it was sunny and warm, hiking in just a T-shirt. Other sunny days were windy, with a chill that required a wind jacket. And some days were quite cool, requiring a long sleeve shirt, a lightweight fleece, and a wind jacket.
I’ve never needed a wind jacket before, but I did need it out there. I needed a heavyweight rain jacket in camp because the wind was so cold. But that jacket was often too hot to wear while walking, so I needed a lighter wind layer. I’ve never run into that need before. It’s rarely that cold and windy where I’ve been, even in Alaska.
Along the Sermilik Fjord, we saw other groups almost every day. I think three of them were doing boat supported trips, and a fourth was likely doing a backpacking trip similar to ours.
The fjord is probably popular because of all the icebergs. There was also some pretty easy hiking in the southern section.
The northern section was a different story, though, and we didn’t see anyone for a week up there. The terrain was steep and very challenging and tiring. But it was also beautiful, with an ever increasing number of icebergs that also got bigger and bigger the further north we went.
The icebergs would crack and break with explosions that sounded like gunfire. Sometimes, a particularly large iceberg would flip and water would pour from it for several minutes. It was strange in the middle of the night to just suddenly hear running water for three minutes and have no idea where it was coming from.
One of the best experiences of the trip was when we crossed a beach at low tide that was littered with icebergs. That was cool. There were dozens of them just laying on the beach. It was like being in a maze built out of ice. It’ll be hard to ever find anything like that again. And that’s what trips like this are all about.
Once we turned into the valley (I need to buy a good paper map, because none of the digital maps I have were very useful there), the boulders and tussocks were always present. Boulder fields and glacial run-off crossings were the order of the day.
The water crossings were cold, but rarely more than knee deep, and rarely very fast. We had one spicy crossing the whole trip, because it was fast and deep. It was on the second day, so the rest were easy.
Sometimes, the guide would toss rocks into creeks in an effort to avoid getting wet by having stones to step on. I felt like it was a good idea, but he rarely gave it enough effort, and it was minimally helpful.
Some of the rivers were choked with glacial silt, but most were crystal clear. And for the first time in my life, I drank untreated water. We didn’t treat a single drop of water on this trip. We just dipped our bottles into the streams and drank away. That was unnerving at first, but then it just became normal. I was still a little anxious, because there were always bird droppings everywhere we went. And while I know there are no big animals out there crapping in the water, I’m sure there are bird droppings in the water.
But so far I haven’t gotten sick. And if I don’t get sick in the next week, then I think this will show how clean the water is in the backcountry of Greenland.
The tussocks weren’t as crappy as the Brooks Range demons, because they don’t flip you off. But they were still in wet, marshy areas that resulted in wet boots.
This was the longest backpacking trip I’ve ever done. I’ve done longer backcountry trips, but they included packrafting, so this was the longest I’ve had to carry all my gear and food on my back. Despite the long, long boulder fields we had to cross, with the ever present risk of falling and breaking something important, and the marshy areas that got our feet wet, and the river crossings that peeled off our blister tape, and the side hill hiking that is truly the most painful part of off trail hiking, I felt good. I only got one blister, and I could have prevented that one if I’d done what I knew needed to be done. But I just popped that blister, and beyond being a throbbing nag, it didn’t bother me. And I never got sore. I had trained a lot for this trip, and it felt good. I was happy with how I had trained and prepared, and it made the trip much more enjoyable.
The only wildlife we saw were Arctic foxes, humpback whales, ravens, sea gulls, loons, geese, and one seal…which I never was able to see.
The threat of polar bears is real. They are outrageously dangerous, and you’ve got to carry at least flares, and preferably a gun. We carried two flares, one to always take with you to the bathroom, and the guide carried a rifle. If you meet a polar bear, it’s not going to just run away like other bears typically do.
But we didn’t even see any signs of them. No tracks and no scat. Another group said they saw a single track in sand by a lake. But we saw nothing.
Nights were short, but got longer and darker as the trip went on. Early in the trip, the sun set around 11, but then just skirted to the north and then east just below the horizon. It was like an all night sunset. And then about 4 am, it would get brighter again.
By the end of the trip, it was dark enough to see stars. The North Star was almost directly overhead. Much further north, and it would be useless as a navigation tool.
I saw Mars and Jupiter, but all the stars were faint, because even at the end of the trip, it wasn’t completely dark.
Plus we had a full moon. The moon never rose very high, though. Just as the sun was just below the horizon, the full moon was just above the horizon. On the night of the full moon, I didn’t see it at all because it was so low that the mountains blocked it.
I did see some faint aurora. That’s twice this year. It wasn’t dark enough to see them well, but every so often during bear watch, they would flare up.
And the views. My gosh. The views. The first couple of days weren’t terribly spectacular, but then the mountains shot up. They were huge. They were dramatic. They were in your face. In the valleys, they surrounded you. Sharp peaks stretching from the ocean thousands of feet into the sky. They were flanked by glaciers and moraines of loose rocks left behind by the melting glaciers. They were beautiful.
I just wanted to sit in those valleys and stare up at those massive mountains. They were incredible.
And looking at the map, I think those views are everywhere. And I just saw a tiny portion of them. Such a tiny, tiny portion.
I want to see more. This planet is so huge with such remote, hidden secrets. I saw big mountains rising high to the north as we took off yesterday. And they taunted my imagination. I want to see those mountains. I know there are more mountains to the south. I want to see those mountains.
Greenland is hard. There are no formal trails. The weather can be relentless, and it’s always challenging. The bears are deadly, and all you can hope for is not to see one. The mountains and valleys are almost incomprehensibly vast. But six miles of hiking per day is exhausting. It’s hard to get anywhere…and all you want to do is see it all.
Maybe I can’t see it all, but like all these Arctic places I’ve seen, I must see more.
I’ll be back. The mountains demand it.
