First photo of me in Greenland above the frozen musk ox lake
I love the polar regions. And I’ve always had a soft spot for the Arctic. I completely fell in love with it on my very first trip overseas, in the Canadian Arctic in 1991. I’d dreamed about going to the Canadian Arctic from the age of 14 after seeing a photo of the Virginia Falls on the cover of an Explorers Guide to the Northwest Territories. I didn’t go to the Virginia Falls on that occasion, but I experienced the Arctic for the first time and I loved it. I’ve explored various Arctic destinations in the 25 years that followed and Greenland was the only part of the Arctic left for me. It’s become a bit of an up and coming destination in the last couple of years and now seemed as good a time as any to see this island of ice which should really be called Whiteland instead of Greenland because all you see when you fly over it is snow from the permanent ice sheet that covers most of the country.
View of the remote town of Kangerlussuaq from above
I prepared myself for my flight to Greenland by putting on my “extra warm” thermals I’d bought from Marks and Spencer, jeans and a jumper over the top and my parka from when I went on an Icebreaker ship to the North Pole. I also had my waterproof trousers in my rucksack, 3 pairs of gloves, 2 hats and 2 scarves. I got on the plane, I was really going to Greenland after years of dreaming about it and bearing in mind it was March and should be warming up a bit, the pilot announced it was -25 degrees in Kangerlussuaq. I’d booked my window seat as soon as I booked my flight, so I got a good view of the east coast as we started to fly over Greenland. I’ve seen Greenland from the air countless times on my many trips to Canada, but this was the first time I was going to be landing there.
Kangerlussuaq is how I imagine the eastern Canadian Arctic, Nunavut to look. No trees just a few houses and lots of exposed rock. From what I can remember from geology, the oldest rock in the world is found in Greenland, gneiss rock. But I faintly recall that’s just in Eastern Greenland. And there really is nothing in Kangerlussuaq. Air Greenland have chosen this town as their hub because of the air base there, but there’s very little here except the airport and a few houses spread out. The locals call Kangerlussuaq a city. I can tell you now, it is as far away from a city as you could possibly imagine.
Head of the fjord above Kangerlussuaq
As for the accommodation, well the Old Camp is a series of buildings and the one I was in was like the Halls of Residence I lived in when I was at university. A long corridor with about 16 rooms, a shared kitchen, dining room, living room and 4 bathrooms. The rooms were very basic. But I can’t say I expected anything else. It’s not that bad. But it’s not that good either. I had my own room. I had to put my own sheets and pillowcases on the bed. But for the extra cost of a room at the hotel and probably not vastly higher standards, I decided I could cope for 2 nights. The bonus was they gave me the room for 3 nights at no extra cost, so when I wasn’t sleeping the following night in my tent on the ice, at least I could leave my luggage in the room.
When I arrived at the airport I got onto a yellow school bus which took me to the camp. Then I got on another bus shortly afterwards to go on a musk ox safari.
There’s a mineral lake where the musk ox like to go and drink and even though it’s frozen in the winter, the musk ox forget and apparently go there every day to try and get a drink. But not today. Today, they’d remembered it was frozen. So all I saw on this musk ox safari was the Greenlandic equivalent of RAF Fylingdales when it still had the golf balls and a couple of distant reindeer. Wow!
The throbbing metropolis of Kangerlussuaq
We did go up to a viewpoint to see the town below us and the fjord, but it wasn’t exactly exciting. I got the “city bus” into town later in the afternoon to have a look around. There were 4 shops, only 2 of which were open, a post office and a supermarket. I bought another pair of gloves from the supermarket because they were waterproof and you can never have too many pairs of gloves. Your hands lose the feeling in them very quickly without gloves in these temperatures. I wasn’t sure how was going to take photos because I don’t do well with gloves on, but I couldn’t take them off or I’d lose fingers!
Polar bear sculpture outside the Old Camp – and the closest I got to seeing any big animals in Greenland!
What I concluded on my walk back to the Old Camp from town, because it didn’t look that far and I couldn’t be bothered to wait for the hourly bus back, that however daunting Camp Ice Cap might be, it was preferable to spending 2 days in Kangerlussuaq doing nothing. I was genuinely scared about being incredibly cold and anticipating getting no sleep whatsoever. I got none when I camped out on Antarctica. I’ll make sure I pack a fully charged iPod. Why did I decide camping out on the permanent ice sheet for the night was a good idea? But unless you’re booked on activities there was literally nothing to do in Kangerlussuaq.
I was tired, so I thought I’d try to get an hour or two sleep and then get up to try and see the Northern Lights. Kangerlussuaq is famed for its cloudless skies so is a really good place in Greenland to catch the aurora. I had a wander outside and could see the start of it, decided that I needed to wrap up warmer, so I went back inside and put more clothes on and then headed back outside again. I watched the skies for a bit longer, the aurora which was a pale white light at that point wasn’t doing much and I wondered how much longer I should stay out in the freezing cold looking at the sky. The sky was promisingly clear so we might get a good show.
A green leaping tiger in the clear night sky? The wonder of the Northern Lights.
I ended up joining a trip where we drove out of town and found a perfect spot for the wind to hit us and once again make me wonder how the hell I was going to survive a night on the ice. Then we drove to a more sheltered spot and that’s when the lights started to dance. And when they start to dance they start to glow colours. Mostly green with flashes of pink and purple. It was pretty spectacular to see. The guide said he’d been there 4 months and gave it an 8 out of 10 for the show the lights put on tonight. They were still dancing when we drove back. I hoped that I might see the aurora again while in Greenland, maybe even the following night when I was out on the ice and finding it impossible to sleep… Anyway I can now die a happy woman and I have got to see the Northern Lights.
Aurora Borealis streaks across the sky
I got into the bed I made myself, there were two sheets in the wardrobe, presumably as there are 2 beds in the room, so I made the bed up with a bottom sheet and a top sheet, with hospital corners and everything to try and make it as comfortable as possible. Once again, I had no idea how I’d manage on the ice, I remember very little about my night on the ice in Antarctica apart from I didn’t close my eyes once and spent the majority of the night listening to a rock band called the Little Angels, probably because they’re from Scarborough and that’s exactly where I was wishing I was at that moment in time. But that was tomorrow. Tonight I had a real bed in a warm room in a proper building. And I’d survived my first day in Greenland.
I travelled to Greenland in the second half of March 2017.
There were two questions on my mind about Camp Ice Cap and the likelihood of a positive answer to either was diminishing by the second. Would I be able to keep warm? Would I be able to keep upright? Would I be able to keep up was a question I didn’t even bother with, I already knew the answer to that was a resounding no, so no point worrying about it.
Camp Ice Cap was at Point 660 on the permanent ice sheet that covers most of Greenland and my feeling of nervousness intensified as we drove the 38km from Kangerlussuaq to get to the edge of the ice sheet.
Of the seven of us on the tour, on paper, I was the one with the most experience since I was the only one who had ever used crampons before, when I did a heli-hike on the Fox Glacier in New Zealand and I was also the only one who had ever camped out on the ice before when I slept in a tent on an Antarctic island. Oh how evidence can lie! Neither one of those things was remote preparation for what lay ahead.
Wreckage from a plane crash
On the way to the permanent ice sheet we stopped to look at the wreckage of a plane that had crashed and the plane wreck had just been left there. I knew flying in the Arctic was dangerous from my time flying in the Northwest Territories in Canada. The challenging weather could make for very hazardous flying conditions and add to that the fact that compasses are much less reliable because of the proximity to the magnetic pole means that pilots really need to know what they’re doing to be able to fly in the North. And here was a stark example of what happened if a pilot didn’t know what he was doing!
To start with we put crampons on, I put my rucksack on my back and there were also sledges with equipment that needed to be pulled to the campsite which was a 2 kilometre walk over the ice sheet and would take about half an hour. There were 5 sledges and 9 of us, so I avoided being one of the ones who had to pull a sledge. I knew I would only just be able to manage myself and my rucksack and anticipated that by the time we left camp the following day, everyone else would realise that too and wouldn’t even think about asking me to try and pull a sledge on the way back. And this was a correct assumption.
The hike to the camp wasn’t too bad, trekking over the snow covered ice sheet, although there was quite a lot of exposed ice visible and we had to walk across some of it. Apparently the ice sheet is 3.5km thick. So it goes down a long way. And has the potential to hold some very deep crevasses, which is why you can’t go wandering about on your own. If you hit a snow bridge that won’t take your weight you just sink into the snow and presumably suffocate. What a cheery thought. Or you might fall into a crevasse never to be seen again.
The vast Greenlandic permanent ice sheet stretching out ahead of us
The ice sheet was very uneven, lots of ups and downs, why did I imagine it was going to be flat? I suppose when you think of polar explorers you just have a vision of them pulling a sledge across a flat expanse of endless snow. And of course, the reality is nothing like that. When you do get to exposed ice it is extremely hard so you really have to stamp into it to get a grip with your crampons. Luckily there wasn’t too much of that on this hike.
I was lagging behind everyone else on the hike, despite the fact I didn’t have to drag a sledge. There were 2 guides, an old Inuit Greenlander called Adam who had been going on the ice for 35 years and Stefan who was Danish and had been in Greenland for a fortnight and was learning to be a guide. He was already a qualified mountaineer, he just needed to learn the terrain in this particular area. Adam was leading the way and Stefan was at the back with me. I wasn’t too far behind the others and then Stefan pointed out the camp. There was a large orange dome tent already up. That was basically the tent where we all congregated, sat round the gas burner and it was quite warm in there. We had a cup of tea and then it was time to put up the tents.
Ice Cap 660 Camp
I don’t remember much about putting up tents from when I spent a night on the ice on Antarctica over 10 years ago. As far as I recall I didn’t actually do a great deal. This was going to be different, 4 tents to put up in absolutely freezing temperatures and we had to use ice screws to pitch the tents too. I had a tent to myself as I was the only single woman on the trip.
Putting up tents, from what I can tell, is not fun. Putting up tents in the snow and ice and freezing cold is even less fun.
We had to find a spot in this harsh environment of black ice hills to pitch our tents
The blokes did the heavy work, digging the snow out to reach the ice, putting the ice screws into the ice for a stable foundation for the tents and I helped with putting the poles into the tent and clipping them into place, more difficult than it sounds when it’s minus 20 degrees and you’re trying to use fiddly clips with enormous thick gloves on. I had 3 pairs of gloves and permanently wore 2 pairs, but in order to do the more fiddly work I had to take the thicker pair of gloves off and just work with the thin pair and then quickly replace the bigger gloves to warm up again. You can get cold and frostbite very quickly and you didn’t have to have your hands exposed for very long for them to feel absolutely freezing. Even with two pairs of thermal socks on and my new boots that are supposed to withstand temperatures of minus 32 degrees Celsius, my feet always felt cold.
This was going to be good to do as an experience, but why anyone would choose to do this more than once was a mystery to me. My tent was the last one to go up and two of my fellow adventurers Matt and John helped me put it up, along with Stefan, the guide. Two inflatable sleeping mats, a sleeping bag and an inner fleece cocoon got thrown into the tent for later and then we went back to the main pod for our evening meal.
The Greenlandic permanent ice sheet is up to 3.5km thick
I had already decided I was not eating the dehydrated food that was being provided. I think they just give people that as an authentic experience so you can feel like a polar explorer, but it was entirely unnecessary to eat it. They had bread, butter, cheese, dried fruit, chocolate and I had my stock of fruit and nut bars in case I got really stuck. They even had Earl Grey tea, so I didn’t need to use my own supply of teabags. So everyone else gamely gave the dehydrated food a go and I had cheese on toast! And we got to know each other a bit as we sat chatting in the tent. There was a Danish father and daughter, Matt who lived in Plymouth and had come to Greenland for a long weekend to do Camp Ice Sheet. John was from Dublin, but lived in London and had also come to Greenland for a long weekend and there was an American mother and daughter. We all chatted for quite a while in the lovely warm tent with the gas burner and then it was time to go and sleep in the tent. Prior to that I decided I had to brave the toilet.
There was a tall green tent a little distance away which contained the toilet. The most difficult thing for me was trying to find which side of this tent the zip was on so I could actually get inside. Not easy in the dark with just a torch from Tesco to help you. They had got this portable toilet with a large plastic bag inside it to collect everything, which would then have to be transported out at the end of the camping expedition. It was hardly Raffles, but it could have been worse.
I do think this adds weight to my argument that we should be able to live on batteries as this would eliminate the necessity for transporting portable toilets to the middle of nowhere. But since that isn’t an option at this moment in time, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.
So next thing was inflating these two sleeping mattresses in my tent. In my opinion as well as having remote control tents which pop up all ready to sleep in at the touch of a button so we didn’t have to assemble them in sub-zero temperatures, the mattresses should have been self-inflating. I was still struggling to figure out how to inflate them when Stefan came to check on me and I told him I couldn’t inflate the mattresses. It was simply a case of blowing them up yourself, which I suspected was the case, but you had to just twist the tops and blow into them, rather than completely unscrewing the tops, which was what had been baffling me. Stefan blew them up for me, made sure I knew what to do with the sleeping bags, one big sleeping bag and an inner cocoon made of fleece to go inside that and then I had to attempt to get into them, not as easy as it sounds in a freezing cold, dark, tiny tent with just my Tesco torch giving me a bit of light. The boots, waterproofs and jeans came off, I took off my jumper to use as a pillow, got my iPod ready to rock me to sleep and managed to get into the sleeping bag.
Mountaineers use this brand of tent when they climb Everest – they must be absolutely freezing too!
The air mattresses weren’t really big enough. You needed a double one to be able to sleep comfortably. You had to line them up in a straight line on top of each other and get the sleeping bags directly on top of them to keep off the frozen ground. And it wasn’t easy to manoeuvre. I wasn’t laying in a straight line and my feet even in two pairs of thermal socks got a bit cold because they were always resting against the side of the tent. You could feel the cold even with 2 pairs of socks on and through 2 sleeping bags when the temperature is minus 25 degrees Celsius. But I found it impossible to line up the mattresses and sleeping bags so that my feet didn’t touch the side of the tent.
I didn’t expect to sleep at all, so the fact that I did get some sleep was a bonus. By 5am I was awake, breakfast was 7.30 in the main tent, I stayed in my sleeping bag to keep warm and then braved the toilet at 6am for the final time on the trip. My tent was closest to the toilet so I could hear if anyone else came past to use it, so I knew I’d gone before anyone else had. I got dressed and went for breakfast. We had breakfast and then it was time for our morning hike over the ice sheet.
Preparing to hike on the Greenlandic permanent ice sheet
Permanent ice sheet. Now I know the word ice is in the name, but even so, I didn’t expect it to be exposed ice that was like glass and virtually impossible to walk on, I expected it to be covered in a fairly deep layer of snow to cushion things a bit. The reality was there was a light dusting of snow from the overnight flurries and drifts, but basically, you were walking on black ice. Black ice, in England, on flat pavements is lethal. So now imagine black ice on a series of inclines and declines. You have crampons on. They did very little help to me. The ice is so solid they don’t seem to stick in very well. You had poles, but the ice is solid and the poles won’t stick into the ice, therefore they give you no stability and are worse than useless. To say I was absolutely terrified was an understatement.
I remember when I was at the Waitomo Caves in New Zealand and did the adventure caving which was very hard going physically. I couldn’t keep up with the other four who were on the tour, but there were two guides and one was always with me. I remember asking Haydn, one of the guides, if I was the slowest person they’d had on the tour and he said, not by a long way, in fact, they assessed the people at the start of the tour and if they were deemed incapable of completing the adventure caving they were escorted out by a third guide before the point of no return. Haydn said they did have to say to some people, “you can’t come, you’re too useless” and the third guide would lead them out of the cave. It wouldn’t surprise me with the Kiwis if they were blunt enough to actually say to people, “you can’t come, you’re too useless”.
Intrepid polar explorer equipped with poles and crampons setting out to conquer the Arctic wasteland
This is what I was anticipating could happen on this hike across the black ice hills of the permanent ice sheet. I’d found the hike to the camp challenging enough, but it was manageable. However, this was different. Within 5 minutes of walking on this black ice with its inclines and declines, even if the Greenlandic Inuit was too polite to tell me I couldn’t come, I was too useless, I was honest enough to say it to myself. If I carried on I’d break my leg or my neck. Possibly with a little more practice and preparation and perseverance I might have managed the hike, and I felt like a complete wimp, as was often the case, for backing out, but was trying to prove I was a hero worth the risk of getting helicoptered out on a stretcher? And to make me feel slightly better, John was almost as useless as me, he got about 10 steps further and then also refused to continue. So Stefan escorted us back to camp.
Me and John took a few photos and then while John was given an ice axe to chop some ice to melt for hot water, I had to take down my tent. I was thinking as I went inside to pack my sleeping bag that it was Sunday and it would normally be dance class.
I’ve never said no to attempting any moves in dance class, any lifts or drops even if they look daunting. I haven’t tried the one where I get tipped upside down and flipped because it hasn’t been demonstrated in a class I’ve attended yet, but I would have happily practised that with my dance partner for an hour and a half over hiking over those glass ice hills. It really was the most difficult thing I’ve ever been faced with, I can manage caving and if I’ve got ropes to hang on to like in the ice cave in Iceland, then I can also manage. If this hike had been with the aid of ropes, I could have managed it, but with unstable poles and unstable legs, it was a disaster waiting to happen.
I was pleased I’d been to the North Pole in a boat, because that crazy dream I’ve had a few times about maybe one day skiing to the North Pole has evaporated. Certainly if it’s anything like what I was faced with on the ice sheet it would be impossible. But if it was over snow, I might be able to do it. And I suppose if you had skis it would be snow and not ice. I’d also thought about trying ice climbing in Greenland. Maybe not such a good idea, although I might manage it with ropes. The thing is, if I had to get to the climbing point over terrain like the ice sheet without ropes, it would be a non-starter.
So after a few attempts at folding I managed to stuff the cocoon into its bag. Then I started on the bigger sleeping bag. I spent about 15 minutes puffing and panting trying to get the sleeping bag into its bag before I realised that I was trying to stuff the sleeping bag into the bag for the air mattress which was why it was impossible to get it all in. Those of you who go camping on a regular basis can stop laughing now. So I started again, with the right bag this time and managed to stuff it inside. I deflated the air mattresses and then Stefan came along and rolled them up and put them in the bag and then it was time to take down tent. I took down the tent on my own with Stefan’s assistance and that was my tent down and I could go into the big tent, in the warm to have a cup of tea. Then the others got back, we had something to eat, dismantled the other tents, put everything in sledges and headed back to the vehicle that would take us back to Kangerlussuaq.
Step onto a snow bridge and you could fall straight into a crevasse like this
Another long hike, but as everyone had realised I was completely useless, there was no suggestion of me dragging one of the sledges because it was my turn. I could only just manage myself and my rucksack. There was quite a bit of up and down on the route back, but it was all snow, very little ice, there was just one section that I struggled on a bit, when that happens I just freeze and can’t move. I have no idea which leg to move or where to put it. Eventually I realise I have to move, my brain kicks into gear and I work something out because I know I can’t stand there all day. I’m really not cut out for the life of adventure am I?
I have a constant debate about pushing myself to do things that are challenging. Is it better to book them and try and do them and then fail to do the entire thing if they turn out to be a bit beyond my capabilities, but congratulate myself for what I have achieved? Or should I know better, realise it is going to be too difficult for me and not attempt it in the first place? I was talking to a British couple in the Old Camp later who were probably about my age. The woman said she definitely would not have managed the hike. She’d been on an afternoon trip on the ice sheet where they just walk on the snowy part, so she’d seen the black ice hills and said she wouldn’t have walked on those under any circumstances. She seemed to think that the hike to the camp, putting up tents in the freezing cold and camping out overnight was enough of an achievement in itself and it would be a shame to push myself beyond my capabilities and be airlifted out, especially when I had another week in Greenland with plenty more things to look forward to. So let’s go with that.
The thing is when it comes to skydiving, bungy jumping and that kind of thing, it doesn’t bother me. I know if I do something like that in a country with proper safety laws, regular checks on equipment and fully trained staff, it’s going to be an exciting adrenaline rush, but I won’t be in any danger.
Reindeer grazing in the snowy fields
Anyway, we were transported back to Kangerlussuaq by tundra truck, one of those big trucks that are high off the ground and have big windows. For the second day running, the heating wasn’t working and it was colder in the tundra truck than outside. We had to wait for the tundra truck to turn up after hiking from the ice camp, then we had to wait for the less adventurous tourists to do their small walk on the ice sheet, then we had to wait while they all had two cups of hot chocolate or coffee before heading back to Kangerlussuaq in an unheated truck. It wasn’t pleasant, all of us who’d been out on the ice all night were completely fed up, but at last we were back at the Old Camp accommodation which was as welcome a sight as the luxury Das Cataratas Hotel at the Iguacu Falls, despite looking like a room in a university Halls of Residence. I made myself a cup of tea, had a shower and then treated myself to the small bottle of white wine I’d got on the plane from Copenhagen. The wine was a celebration, to congratulate myself on making it back alive and in one piece.
Whatever I say about the camping on the ice sheet, it was worth doing, I trekked on the Greenlandic permanent ice sheet, maybe not as far as some of the others, but further than most people will ever do and I slept out on the ice sheet in a tent on my own. I also enjoyed the company; we did have fun chatting to each other around the gas burner in the tent. It’s one of those things you can look back on and be pleased you did. Some experiences were awful at the time, but you look back on them and are pleased you did them. Generally this wasn’t completely ghastly at the time, a lot of it was enjoyable and I even managed to get a bit of sleep when I was in the tent. It wouldn’t be for everyone, but I had a great experience.
I travelled to Greenland in the second half of March 2017.
