Raleigh News - 1995
A Walking Holiday in Greenland
The expedition plan could have been written on the back of an envelope: ski across Greenland from east to west, four-man team, new route, no radios, no air support, no dogs, no back up, isolation, commitment and adventure. By the time we flew to Iceland on the first leg of our journey in June 1993, eighteen months of planning had expanded the envelope to several lever arch files full of applications for grants, sponsorship proposals, permits, equipment orders, a filming contract, the best method of killing an attacking polar bear, the list goes on.
We planned to cross the icecap on a previously untravelled route from the uninhabited Vestfjord on the east to the settlement of Jacobshavn on the west. Our plans for getting to our proposed starting point at Vestfjord went awry a couple of weeks before departure. The only ski-equipped Twin Otter operator in Iceland was due to fly us onto an unprepared glacier landing at our chosen starting point. This was a weak link in our logistical chain and we were not over impressed by the announcement that a lucrative government contract for several months flying meant that he was cancelling all bookings for individual flights. We arrived in Iceland with no method of getting to Greenland, extracted our freight from Customs and looked around Reykjavik for another aircraft to charter. With an adaptable and cohesive team, the sudden changes to our careful plans were not really a problem. We located the only possible landing strip for wheeled aircraft on Greenland’s east coast, chartered a plane and set off.
The dirt airstrip at Kulusuk is inconveniently located on a small island off the east coast. More transport was required. We spent two days in a fishing boat with three Inuit: Pele, Gideon, and Enoch. Gideon fed us on seal meat and dried fish and Inuit hunting lore and gave insights into one the few cultures that is still in contact with the rhythms of the natural world, taking what it needs from the icy seas and margins of land beyond the all-pervasive internal combustion engine. On the second day we failed to cross Sermilik fjord, a narrow throat of water which was choked with floating brash ice and icebergs. We retraced our route, escaped the ice and headed off to another island Angmagssalik where we know Greenlandair operated a Bell 212 helicopter.
The change of starting point meant that it was no longer sensible to go to Jakobshavn and we decided to head for a former USAF base at Sondre Stromfjord which is now the hub of Greenland’s plane and helicopter transport system.
The helicopter pilot had flown parties onto the icecap before and made reassuring comments about not too many fatalities. He dropped us on the edge of the icecap at the top of the Hahn glacier. As the helicopter lifted off, we felt pretty isolated on the edge of this great wilderness. Ironically it was also a relief to have finally arrived at the start. Expeditions travelling to the South Pole usually start from a base on the edge of Antarctica and only reach the point of no return half way through their journey, from which point on they would not have sufficient supplies to survive the return and must press on to the Pole. In contrast, the helicopter’s departure on day one was our point of no return as we had deliberately not brought a radio and had no base to return to. We wanted to experience the isolation and commitment that an earlier generation of polar explorers had endured. Success and survival were entwined and they lay four hundred miles away on the other side of the world’s largest island. We expected to travel about ten miles a day wearing telemark skis and each pulling a fibreglass sled, or pulk, loaded with over 100 kg of food, fuel, and equipment.
The first days were spent going down the Hahn glacier to the fjord where we had planned to arrive by boat. Having arrived by helicopter we didn’t want to get home only to be told that we had not done the whole thing because we missed out the first three thousand feet. So we descended on skis, bivied in our sleeping bags and then climbed back up to our camp. We were eating into our rations and couldn’t justify any more time exploring the area. It was time to get into the sled harnesses and start putting one foot in front of the other.
My three companions Peter Price-Thomas, Carl Holt, and Jamie Miller were all 21 years old. They had met on a British Schools Exploring Society expedition to Svalbard in 1991 and all had more experience of pulling heavy pulks around or man-hauling. I had more mountaineering experience which might be useful on crevassed terrain on the western edge of the icecap. Peter was an old friend who had shared numerous rock climbing trips to far corners of Britain. On a number of occasions these ended with Peter in Accident and Emergency wards when his enthusiasam wasn’t matched with quite enough ability at holding on. Carl was in the process of joining the Royal Air Force hoping to be a fast jet pilot and Jamie had just graduated from Durham and was considering a move from the Territorial into the Regular Army.
We settled into a routine of skiing for an hour, having a short rest break and then changing lead and doing another hour. This continued with a longer lunch stop for soup from our flasks, biscuits, butter and chocolate. We followed one behind the other as the effort of pulling the pulks was considerable and it was marginally easier to follow the ski tracks of whoever was leading than make four parallel tracks. Two Global Positioning Systems (GPS) units told us how far we had travelled each day. Initially the route climbed about five thousand feet to the high central plateau. Strong winds often swept down from the north and we skied along wrapped up in gore-tex jackets and salopettes; neoprene face masks and goggles protected our faces from frostbite. At each camp the two Mountain Supernova tents were anchored down to snow stakes and often protected behind blocks of snow cut with a snowsaw and shovels. By the time we got inside the tents after a day’s work we were pretty tirerd. Supper consisted of more soup followed by a dehydrated meal with half a packet of butter added to boost calorific value. Our food had been carefully planned to be as light as possible whilst providing 6,000 calories per day. Each day the pulks got a little lighter as we ate food and burnt petrol in the MSR X-GK stoves.
After two weeks of steady progress the wind changed direction and we tried our secret weapon: horizontal parachuting. The pulks were tied together and we sat on them like children on a fairground ride. A borrowed parachute filled with air and pulled us along. It was faster and easier than manhauling. Annoyingly the wind was only in the right direction for another half day and then the manhauling was resumed. It had taken us over the watershed and it was now downhill, in theory at least, to Point 660 a psot height on the map which was the point of land where we would come off the ice and walk for a couple of days to Sondre Stromfjord.
About forty miles out from Point 660 the surface conditions began to deteriorate. Melt water streams cut across our route forcing diversions along their banks to a point where we could cross safely. This often involved donning crampons and ropes for hazardous leaps onto island of ice which the pulks could be manoeuvred onto. Shallow streams were forded running. With forward momentum the fibreglass hulls of the pulks floated and Tundra or Yeti supergaiters kept our boots fairly dry. One morning we stripped off up to the waist and carried the pulks one at a time across a wide river of meltwater. With only one pair of boots each and no means to dry them out if they got really wet, we took them off and waded barefoot over the sharp blades of ice which formed the river-bed. This combined with an air temperature approaching minus twenty provided a thoroughly unpleasant start to the day and pain in the feet which I will remember for a long time. All this water was not good for equipment or enthusiasm but in the absence of alternatives we pressed on. The distance travelled each day fell to less than half our ten-mile target as the numerous melt water streams and crevasse fields were negotiated. Miles of waist high icy ridges followed by crevasses were further obstacles. After 35 days the terrain had deteriorated so much that it was too dangerous to continue pulling the pulks and we resorted to relaying our equipment in rucksacks to Point 660. The GPS receivers were vital here, without them we would not have been able to locate the caches of equipment left on each carry. Three days later we stepped off the ice onto desolate moorland. We had safely reached land at Point 660. Several more days or arduous load carrying got all our kit off the ice and down to the airfield at Sondre Stromfjord.
Although we had not crossed the icecap by a new route due to the transport problems at the start, we had achieved our aim of crossing the icecap and we were the youngest team ever to cross the icecap and also completed our supporting objectives of filming for National Geographic Television and collecting samples for a scientific study. We felt privileged to have travelled under the stunning Arctic skies, to have experienced the emptiness and wild beauty of one of the true wildernesses on this crowded planet.
Note. Angmagssalik is now called Tasiilaq, Sondre Stromfjord is now called Kangerlussuaq, and Jabokshavn is now called Ilulissat.
