Arctic Meridian

The perfect solitude of early morning on the Greenland Icecap.

When the Lonely Planet guidebook describes something as “an exercise in masochism” I should perhaps have realised that the ski-traverse of the Greenland Icecap would be no ordinary holiday! The expedition would involve ski-touring for roughly 24 days, over 10 hours per day, covering a distance of 550kms, pulling pulks (sledges) weighing up to 75kgs behind us.

Landing on Greenland’s north-east coast at the start of the expedition

For me, this was a new opportunity to realise the pure simplicity of setting off on a ski tour with a difference, pulling everything I would need to survive in temperatures as low as  -30ºC for over three weeks. Having skied the ‘last degree’ to the North Pole the previous year, the idea of a longer trip crossing the world's largest island (much of which happened to be covered in ice!) with another group of Norwegians, seemed an ideal ‘next step’ before heading off to the other end of the world to ski to the South Pole (now completed in January 2008). It also gave me a great reason to get my old car tyres out again and start pulling them around the local reservoirs behind me to strengthen my lower back muscles.

Endless expanses of snow and ice under empty skies define life on the Greenland Icecap.

Greenland, the northernmost country in the world, is 85% covered in ice. At the centre, this icecap is up to three kilometres thick, and contains ⅛th of the total global ice mass. The highest point that we would reach on this particular journey would be 2500m above sea level: however, this would be reached over many days, with the physical challenges being presented not by the height gain but more by the complexity of the glaciers at the beginning and end. The dome structure of the icecap results in the explorer always skiing into a headwind going uphill, and with a backwind on the descent.

Strangely, the entire 550km journey seemed to be all uphill, and with a strong headwind the whole way when we crossed! The sparse population of only 1 person/39.5km² - compared with 353 people/km² in the U.K. - meant that we didn’t meet anyone else along the way, unsurprisingly. In fact, the only other living things we saw over the whole journey (apart from our fellow team members, some of whom looked half dead by the end) were two Canada geese.

Mind that gap! Crevasse crossing provide regular entertainment on the icecap.

Following Fridtjof Nansen’s first recorded crossing of the icecap in1888, the most common route now taken to cross the icecap runs further north of his original route, roughly following the line of the Arctic Circle, between Kangerlussuaq (west coast) and Isortoq (east coast). The crossing is usually completed either in spring (April/May) or summer (July/August). Saying the ‘most common route’ perhaps gives the wrong impression, as  significantly less people have undertaken this ‘ski challenge’ than have climbed to the top of Everest!

We chose to complete the crossing from east to west in mid August/September, a wetter but slightly warmer time of year than the spring crossing season. Unfortunately, this meant that the descent on the west coast was made particularly difficult by the collapsing snow bridges over the underlying crevasses on the glacier, but going later into September meant that the extraordinary supra-glacial lakes (huge sink holes rather like meteor craters) and surface rivers on the west coast were slightly easier to cross.

Progress was slow and difficult during our crossing of the Icecap’s west coast

Before any expeditions are allowed to set out over the icecap, permission has to be sought from the Danish Polar Institute (Greenland, under Danish sovereignty, forms 98% of the land area of the Kingdom of Denmark). Before departure, the Greenlandic police make sure that all safety procedures are adhered to regarding equipment essentials: parties attempting the crossing must take a rifle (as this is polar bear country), sat phone, and EPIRB, a 'Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon. The Greenland Icecap is a vast wide open space and if things go wrong, it’s not the place for search and rescue parties to start playing the ‘needle in a haystack’ game.

This aspect of the logistics was all covered by Hvitserk, the Norwegian company which I had joined for this particular expedition. Our group of eight skiers (all of whom were Norwegian, except for me) had already undergone a training selection long weekend in the Nordmarka area on the outskirts of Oslo back in March. This gave us an opportunity to experience some of the hardships involved with camping in extreme cold conditions. The Norwegian winter temperatures, combined with a few runaway pulks artificially loaded down with tree trunks gave us a real chance to test our stamina, and realise just how much training was required in the intervening months before departure.

Rescuing one of the pulks from a crevasse: we had to be constantly on guard against runaway pulks, taking our precious supplies down into the ice.

The expedition began with a 4 hour boat ride from Tassilaq, through the icebergs to our start on the edge of the glacier near Isortoq. Progress at this stage was slow. After an early start at 3am each day - when the snow conditions were at their best - we skied for 30 minutes and stopped for 5 minutes, hour after hour, dragging two pulks per person uphill over the rough glacial surface. Even though our leader had completed the trip in reverse earlier in the year, conditions had changed dramatically and some of the GPS route location points couldn’t be used. On day two, we became involved in an intricate route-finding heavily crevassed area, which slowed our speed to 1km in 4 hours. We began to think we would hold the record for the slowest crossing ever!

Difficult route finding among complex crevasses on the west coast

We certainly never lacked for a good variety of food on the trip – calorie deficit is almost inevitable on these kinds of expeditions, but it’s certainly not a weight-loss programme for the faint-hearted! Taking a frying pan with insulating cover, and heat diffuser for the stoves, we made herb bread and cakes most nights. One of the Norwegian men on our team actually pulled three pulks, the third being completely filled with 80 family sized bags of potato crisps. We certainly needed the fat and salt over the course of the trip, and the variety of flavours were very much appreciated throughout the 24 days!

There’s always an easy way to travel downhill on the Greenland Icecap

After the fifth day, the icefall area had been safely negotiated, and progress became much more efficient as we reached the ‘icecap proper’. We would ski for 50 minutes, then rest for 10 minutes, for 10 hours each day. It may seem like a highly regimented way of achieving a goal, but on the training weekend back in Oslo we had identified this as one of our ‘Greenlandic team laws’. This was the way we’d agreed to proceed, otherwise time would gradually disappear from each day, and over 24 days this would have a significant impact on our overall goal.

This central part of the expedition was a real test of mental as well as physical abilities as we were subject to day after day of unrelenting wind. For several days, we were not even being able to tell whether we were skiing uphill or down, as the whiteout conditions blended the horizon with the endless snow-covered vista surrounding us. At times, I found myself realising how truly, insignificantly small we humans are in the natural  world. At this time, the icecap seemed impossibly huge. Our progress, by contrast, was miniscule.

We reached our ‘summit day’ on the 13th day of travelling, which was also  our longest day - we covered 34 kilometres. Norwegians are (almost literally) born on skis, and gliding across the snow comes naturally to them. My shear determination not to get left behind at any point meant I always managed to keep up, even if my legs were almost half a metre shorter than some of theirs! It sometimes seemed that I was putting in double the effort with every plunge of my poles.

The team taking a well-earned break

Day 16 finally brought a change to the view as we saw the small black dot on the horizon gradually ‘grow’ into the abandoned radar station, DYEII, the only building which is encountered on this section of the icecap. The Americans set up four of these DEW-line (Distant Early Warning) radar bases during the Cold War from 1958 onwards. This one finally closed in 1991. Unfortunately, the harsh Arctic conditions have now taken their toll on this building, and it may soon suffer the same fate as other DEW-line bases and have to be dismantled.

Entering the building is like stepping back into a world which has suddenly been abandoned, and where time has stood still…bottles of frozen beer and cans of food frozen cling to the shelves of the canteen area, where the tables remain set just as they were when the 100 men who were stationed at DYEII in the past would have eaten all their meals. Two Americans have established a heavy-weight camp at DYEII over the last few years during the main expedition season from April through to August. They are primarily involved in scientific research, in conjunction with the American Hercules training programme which takes place on the nearby ice strip. Unfortunately for us, they had already gone home - but not before leaving us a hugely welcome supply of home-made cookies!

DYEII – an eerie, deserted marker-point on our journey (complete with home made cookies).

Leaving DYEII for the west coast reminded us that winter was not far around the corner. Temperatures plunged even lower at night, and the encroaching darkness noticeably shortened the length of daylight. For one member of our team, the ever-present nightmare of kit failure began. We were all using Asnes Rago cross country skis, with a clip-in half skin underneath to aid traction, and the Salomen SNS binding. The weakness with this system finally showed as the connecting front bar on the boot, which clips into the binding broke loose. Despite copious amounts of glue it just wouldn’t hold in place. An improvised ‘tie the skier to the ski’ was the best option possible for the last 180kms. If it had happened to me, I seriously think I would still be crossing the icecap now!

An improvised ski binding repair. Makeshift innovations can be critical to success on polar expeditions.

As the mountains of the west coast finally came into view on the 22nd day, we knew that we could tackle whatever obstacles remained in our way. Little did we realise quite how much ‘fighting spirit’ would be needed for these last few days, as we entered the maze of routes through the crevasses of the west coast. A slight distraction from the difficulties was occasionally provided as we passed flags on wooden poles, piles of tarmac surfacing and raised sections of snow-covered road. We had stumbled on the remains of the bizarre and environmentally idiotic project of a well-known car manufacturer, which was designed to create a unique environment in which to test drive and promote their 4 wheel drive cars!

Fighting the last of the big crevasses on the west coast

The final obstacle on the 24th day involved leaving the icecap at Point 66, and hauling our pulks up the wooden ladder which constantly slipped away from underneath us down the moraine pile. But at this point, nothing could take away my sense of having suppassed my own limits. I had experienced a physical, emotional, and mental challenge of a scale I could never have imagined before I came to Greenland, to ski across one of the most vast and coldly beautiful wilderness regions on earth.  

24 days after leaving our boat near Isortoq on the East Coast, we approach Kangerlussuaq on the west coast.

Which way is straight ahead? Navigating under the massive skies of the Greenland Icecap.

 The author in Arctic Greenland