Greenland I

This is part 1 of 3 of my trip to Greenland. There is a pre post trip you can also read.

The plane I took landed in Narsarsuaq on the 3rd of July and so my most planned trip ever began! I say most planned, it was however still not very well planned... since I had already forgotten about 1 thing, the boat ride to the starting point of the trip, but I soon found someone who could help me with that. As I was trying to stuff 15 days of food into my already heavy pack, I looked around at other people from the plane and tried to figure out if they where as crazy as me. I saw one guy pack a jar of Nutella and I immediately knew I was not alone.

It turned out he was going solo mountain climbing in a bunch of different places, when I proudly showed him my plan he asked me "Aren't you worried about polar bears?", to which I replied "Aren't you?".... After exchanging some more information about the surrounding area it was time for me to head off.

After the boat ride to the starting point I saw the boat go away and realised that was the start of two weeks of almost no contact with other people. But I liked the idea, it was part of the reason I picked Greenland as a destination. I wanted to know how I would cope with being alone for more than a few days. Since I hadn't gotten any sleep traveling I expected to be pretty tired, but I wasn't so I set of on up the first valley.

Despite the pack weight of 9 million tons (okay, more like 25 kg) I made good progress and was really enjoying the view. The map I used was an old soviet army map from the 1980's. Most of the towns on the map didn't exist anymore and the map scale was really small (1: 250 000), so I soon decided it would be better to just identify larger mountains in the distance and sort of aim for those in stead of trying to follow the contours of the map. This made navigation pretty easy after a while.

After a scary first ever packraft ride on the outflow of the Jespersen glacier I found a flat spot and put up my tent.

The second day started very cloudy, and according to Willem's report* it would also bring lots of bushwhacking. I maanged to avoid the bushwhacking by taking a little detour around a nice like. I spend this day mainly rafting across a few lakes and hiking between them. I also went swimming in one of the lakes which was really nice.

(*So in the previous post I mentioned my planned route is basically the same as Willem's (Belgian packrafter) route he did in 2013, this is mainly because it's the only way to get to Nanortalik. He had also published a very detailed trip report on his blog. Before the trip I decided to print it out as it might be a handy reference point. So if I mention Willem's report you now know what I mean by that.)

The next day the weather improved. I crossed a dammed lake and was suprised to see some buildings. There was some sort of hydro-power plant next to the dam so I assumed there would be people living there. When I went down I indeed saw some people. They also spotted me and by the time I reached their house a big family of 7 people was waiting for me. They didn't say anything at first, so I made the first move asking if any of them spoke english. They surpirsed me in that almost all of them did. They invited me in for coffee. What happened next was very weird... I walked in the house, and inside I see a huge tv, now even though it didn't fit the picture of Greenlandic live I had in my head it's not the weirdest thing ever... The weird thing what was on the tv at the time. It was the soccer World Cup, Holland vs Costa Rica. You must understand that for Holland it's basically the biggest sporting event for us. I had already accepted that I would not be able to see the rest of the world cup when I left, so this was totally unexpected.

So there I was, in Greenland, watching a soccer match with the nicest Greenlandic family ever. Marius (the farm owner) told me he was one of 3 potato farmers in all of South Greenland. He grows 30 tons of it every year, that's even more then my pack weight! They invited me to stay for dinner and spend the night, which I of course accepted. After dinner we had a little repeat of the world cup match outside on a field, this time Greenland won.

Greenlandic people seem to be obsessed with polar bears. Everyone I meet either asks me if I'm worried about them or tells me their own polar bear encounter story. Marius told me his son had to shoot one in 2013, when it came all the way to their home in late April. He said the stomach of the bear was almost empty, so it must have been very hungry to go this far away from the ice. His son showed me the tattoo he got for the occasion, which I thought was a pretty legitimate reason for getting a tattoo.

The next 2 days where mainly hiking because the wind was to strong for rafting. Also the mosquitoes where quite bad and the ground was very wet and soggy.... So to keep things interesting lets skip that and move on to day 6.

Day 6 was a big day, Willem's report was going on and on about how it was the most dangerous and unprepared section. By now I had already made up my mind that Willem has quite a neck for dramatic writing and not all is at it seems (no offence to Willem, it's a very nice write up still!). A couple of hours into the hike it does get quite steep but nothing spectacular until.... I slip and fall a couple of meters down and a rock follows me and lands on my ankle. At first it hurt a lot and there was a lot of blood, so I was really worried that it would be the end of my trip. I did however notice it wasn't broken, so I waited an hour to see what it would do before pushing my SOS button.

An hour later and it was still very painfull but I knew I could at least cary on. I did however have to turn around, there was no way I could continue to climb today. It took me 4 hours to go back down and when I got the foot of the fjord I had to make a decision. Either go back all the way to Marius's farm or keep going to Nanortalik by packraft, hoping the ankle would get better. On the map it said there was a town 2 days away, where I could maybe rest my leg for a while. If this town even still exists.... I decide to make camp along the shore of the fjord. The next day the ankle feels much better, (still can't hike on it though) so I decide to keep going towards Nanortalik!

Luckily I was able to raft for the entire day and hopefully end up in the town called Sletten. The weather was bad and windy which made progress very slow, and without a save place to go on shore I even had to hide in a cave for a little while when the tide came in. After a scary couple of hours in the cave (there was a jellyfish to keep me company though) the weather calmed and I finally made my way to Sletten.

To my great relief I found out it was not abandoned and soon found an English speaking person named Apa. He said I was the first "tourist" to come here in 2 years so he happily showed me around and introduced me to some other locals. One drunk guy took me on a ride on a quad bike and showed me some viking ruins nearby the village, the ruins where almost as impressive as this guys drunk driving skills (do not drink and drive unless you own the only vehicle of the entire vilage and there are no roads). Later that night they invited me to a party which was really awesome.

Apa playing Greenlandic tunes

More in part 2

Alps 2014

I did a nice section of the Alp Haute Route at the end of may of 2014. It was partly to preper for a bigger trip (to Greenland) but mostly because I just had some extra time available and it seemed like a great trail to experience. It was quite early season, and there where almost no other people at all on the trail, which gave for an unforgettable experience.

I will upload pictures and write a little piece about this once I have the chance.

Greenland pre-trip post

There have been a lot of requests for a blog post about my plans for this year so here goes! This year I'm going to Greenland. It will be a solo hike and packraft trip. I'll get to the packraft bit later (I didn't know what it was either until a little while ago), but first let's talk about the location.

On the 2nd of July I will be free from cubical life once again. I will take a train to Amsterdam, proceed to fly to Copenhagen and spend the night there and on the next morning fly to one of the larger towns in Greenland named Narsarsuaq which is in the southern part of Greenland. The plan is to head south and go towards pretty much the most southern point of Greenland. The route will mainly be based on a route from a Belgium guy named Willem who has done the same trip (see his blog here). The difference being my route will probably be a bit longer and there will be more high altitude climbing in the second part of the trip.

Here's an overview of the path (credits go to Willem, I simply edited his posted route), the red and blue lines are from Willem's trip, the orange parts are my additions. I will probably change it a little bit more in the future, and these are definitely only guidelines. The weather plays a big factor in these regions so I might not have the time to do all of it.

There is a small town in the middle named Tasiassuq. I will send a food drop there beforehand, 13 days worth of food. This place will be considered the half way point. I will start off this trip with 14 days worth of food. The total hiking days will be 25/26 ish. So there are 2 extra days worth of food I will carry just to be save.

The blue lines are parts that will be packrafted. Now this is something new for me entirely. Packrafting is basically the "light weight" option to carry your own inflatable raft with you for crossing fjords/streams and rivers. I have never done this, but on a trip in the Alps last year I met someone who did a lot of it and the way he was talking about it, it sounded really awesome. So after I found this route I was sure of it. The only issue is that packrafts are not cheap, the one I want to buy will set me back 1000 euro's easily (included all the gear), and the worst part is it will add about 4 kilo's to my pack weight which is already going to be very high because of the 14 days of food I have to carry. But nonetheless I want to try it anyway.

I'm finally able to afford the good stuff! 26 meals for 26 days.

I still have some things I need to do. The biggest of which being finding the correct way to send food to half way point (source online tell me it's difficult with customs and all this weird food), and buying and testing a packraft, which I will be doing next week. Other then that I already have most of the gear I need, I will be uploading a gear list when I have the time to make one, but I am aiming for a base weight of around 11 kg's (including packraft stuff, not including food/fuel/water).

There is a little bit of risk involved in this trip. It's going to be tough terrain and I will have to make sure I don't get lost since it's a very desolate place and there are no trails. The maps are not very good, some of them are from the Soviet military from 40 years ago. Also there are mosquito's everywhere. But I think the most difficult part about the trip will be that there are no other people in between towns...none at all. Being without human contact will be very difficult for me I think, but I am also very curious to see how it will affect me. I don't know why I do these things...

After 25 days I will arrive in Nanortalik and get to fly in a helicopter (secretly this is like 50% of the reason I'm doing this whole trip) back to the starting point and I'll have a day to relax before heading back home.