Packing and preparing to go– March/April, 2017
I’ve been fascinated by Greenland as long as I can remember. Greenland, the world’s largest island, is almost completely covered by ice and snow– eighty percent of the landmass is covered by an ice sheet over two miles thick that would cause sea levels to rise by more than 23 feet if it melted! When I was a kid, I would go down to the basement and open a trunk that contained items from my dad’s past that belied the suit and tie world that was all I had ever known him to live in. There in that trunk, was evidence that my father had lived a life that was exciting and exotic compared to the cookie cutter suburbia where we lived. There were kamik (mukluk) boots hand-sewn by Inuit women, a knife with a handle hand-carved from walrus bone, and a hand-made Anorak jacket made from white parachute cloth.
And then there were the photos: my father as a young man in army fatigues working with weather equipment; photos of Inuit hunters in front of a narwhal they had killed; dog sled teams; native men in kayaks. Indeed, there were even photos of my dad on skis! Skis! We lived in suburban Philadelphia and I didn’t even know that my dad had ever skied– this was definitely something that I had to get to the bottom of.
As I got older, I learned that my dad had served in the Army during WWII where he had been a meteorologist at a remote weather station on the East coast of Greenland above the arctic circle. The weather station was manned by 11 GI’s who became ice-bound when the war in Europe ended and therefore had to spend another year before an icebreaker could be brought in to relieve them.
During that year, the crew including my dad performed their weather duties at the station, visited the nearby native village of Scoresbysund, and participated in various activities like going on whale and seal hunts by dog-sled and boat. He kept a journal during his time there and during the last few months of his life last winter, I went through it with him and helped to put it into a format where it could be published. I have included a few photos from his journal here.
My father died last March 13, just two days shy of his 92 birthday. Even though he had been a very good photographer his entire life and had traveled to over 50 countries, the only photos that he wanted around him during his last few bed-ridden months other than those of family were of the year that he had spent in Greenland. As you can imagine, this was the adventure of his lifetime- a unique chance to experience and live among another culture far from the center city Philadelphia row houses that he had grown up in. As he lay there, we went over his journal and he got to relive that time in his life through the writings that we pored over together.
As we discussed the time that he spent in this remote and wild place, I remember forming a vague concept that maybe I might try to go there to combine one of my favorite activities- ski mountaineering- in the place that had been so central to his life. In my mind, this wasn’t too far-fetched. Because my Dad’s infatuation with Greenland had been passed down to me, I had already visited there a couple of times before.
The first trip was after my mom died in 2001 when I went with my dad to see the area where he had served- we went on a 10 day trip up the impossibly beautiful Scoresby Sound on a small boat manned by Ole Brønlund and his two sons. Ole had been a hunter from the small village of Scoresbysund nearby where he had served which is also known by the equally impossible to pronounce Greenlandic name of Ittoqqortoormiit. His last name was the same as one of the Inuit women that dad had known while he had been there in 1945. On that first trip, we passed by icebergs that calved from the enormous ice sheet at the end of the fjord. All along the way, mountains rose straight out of the water and I remember thinking at the time what a great place to try to come back to someday to ski and climb!
My wife, Sonya, and I then did a 9 day back pack trip on our own further south near Tasiilaq shortly after that and we got to experience the awesome realization that we were completely on our own– somewhere in the Arctic with only the sounds of stately icebergs occasionally turning in the quiet fjord outside of our lonely little tent. I don’t think that I have ever felt so exposed to whatever might have come our way. We may have told someone in the little town where we were going, but somehow I doubt it. We never saw a soul for the entire trip and we just had a rough map that we used to dead reckon using a compass and altimeter across that austere, barren landscape.
The next time was in 2013 when Sonya and I signed up for a two week kayak trip along the Southwest coast of Greenland. We started our trip this time from the place where Eric the Red founded a viking colony after he had been expelled from Iceland for murder. This part of Greenland has a completely different feel than along the east coast- it is warm enough for one thing that the vikings had viable farms there for almost 500 years before they mysteriously died out. There are still some ruins as well as reconstructions of a viking longhouse and the church that Eric built for his wife there. Again, we flew from Reykjavik, but this time to Narsarssuaq, which was known as Bluie West One during WWII. It turns out that my dad had landed on this same airfield almost 70 years before. Our trip was incredible and although we got the same feelings of wildness as on our solo adventure, this time we were part of a guided group from France and Spain– we were the lone Americans along.
So, here it was just after the one-year anniversary of my dad’s death, and I was preparing once again to go to Greenland- the place that had been so pivotal to his life and was now becoming somewhat of a theme in mine as well. Shortly after his death, I found myself searching on-line about back country skiing in Greenland and I came across a guiding service that offered ski mountaineering expeditions in East Greenland. I contacted the guide, Matt Spenceley of Pirhuk (http://www.expeditiongreenland.com), and we started emailing back and forth through the summer and fall and I finally signed up in December. It would be a two week expedition starting from the town of Kulusuk along the East coast and would entail going by dog-sled to the end of a fjord where we get on our skis and would carry our gear about a day to our first base-camp. From there, the idea would be to explore an area that had so far not been been skied or climbed before. It turns out that the mountains that I had been looking at across the fjord from where Sonya and I hiked in 2002 were the very peaks we were going to explore on this trip 15 years later. Even though I was getting older- I just turned 61 this year- I signed up and then somehow talked some friends from Seattle to sign up as well!
So, three of us from Seattle– Paul, Steve, and me– are planning on flying to Reykjavik, Iceland, where we will then get on a smaller plane to fly to Kulusuk, Greenland, the next day. We are outfitted for a fairly cold expedition, although we don’t expect it to be as cold as on Denali or on other much higher peaks in the Himalaya. The difference of course is that just a few miles away will be one of the largest ice-sheets in the world, so even in spring it won’t be that warm. For two weeks, we will be climbing and skiing peaks in an area of the wild coast mountains of East Greenland that has remarkably still remained unexplored– our own little blank spot on a map!
Oh, and I almost forgot– Sonya and some other friends will meet us when we get back to Iceland and we plan to do another 10 days or so of ski touring in the northern part of that country as well as enjoying some of the more luxurious activities like soaking in the hot springs, sleeping in a bed, and eating at restaurants. But that’s another story.
Take care,
Rob.
PS- Here is a link to Matt Spenceley’s blog that includes information about his trips including the East Greenland Ski Expedition that we are going on: