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A Day on the Greenland Ice Cap

You’d never guess what I’m up to right now. Here I am, sitting on the snow in a comfortable chair, basking in the sun and enjoying my almost evening rest. The wind is still blowing gently, bringing some warmth with it. Inside the tent, with the flap closed, it’s 28 degrees Celsius, while outside, now that it’s six in the evening, it’s about 10 degrees in the sun. It’s wonderful here. However, the day started differently. At four in the morning, we woke up in a fresh environment; it was about minus 10 degrees last night. It wasn’t extremely cold in the tent, but still fresh compared to now. It felt like Ibiza! After breakfast, we packed our things and were ready to leave at a quarter past six. Our team of five split up: three of us went on foot and two on skis. We were able to pick up speed well over the hard snow and navigate using a wind vane and the sun that was just peaking above the horizon. We had to maintain a course of 310 degrees and managed to cover almost four kilometers in an hour.

Challenges along the Way

Everything went smoothly until noon. After that, it got warmer, which softened the snow. In addition, clouds came up that obscured the sun, making our shadow navigation impossible. Navigating in Greenland often relies on sun and shadow, but without shadows, we had to rely on our compass and wind vane. The magnetic declination also plays a role here; our compass must be set to 310 degrees to account for a deviation of 22 degrees from the map north. For more information about this, you can participate in my Map and Compass Navigation Workshop in Utrecht. With the clouds lingering, navigating became more difficult without visible contours in the landscape. We had to improvise by navigating with the help of the wind vane and by regularly looking back to check if we were still walking straight.

Efficiency and Progress

We arrived at four in the afternoon after seven and a half shifts, an improvement over yesterday when we did seven shifts and stopped at 4:40 PM. This efficiency has paid off: we covered 26.1 kilometers today. It was a fantastic day and I look forward to tomorrow when we hope to reach our first milestone. Until then!