Fallen through the Ice: Adventurous Turn in Greenland Expedition

Day 25: Fallen through the Ice and a New Route

The inevitable has happened: I have fallen through the ice. Welcome to a new blog update from the Greenland Expedition Team. We are now on day 25 and my watch indicates it’s Sunday. Let’s first go back to yesterday. Yesterday we were by the water and after the blog update, I consulted with Wouter, our Basecamp Manager, about the route to follow. The original route I had planned in the Netherlands would have us cross a river twice. Two years ago, that wasn’t a problem because the river was completely dried up and frozen. However, this year a lot of water is flowing through it. In consultation with Wouter, we therefore devised an alternative route. Thanks to Copernicus satellite images, we were able to view recent images from September 1 and determine a new waypoint.

A Challenging Start

We started the day early, at 6:20 in the morning, and soon found ourselves in the middle of a crevasse field. Large glacier crevasses were visible all around us, which was fortunate because covered crevasses are no longer visible. Fortunately, the crevasses ran in the same direction as our course. Such terrain changes often mean that the terrain ahead goes downhill, which was also the case for us. We had to navigate between bumps and humps created by meltwater. After about half an hour, we reached our waypoint at the river. To our surprise, this river was cut off by another river that flowed into the first river we wanted to avoid. We decided to follow the river in the hope that it would widen and we could cross more easily. We eventually succeeded, as seen in the blog photo where Michiel and David are crossing the river.

Wind at our Back

After crossing, we were able to adjust our course towards the northwest, with strong wind at our back. This gave us extra speed and before we knew it, we had skied past our next waypoint. We reset the compass course, this time heading west to Point 616. The rest of the day we traveled through a landscape full of bumps and humps. At one point, I decided to keep my ski boots on due to the poor ground. And then it happened: I fell through the ice. The pressure on my ski boot was too great and I stepped through the ice. Michiel experienced the same shortly after.

Safe for the Night

We walked for another half hour before setting up our tent in a safe spot after thoroughly testing with ski poles to prevent falling through the ice. The ground is frozen, making it difficult to drive in stakes, but with ice axes and snow ice screws, we managed. Today we covered 27 kilometers, bringing our total to 546 kilometers. We are now at an altitude of 825 meters. Tomorrow we hope to reach Point 660, which is exactly 13 tough kilometers further as the crow flies. More on that later.