My ‘Assault’ on the Icecap
Hikers and adventure travellers: No snickering at the back!
The air tasted of Wrighley’s ‘Ice’, but this was the real article. An artic breeze washed over me like a refreshing shower. I enjoyed it nearly as much, although it slowed me down. I had’t thought there could be anything which could slow me down any further.
The mountain bike which I had dubbed ‘stubborn mule’ had agreed on three gears (out of a theoretical 21) which it would deign to assume after a lot of cussing and cursing. Neither of these quite matched the current conditions.
The gravel crunched under my front tyre, sharply redirecting my attention to the path below. I had nearly snagged on a pebble—actually more of a small rock—and it refreshed my memory of what it feels like to come off a bike on a gravel path. This early in the excursion, let alone the trip, I could not afford any injuries. With both brakes engaged, I glided slowly down the slope and dismounted, not having any kinetic energy left to start on the uphill section.
The path wound up and down like a rollercoaster. The slopes weren’t very steep, but with the lower gears not working, I had a ready-made excuse not even to try and cycle up them. It meant that I could look at the landscape a bit more. What was the rush?
The almost fluorescent-coloured horsetails at the roadside surely put the ‘green’ into Greenland.
This far inland, and in the summer, the scenery is otherwise very reminiscent of the Scottish highlands. There are barren slopes and lakes, cotton grass nodding in the breeze, and the vegetation looks similar overall; just with arctic willow, instead of gorse; blueberries, rather than heather.
The blueberries were in season, but fruit were only found in occasional patches. Walking close to the overgrown roadside—always prepared to jump out of the way of the tourist trucks which periodically clattered down the gravelly path—I developed an eye for spotting them. The berries were juiceier than back home, with a more pleasant sweet-and-sour-taste and only a hint of blueberry bitterness.
Another down-slope, and I got back into the saddle. Different leg muscles started to hurt as I engaged the pedals, but at least for a while the pressure was off my blistered feet.
I never thought of this excursion as an ‘assault on the icecap’—more of a little tour to see whether I could spot any of the musk oxen which are usually so abundant around Kangerlussuaq. Alas, the hunting season had just started and, contrary to what the tourist brochures say (‘Suddenly, one of the rocks moves! Soon, you will learn to distinguish between rocks and living musk oxen.’), I thought I saw musk oxen everywhere, but they remained resolutely still and turned out to be just rocks.
One of the tourist trucks had stopped ahead of me.
People were filing out and walking up a hill, picking berries on the way. But most soon stopped, turned around and stared. Cameras and binocular were raised.
Ahead, there was the icecap.
It looked close enough to touch, but it would be many miles away. Could I really get that far?
I started rolling down the long slope towards it, covering about a kilometre without coming any nearer.
Far in the distance, a landrover rushed across a dustpan, like a dried-up riverbed left by the receeding glaciers. It was barely visible, aside from the trail of dust it threw up. Way past the car there was yet another steep hill, with the ribbon of the path snaking up it.
Why did the path not follow the contours below the slopes? Why did it have to climb up-and-down every damn hill?
I remembered that it had partly been built for use as a testing track for some car company. That would explain the topography. But I was out of puff. If there wasn’t a shortcut through the dustpan, I would turn while I still had the reserves to get back to the campsite.
My tyres slipped in a sudden accumulation of lose sand at the bottom of the slope, causing me to reconsider my planned route.
However, there was a track leading across the dustpan, and it looked firm.
So I pressed on, occasionally dismounting to push through lose, grey sand; but I did not stop, feeling drawn to the icecap like iron filings to a magnet.
Until I came to a river.
A lone hunter had tied an inflatable to the rock. I knew it was a hunter, because his gun leant against another. The remains of a reindeer were stacked under a fly-infested plastic sheet. Blood still splattered the rock where it had been butchered. But there was no sign of the man.
As far as I looked, there was nothing here but landscape.
And then I turned my back to it and started to climb the rocks. And there, almost close enough to touch, was a wall of ice (the photo doesn’t do the perspective justice).
I took a deep breath of arctic air, blown straight off the icecap where it had been trapped for millenia.
Tags: Greenland, Tag Index
Denni