Going wild in Greenland: Kangerlussuaq – Sisimiut on foot
Text and photos by Tina Bollerslev (and some by Andrew James and I don't know who took the best ones!)


From the Ice Cap to the Coast


Flying over the Inland Ice in West Greenland
Ice, mountain tops and more ice
Greenland. Finally I made it there after so many years of dreaming about this country of ice, glaciers, fiords, mountains and wilderness. And it was just as fantastic as I had dreamt it was – possibly even better! On top of spending our 3-week summer holiday in my dream destination, we started out with my favourite activity: tramping. This time no less than a long 9 day tramp through the wilderness from where the ice cap ends (Kangerlussuaq) to where the sea begins (Sisimiut). Here is an account of the tramp.

Start of Sonder Stroemfjord(Kangerlussuaq)
Sonder Stroemfjord and me
Kangerlussuaq–Sisimiut, approx. 170 kilometres wilderness
Copenhagen – Kangerlussuaq, and Tramping day 1, Sunday 22 June 2003

We were supposed to wake up in our tent in Greenland today, but because our flight was cancelled yesterday, we wake up in the luxurious Hilton Hotel in Copenhagen Airport.

It is 7 am. We are in the ballroom for breakfast, all dressed up in our tramping gear. AJ is going for his third helping of smoked salmon from the sumptuous breakfast buffet. We really can’t complain. Since we set our foot in the Hilton, we have made good use of all the luxuries offered to us, not least the food. Now bloated, we wobble over to the airport terminal and board our plane to Greenland.


First day tramping: feeling at home in the HILTON!
Exploring Kangerlussuaq for a couple of hours
What a flight! First Iceland from the sky: dramatic volcanoes, glaciers, river systems and steep, volcanic mountain walls dropping into the sea. Then the icy Greenlandic East Coast, also very dramatic, rocky and mountainous, but the mountains slowly disappear as they are buried under the massive Inland Ice. There is lots of it - about 1.8 million sq km! In some places, it is 3000 meters thick. UNbelievable!

I have finished my Baileys (half of it on my only pair of pants) when the plane dives down between steep, rocky hills, and lands abruptly on the short runway of Kangerlussuaq. We step out of the plane and enter the airport, that is, the town centre. Kangerlussuaq. The place is really nothing but an airport. It was built by the Americans as a military airbase during WWII, strategically placed in the region with the driest climate. The town – or airport – has changed little since then. A heavy-duty container architecture still dominates the housing around of the airport (which is also a container), and it looks as if we have landed on the moon.


Sneaking in on a musk ox for a photo
Annie, who gave us a ride to the Radar station and the start of the track
We spend quite some time looking for petrol for our MSR cooker. “The Shop” (the only one in Kangerlussuaq) has none and is waiting for a delivery to bring it in about 4 days. There is no petrol station about, so I run over to a nearby container office and ask for petrol. It seems to be some sort of a traffic office, but they are helpful. After a phone call, a Statoil worker picks me up, and we drive around to the runway. In a shed in front of the Air Greenland plane that we just landed on, he fills up all three bottles (3 litres) for 10 kroner, and wishes me a happy trip. Kangerlussuaq Tourist Information doesn’t seem to worry too much about the vast wilderness, as we try to “sign in”. We can sign in if we like. Good that I have settled an agreement with my mum in Denmark to call her in 9 days! Before we start our tramp, we want to see musk oxen, so we hire two mountain bikes and head for the hills around the airport. We soon see a musk creature out by a lake, and we sneak down to take a closer look at him in true Kevin Costner “Dances with Wolves” buffalo style. He is very alert and senses our presence very quickly, then he gallops up the hill.

Clean and fit: the start of the track
Soup stop a couple of hours later – and the mozzies have found us!
We turn down Kangerlussuaq Tourist Information’s generous (!) offer to take us to the beginning of the track for 500 kroner / 50 pounds. It is 15 kilometres away, the end of the longest road existing in Greenland! We find a local woman, Annie, who squeezes us into her jeep and pay her 200 kroner. Her boyfriend works at the radar station at Kellyville where the track starts, so we go and pay him a visit. He phones up his weather people to get us a fresh weather report, and he also gives us more vital information on the track, such as, don’t use a compass as the declination is very unpredictable. It changes according to what’s in the soil you’re standing on, or even the wind and weather!

The hunters were here …
It’s 9 pm …
We head off, our backpacks are really heavy, and it is hot and sunny. Lakes, hills, lakes, hills, lakes, hills – and they all look the same! No wonder people are never found if they get lost here! I start drawing our route on the map to keep track of which lakes we are passing. The mosquitoes are a bit of nuisance when we stop for soup - and they only get worse. Around 11 pm we have found a tent site and we lie in our sleeping bags, having not quite reached our goal for today. With 4 hours gained in time (for us it is really 3 in the morning), our attempt to stay up for the midnight sun is futile, and AJ starts snoring before he has even zipped up his sleeping bag.

We are deeply fascinated by the quick landing of these combat mozzies.
Feast!
Tramping day 2, Kangerlussuaq – Sisimiut, Monday 23 June 2003

Wwwwrrrrrrooooooouuuuuum….. It’s 9 in the morning and I wake up to the sound of someone motoring around on a nearby mountain lake. It doesn’t make sense. There is no way you can get a motorboat out here, unless you drop it in by helicopter. I am waking up. Wwwwwwrrrrooooooouuuuum. Right. Not a boat. Mosquitoes. Lot’s of them, the so-called Greenlandic Air Force, and loud as. Sounds like an entire fleet of combat helicopters is hovering above our tent.


A swarm of hungry mozzies
We are wearing a lot of clothes … mozzie protection
We pack up and start walking through hot, dried-out soft bogs with plenty of mosquitoes and no wind. Fantastic. Everywhere around us are blue lakes in all shapes and sizes – and their surrounding bogs. Then it goes uphill a bit and into the wind. We take the time to look at some flowers (and eat chocolate).

A curious reindeer
Exotic Greenland
After having stayed high for a couple of hours, we descent again to a massive lake Amitsorsuaq, approx. 15 kilometres long. We can now see the little hut at the end of the lake and AJ is in front, speeding up to escape the midday heat and mosquitoes. A reindeer that was drinking from the big slab of melting ice jumps up and runs in a big circle around us, curious.

Heat exhaustion!
Give me ice! AJ is already down there, trying to get away from the heat
We make it to the hut at 2 pm, and hide from the frying sun and the annoying mosquitoes. AJ reckons it is well over 30 degrees outside, although the average temperature in July is only 11.6 degrees C. It certainly seems very hot in the sunny, windless valleys, especially when carrying a 25-kilo backpack and 100 mosquitoes at the same time.

Tina, the sunburned Reindeer …
Fantastic arctic summer!
The hut lies in a beautiful spot, absolutely beautiful. Amitsorsuaq Lake is so big, clear and colourful with a big slab of melting ice coming down between the hills, throwing rays of bright blue and turquoise into it. Lunch consists of 3 packets of two-minute noodles and some Danish ‘knaekbroed’ with hummus. We leave again at 3:30 pm, to continue our walk around the massive Amitsorsuaq. There is a nice breeze, and we try to go for a swim, but fail because the water is absolutely freezing…. And, well, who cares anyway?

The somewhat icy path to the hut
Walking around Lake Amitsorsuaq …takes days
We find a suitable tent site halfway down the lake, and collapse in the grass (with our head nets on, of course). It’s 9 pm, so we cook up our Bean Feast with mashed potatoes (brilliant tramping food!) and pitch the tent. We even get dessert – chocolate mousse cooled in the lake – and I manage to stay up for the midnight sun, only just to take a picture, before I jump into the tent and join the snoring.

Yes! I made it! My first Arctic midnight awake!
Fantastic morning on the lake
Tramping day 3, Kangerlussuaq – Sisimiut, Tuesday 24 June 2003

We have our breakfast overlooking fantastic reflections on Amitsorsuaq Lake. Our plans to leave early suddently change when AJ realises that he has set the shrub (and other great things!) at our ‘toilet’ rock on fire in the well-meaning attempt to burn the used toilet paper. The vegetation covering the whole landscape here is just a massive, hilly carpet of dry, airy turf. In addition, the valley tunnels the wind along, meaning that a turd on fire would cause a catastrophe here. We spend the next hour or so running back and forth between the lake and the rock with water and wet sand. We sweat and swear a bit – the sun is already frying us at 10 am, and the mosquitoes seem very pleased with us staying at the tent site longer. After an hour we think (and hope!) we have prevented a catastrophe from happening, and we head along the lake.


Our campsite – and its reflection
DEMOTIVATED: We are going out to the coast (my finger), and we have already walked full-on for three days from the edge of the map .... and only got this far (my foot)?!
It is very hot, and we have several blister stops before lunch. We try to slow our pace down – until now we have walked a bit to fast and exhausted ourselves in the heat, then had to take long breaks instead. We reach the quite large hut, ‘the canoe centre’ at 1 pm and collapse inside on the beds, away from the sun and the mosquitoes. I cook up a pot of two-minute noodles, and we try to rehydrate, while counting blisters. So much for the guaranteed blister-free socks bought in Cambridge! We look at the map of the entire track on the wall and go a bit silent. It is demotivating. No, challenging. Errh, well, the thing is, we are on day three, but it doesn’t look like we have hardly made any distance on the map. The coast looks months away! O well, this is fun (but even more fun when it’s over?) – I laugh and point with my blister foot and finger, and AJ takes a picture. Although another six days of probably even longer hours of sweat, blisters, mosquitoes and headnet seem a bit much at this point, I am still loving it. Being outside, in the wild wild! Haven’t seen a single person since we left Kangerlussuaq. Awesome, or what?! I make a comment – AJ mumbles something less enthusiatic in reply. He reckons the heat melts him from the inside (this becomes true later).

The next 4 kilometres is a dream …
AJ is paddling while I’m fishing with Jelly-beans
We borrow a canoe from the hut (Sisimiut Tourist Association left the canoes there to use for free – thank you so much, guys!) and travel 4 kilometres down to the end of the lake. This is fantastic and the good mood and enthusiasm is back in the camp! The wind is in our back, so we hardly paddle (I don’t anyway because I sit behind AJ). Instead I try to fish, without luck. The lake is so beautiful, calm and fresh, and having no weight on our feet is bliss. After only 40 minutes in the canoe, we land at the far end of the lake and disturb a large, strange duck that makes loud owl-sounding noises. Then we head over a hill and descend into a big valley – a large dried-out sponge bog – hard going stuff. The heat is unbearable, the air stands still in the valley – there is no escape. We call it Death Valley.

”Death Valley” where AJ got his sun stroke
Mr. Wet T-shirt and Wet cap – the doused look for sun protection
When we are finally through the valley, AJ is pretty over-cooked, to say the least. He’s having a heat stroke. At Kangerluatsiarsuaq Lagoon, we camp near the river, and AJ spends the rest of the evening lying naked inside the tent with a wet T-shirt over him, desperately trying to cool his body down. A massive headache accompanies him to bed. I feel fine, and suffer only from heavy mosquito attacks on my forehead and rear end while cooking our beanfeast that evening (Everytime I bend over they get my rear through the tightened pants!)

Tramping day 4, Kangerlussuaq – Sisimiut, Wednesday 25 June 2003

AJ is feeling better, and we start early (7 am) at a slower pace and allow plenty of stops to douse cap and T-shirt in water to stay cool in the sun. Adopting a different strategy today, we want to reach the hut (the only chance to get out of the sun) at midday and spend all day there, then continue closer to the evening and walk until late.


I feel ALIVE!
… and overwhelmed …
There is a steep climb onto a plateau, offering great views over Lake Tasersuaq (nr. 1) and the scenery is getting more and more mountainous. An arctic fox shoot across the plateau. We reach the mountain shelter just in time to escape another heat stroke at 1 pm, both feeling pretty exhausted and very hot.

We recover by sleeping, eating, and hanging out in the mountain hut. My defeat to AJ in cards helps miraculously. At 6 pm we continue up over the plateau, and it is quite windy and pleasant. I spot a white arctic hare grassing below us, and AJ sneaks up on it in order to take the all time picture. The hare doesn’t care at all. When AJ runs out of rocks to hide behind, he is able to approach the Alice in Wonderland creature even further, very carefully, while being attacked by mosquito swarms. When he is right up close to the white creature, I get up from the top of the hill and wander down to have a look at him as well. We get within a couple of metres of him, before he slowly wanders off up over the hill.


An Arctic hare directly from Alice in Wonder-Green-land
Itenneq valley, here we come!

That evening, we descend down to Itenneq, the Valley of Ole’s Lakseelv, which we have read horror stories about. The massive bog valley has completely dried out, and it is hard to imagine that people have struggled their way across this valley floor in thigh deep water and mud. We slender across on dry land in less than half an hour. The river, Ole’s Lakseelv, which some people have had to swim across, is also calm, though waist deep, but there is a canoe for us to use for our crossing! Seeing the many fish in the river, we spend the next hour going up and down in the canoe, fishing with jelly beans (I’m fishing, AJ is paddling). No luck, but it is a beautiful evening.

As we continue, we joke about the fairly fresh musk ox tracks on the path – until we hear him grunt at us from the high grass on the side of the path and we freeze. They are pretty big, these buffalo-looking fellows. He decides to head up the hill away from us, and we wander on, a bit apprehensive now, to find a tent site for the night. AJ’s achilles is suddenly playing up. It’s been an awesome day, but long, and we should have stopped half an hour earlier.


The arctic hare saying goodbye
A funny duck that sounds like a ferryboat

Tramping day 5, Kangerlussuaq – Sisimiut, Thursday 26 June 2003

Day five. It’s stinking hot in the tent, and it’s only 5:30 am. I am sweaty. Oooh, the rite of waking up – dirty, stinky, sweaty, disgusting. Then spending the next 10 minutes trying to cope with myself. It’s a fact. I am filthy and smelly. It is me. I have greasy, messy hair full of dandruff, and my nose is blocked with big, black dry bogies. Despite that, I can still smell myself. The sod from the MSR cooker is everywhere: under my nails, on my hands, in my face, in my ears, on my clothes. And in the small hot tent, it is very difficult having to deal with myself like this. I fantasize about swimming pools … again. Big, clean, cold, wonderful swimming pools. Oh no. It’s not real. I stink, I need the toilet desperately, I need a shower, I sweat. “Must get out! Must get out!” I think. Then I hear the mosquitoes WRRRROOOMMMM, and decide that I’d rather want to deal with myself than with the thousands of mosquitoes outside. Crammed together with all our stuff and sod in the small tent, we eat breakfast and pack up – and we’re still friends.


Descending down to Itenneq Valley and Ole’s Lakseelv
…and, the next day, bye bye, Itenneq Valley!

After about an hour, we reach a new hut on the track. It is already stinking hot at 8 am, so we decide to spend all the day in the hut, stay out of the sun and rest AJ’s foot. That means a long siesta in a lovely hut. Now, that’s nice! Unfortunately (?), we spot a cloud getting bigger and bigger (the first cloud in 5 days!), and since we have a climb and some high hill walking in front of us, we decide to leave already at 2 pm.

We lose the track at one point. Then we make a shortcut to get back to a cairn, but the soft, spongy hilly land does damage to AJ’s foot. By the end of the afternoon, it is not cooperating at all anymore. We are still up high and have quite a way to go for a suitable tent site. I try to carry most of the weight, but AJ is still only limping along, now using both my hiking poles and looking like a true German tourist! I never thought I should see this southern man use hiking poles – must take a photo for the record.

As soon as we reach the lake after at the descent, we pitch the tent and AJ spends the rest of the evening solving crossword puzzles with his leg up. I cook up the usual pot of Beanfeast and Mash, and we even have chocolate mousse for desert. It is now overcast, and a bit cold for a change, but the tent is bloody “hyggelig!”


Making our way over the hills as it gets colder and colder
AJ injured (and here seen WITH WALKING POLES!)

Tramping day 6, Kangerlussuaq – Sisimiut, Friday 27 June 2003

I pack up all the gear, while AJ limps along the lake, moving about a kilometre an hour. (God, we are never going to make it out of here). I catch up with him in less than twenty minutes, and then function as his scout, trying to find a track in the spongy mossy bog land – impossible.

I take plenty of breaks, waiting for AJ. An arctic fox and I surprise each other in the bushes – a bit of a shock for both of us. He darts off into the shrub.

The landscape is now much more dramatic and we wander along a large, wide dried out river full of boulders. Spring must be amazing here with all the melting water travelling down these huge rivers.

We walk around another lake, in a bog. I walk ahead, hoping to reach the hut and then come back and take AJ’s pack, but the terrain is hard work, and I end up staying too low for too long and have to come up a long, steep, spongy hill to the hut. By the time I get back down to AJ, I am pretty exhausted.

It’s a hunter’s hut used by the locals. There is loads of trash around it – old dog food bags from the sled dogs that come here in the winter, beer cans, gas canisters, rope, plastic, toilet paper and lots of antlers, of course. I wander down to the lake to get drinking water, but don’t like the antlers and fur in the water. Trying to find a better spot to get my water, I walk around the lake and come across a huge carcass of a reindeer, staring at me from under the clear water. I head back, passing empty beer bottles and food cans on the beach, and go to get my water from a mountain stream.

I am very upset that people who come out here on their snowmobiles, dog sleds or even in helicopters, are not capable of carrying their shit out with them again. They are not even walking! How much effort does it take?

While I am swearing at the hunters, back at the hut, AJ is fantasising about the same hunters flying in here in helicopters and taking him out with them again. But it doesn’t happen. We are alone out here, and we feel very far away from where we want to go. AJ’s foot is pretty bad, and we are wondering whether we will make it out in time to catch out boat up the coast. The alternative is that AJ goes to another hut at the end of a fjord, still a day or more from here, and I walk out alone and get a boat to pick him up, but neither of us is fond of that idea.


Finally we get the clouds we wished for – and it’s still beautiful!
AJ limping off into the distance while I take photos of him

After a snooze, we head out again into the cold, windy weather. It’s 8 pm, and for the first time on our trip, it’s looking a bit dark – because of low-sitting rain clouds. And then it starts raining. A young reindeer finds us very interesting and circles around us quite closely to get a better look at us. He looks like a big dog wanting to play with us, and I can’t help laughing at him.

Just as I find a nice tent site, it really starts pouring down, and I frantically try to raise the tent. It’s hosing down, the tent is out, and nothing seems to work. It’s very cold. Then I realise that one of the tent poles has snapped. Oh no! We raise the tent anyway, and jump inside, but water is pouring into it. The fly is not working like this, so I jump out into the rain again, tape the pole together and make the tent stand relatively OK beneath the fly. I get back into the tent again, my fingers blue from the cold. Then it stops raining.

But it’s already very wet inside the tent. I pile up all the wet, disgusting clothes in one end, and try to warm up a bit, while AJ cooks up the Beanfeast and Mash tonight. We go to sleep as soon as we have eaten, hoping the weather will stay OK – or at least that the tent will keep us dry with its broken tent pole.

Tramping day 7, Kangerlussuaq – Sisimiut, Saturday 28 June 2003

It stayed dry last night, but it is very unpleasant putting on wet, cold clothes as we get ready to go around 8 am. AJ’s foot is feeling better today, and we actually seem to be getting somewhere! What a relief. We are both optimistic, and it’s a lovely day for walking despite the clouds.


It’s cold and windy and beautiful!
The red dot: our shelter from the rain

The scenery is getting exciting now. Clouds rest on the snowcapped mountains surrounding us, as we walk along lakes and then head for the river in the large valley. We see another reindeer and perhaps another arctic hare, which we celebrate with a soup break later. Around the bend in the valley is the next hut at which we arrive at 3 pm. We have lunch, rest and I finally beat AJ in cards!

A few showers of rain drum against the door and the windows of the little hut while we sit there, and we wait till 9 pm to leave, reluctant to get wet again. We walk along the river for less than 2 hours, then decide to camp in a sheltered spot next to a big slab of ice.

Tramping day 8, Kangerlussuaq – Sisimiut, Sunday 29 June 2003

The clouds are hanging low – it’s getting foggy, and it’s now also raining steadily. Strangely enough, even on a wet morning like this, there are millions of mosquitoes and we walk with our headnets on most of the time. We mostly follow the river down the valley, but almost every time we have to cross boggy land, we lose track of the path. This makes the terrain is challenging – the valley consists mostly of bog and swump land taken straight out of “The Never-ending Story”, and we snail our way through the soft, spongy pillows of turf and water. It is very hard work on the knees.

The weather is closing in and it’s getting really windy. We spot a red dot by the end of a large lake, and are overjoyed. It must be a new hunter’s hut, which is not on the map. This makes me speed up, and I race around the lake with cold rain and wind in my face. I am quite tired and cold after a long morning through never-ending wet swamp land in the cold rain.

So, I get to the end of the lake, go up through the shrub and then, as I am about 50 metres away, I finally see the “hut” again. Except it is not a hut, anyway. I am about to cry. Someone has dumped two large red Royal Arctic containers in this place, probably to use for private accommodation when hunting in the mountains. The disappointment is too much, I really needed this break. The monstrous construction is dead ugly, but also rather mysterious. The red container has a home-welded door with a massive pad lock on it and a big solar screen covering part of the front and top of it. I wish I could get inside it, but, oh well, it’s of bloody no use, whatsoever. In a rather bad mood, I make my way back through the shrub to meet AJ on the other side of the stream, sheltered by the hill. He cooks up some soup for his disillusioned girlfriend, and we pop a few “pick-me-up jelly beans” before facing the ascend into even worse weather.

We get to the top of the hill and walk straight into a strong wind with rain en masse. Once again, we have to cross over some very boggy land – this time we’re up high and very exposed – the wind is pulling us to one side and hosing us down with cold rain. We snail our way through the bog, and finally reach the hut sitting on the side of a hill. Once inside, I get the wet gear off and light the candle on the little table. The bad weather makes it dark inside the hut, and it feels like an early winter’s evening.

After lunch (now hitting the extra ration pasta dishes because they are much yummier than our two-minute noodles), we sleep, while the wind is trying to make the hut fly. It pulls and pushes the hut, shaking it with unfriendly roars. I do not want to go outside again this afternoon, although AJ is keen to push forwards. We still have a decent climb and some high country walking before getting to Sisimiut – and our boat leaves tomorrow, so we are pressed for time if we stay the night here. I worry about the weather. This is not the place to get lost in a thick fog. Nobody will ever find you.


A hut on the top – does it get more exposed?
Almost there …

Luckily, around 8 pm the wind has died down enough to head off up over the pass. This leg would probably offer some of the best views on the trip – of the high mountains, Mt. Pingu and the great fiord carving its way into the mountains. But, we are walking in the clouds and can’t see much at all. We take a break at the shelter of Sisimiut Snowmobile Club – very easy to find by following a trail of litter….. The litter runs out as we move away from the hut, and it gets a bit more challenging to find our way because of fog and rain. We are being very careful, stick to the trail and the cairns like glue and stop frequently to check the map. The track is quite clear and our only major problem is the cold and the rain. Finally I am using all my winter gear that I have carried all this way – polar polyprop, normal polyprop, hat, mittens, over-trousers (… and I am still freezing!)

AJ has got a sore ankle, but any breaks turn me into a pop cycle with a backpack, so we limp on through the freezing bog with dead tree stumps sticking out of the fog-covered dead water – the bog from Never-ending Story, no doubt this time.

After midnight we descend again and come out of the clouds and the cold rain. The temperature rises with every metre and we find a nice spot next to the ice-filled river and pitch our tent. AJ cooks up spicy two-minute noodles while I stay in my sleeping bag in the tent to regain the feeling in my fingers and feet. What a day!


Midnight snack to regain sensation in fingers and feet!
One of our camp spots next to ice

Tramping day 9, Kangerlussuaq – Sisimiut, Monday 30 June 2003

It’s still raining, but we wake up dry despite the broken tent pole. All that’s left of the track is a walk out downhill through the valley. We’ll be in Sisimiut around lunch.

I get somewhat sentimental walking these last steps of the trail. It’s been such a good tramp. It was awesome to travel over land like this, see and feel the landscape and geography change, and experience the climate change when we got closer to the coast. Not to mention the animals we saw up close. Even the blisters on feet (and shoulders!), the mosquitoes, the heat stroke, the sore legs, knees and ankles, the endless bogs, the freezing cold, the dirt, grease and sweat – even all these things I am going to miss! I don’t want the tramp to be over! So, I suggest to AJ that we turn around and walk the 9 days back again. All I get is a painful look on his face.


We made it!
Sisimiut here we come!

All muddy, smelly, dirty, greasy, and cold, we walk into Sisimiut town. Strange to be surrounded by houses, cars and people again. While gobbling down the first couple of Danish pastries at Brugsen Supermarket, we phone home to say that we are out safely, before continuing to the bakery café where we spend the rest of the afternoon.


Sisimiut – second biggest town in Greenland
Our ferry waiting for us …

Early that evening we board the Sappik Ituk Ferry – still muddy, smelly, dirty, greasy, and cold. Travelling on first class (no other tickets available at time of booking!) we get our own fancy double cabin with own bathroom, shower, clean towels, clean soft beds… nice, nice, nice…. and a good view out of the window! We shower and clean up just in time to be on deck as the ferry takes off from Sisimiut port. It is clearing up, and in the backcountry where we came from this morning, the magnificent mountaintops pop out of the clouds to say goodbye to us before they slowly disappear in the distance.


Sisimiut tranquility
Bye, Sisimiut - Kangerlussuaq