Christoffer Petersen blog

Apparently, day 6 was a maintenance and rest day. I’ll spare you the details, but the smell was shocking!

 

The midnight sun is fantastic! It’s low, but still warm, and gives an amazing warmth to the surrounding… yeah… everything, really. But at midnight, it’s also a little cooler and all but the most persistent bugs bug you. That would be mosquitoes in the photo above!

We paddled into a smaller fjord to make camp at the end of it, before hiking up and over the ridge to get a closer look at a glacier. Paddling into the narrow(ish) fjord with steep sides and bugger all growing on them, was really quite something.

And then you get your first view of the glacier…

And it’s just cheesy and hopefully cute photos for the family from there on in!

The bay really is a good campsite! Loads of space.

As you can see. 😉

But the bugs were… yeah… the bugs! Toilet trips were a coordinated affair, with the one inside the tent ready to open and close the door, as the one outside did what they needed to do and then raced for the tent, shouting Coming in hot! We still have blood patches on the inside of the tent! I used to think the Greenland bugs were bad. But that was before we went to Alaska!

I think these little fellas are a Sundew meat eaters. They did not go hungry!

There was so much to discover at every camp we made on the trip. And a variety of bones, the origin of which could only be speculated about, i.e. we didn’t know! 😉

But we had to move on, and the bugs gave us a good send off!

Another big berg day!

With his and hers maps for the kayak. Jane doesn’t like steering, but she likes to know where we’re going!

Past that bloody big berg is where we’re going as we paddle down to the bottom of Salliaruseq Island to camp near the desert, which, incidentally, is where I set a few stories including The Rock Thief. Nice plug, eh?

But I digress. This bay almost at the bottom of the island, is a particularly good spot to camp. We have camped here many times! The bay offers some protection.

Although you can still find plenty of ice (a.k.a. drinking water) on the beach!

Life is really tough! I mean, this was our backyard! This camp is about two thirds of the way down Salliaruseq Island, and about 15-20km from our house. Roughly. I’ve written about this island a lot in my stories, and now I think you can see why. 😉

Apart from the bugs, there’s plenty to smile about. We lived here! This was home.

Camp chores included making sure the kayak was high enough to escape all but the biggest iceberg tsunamis.

Followed by a bit of light and maybe appropriate reading. 😉

It’s been a while since we paddled with icebergs, so you’ll have to forgive me, but I’m going to use the next 12 blog posts on our first sea kayaking trip in Uummannaq Fjord. We arrived in Uummannaq back in August 2006. This trip, the following June/July was the first time we left the island, apart from walking on the sea ice in the winter.

Just leaving the island is exciting, as was getting all the gear into the kayak. It was a big kayak (currently in my brother-in-law’s garage) made by Folbot. Folbot unfortunately went bust a few years ago, but we were pleased to paddle in their two-person folding kayak appropriately called Greenland II.

We said goodbye to one mountain while paddling among many, many others.

Plenty of room in the kayak. But then everything had to be taken out each time we made camp as we had to move the kayak high enough out of the water to stop it being washed away from the tsunami waves each time an iceberg calved. I’ve often described it as iceberg artillery and this trip was our first real taste of it.

Can you see the ice in the distance? Yep, we’re heading into that!

It can get a little chilly paddling around so much ice and the clunk clunk of the brash ice against the hull takes some getting used to. The kayak had a metal strip protecting the bow and stern. We put it to good use!

Oh, and the air temperature, when the sun was out was in the plus 20s Celsius. While the water temperature was, at a guess, around 5 degrees(ish). We wore drysuits which were stifling hot, but necessary if you fell in, of course.

Chris