Greenland:Day Two

Our plan for the day was to paddle into the fjord just north of where we had camped and hopefully see the glaciers which were calving into the sea before returning south.  It was another beautiful day, with light winds and blue skies but our progress was stopped after a couple of miles because of the density of the ice.  So without seeing the glaciers we turned and headed south, we had 17 days left to reach Ilulissat.

It was the scale of the scenery which took some adjusting to.  The cliffs were huge and in places the mountains rose to over 2,000 metres within a few miles of the sea.

We had been really fortunate with two days of excellent weather and were looking forward to more of the same the following day.  Another 23 nautical miles covered.

Following one of the leads into the fjord.  Almost immediately it became apparent that the ice was denser than we had previously thought.

 Alex heading into the ice, the glaciers were out of sight.

Andy at the ice barrier.  It was clear that we weren't be able to make any further progress, so we turned around and headed south.

Lunch on a small headland, Anoritup nua.  The cliffs in the distance are the southern coast of Agpat, with the highest mountains rising to over 1,600 metres within 2 or 3 miles of the sea.

These cliffs stretched for about 10 miles and rose to nearly 1,000 metres in height.  There is nothing comparable in the UK.  Note the paddler in bottom left.

This was a really strange area known as The Desert.  By some quirk of geology there was no vegetation growing over quite a large area.

Crossing towards Ikerasak, where we were going to camp.  There were plenty of large bergs offering some interesting photo opportunities.

 The normal evening chores.  We were as close as possible to sea in an attempt to keep the insect population to a minimum but it was still necessary to use midge nets.

 The perfect view from the tent.  Uummannaq Island.