Written August 14, 2007.

(To see more photos by Mike posted on Google Earth, open this link in Google Earth.)

The weather didn't clear up much since last night. The mist rose but then hung around the mountaintops and the wind got up. Windy misty weather, I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but it is weather we see on "the ice" too. We tried to go north in the helicopter and got some of the way towards the fuel cache before turning round. We took 30 minutes to go north towards the fuel cache, but a "slight" tail wind allowed us to cover the same distance back to Kulusuk in 10 minutes. We repacked the helicopter with a different GPS site — it took about 10 minutes now that we have all the gear organized, and headed south with the same stiff tail wind. We zoomed over icebergs and past the "city" of Tasiiliq, which our Greenlandic pilot pointed out is the word for the bay the settlement is on. "Tasiiliq is the water, we do not live in the water." He said. "We live on the island, and call it Angmagssalik." He pointed out the school house, his wife is the principal of the school, which has 500 kids (!) from all over the region.



I asked if he lived in Angmagssalik all his life. "No," he said, "I am from much further down the coast, as is my wife." I have spent the last few months looking over maps of the region and am pretty sure there's no villages down that way and I said as much. "We were moved in 1965 from our village to Angmagssalik." I cannot imagine "being moved." Per said it was more difficult for his wife who was very attached to Skjoldungen and whose family had lived there for a long time. The settlement doesn't appear on the 1:250,000 maps I use, but does appear on the older 1:500,000 maps. Strangely I was planning on putting a GPS there, as there is actually some literature on the area on the internet. I settled on a peninsula 20km further to the north, which will be installed by the southern group.

Continuing south it was obvious that the weather to the north was giving Kulusuk a bit of a wide berth but then was pushing from the sea onto the ice sheet to the south as well. We hummed and hawed for a minute before deciding that instead of pushing the boundaries of safety and common sense it would be better to turn round. So back to Kulusuk, back to the hotel. "Erm? Got any rooms?" and, well, about 3 hours ago I sat down "for a minute" to change out of my layers and layers and I guess I just woke up.

So, I have a mountain-facing view instead of a bay-facing view now (it's not as nice), I see the maintanance garage of the airport, the airport itself and a big fuel storage tank. The mountain itself is truly a mountain with a small and not-long-for this world glacier on its southeast cirque. It's clouding over off and on as I type. I can also see, off to the west-southwest, the site of the old American early warning station Dye-4. That's the real reason the airport is here, on an island with a population of a couple of hundred people instead of near the "city" of 1700 people. There's a bunch of stuff online about the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line and the Dye stations.

So for some more prosaic information - todays packing list - essentials for camping in Greenland.

personal stuff:
Two thin polypro thermal tops.
One set thin polypro long-johns (sounds like a pirate). Thin because I am not prone to getting cold in the field, rather the opposite.
Windshell.
Softshell.
Mountain Equipment fleece (I totally love this fleece - had it for 10 years and it still fits!)
Gaiters.
Boots.
Wind pants.
Socks.
Sun Glasses
Hat.
Gloves.
Hawaiian shirt (I mean can anyone go anywhere without a nice hawaiian shirt? - This is a particularly nice green and blue one that my girlfriend got me).

The main difference between this list and Antarctica gear is that almost everything is storm proof for Greenland (waterproof is a bit too wimpy). On Antarctica everything is aimed for really really dry cold conditions. Here there's much more moisture being flung around and being above freezing rain is a very real and normal occurrence. If it rained where I work in Antarctica (~ -79 degrees South) then something would be seriously seriously wrong. But wet cold is way more dangerous, way quicker than dry cold, so keeping dry is essential.

Gear:
Camera — you may have noticed.
Laptop — gotta work on that dissertation at some point, and I have the software for checking our satellite comms equipment on it.
Iridium phone— nowhere is cell phone free now!
Cell phone — see! Not much point having it in the field, but there you go.
Radio.
Rifles.
GPS.
Maps.
Water bottles.
Food (not potatoes).

Ipod: Still haven't got a theme tune for this work yet. I try to get a theme tune for each time I deploy to the ice. I am leaning towards older stuff this time, maybe Pulp or some Portishead — they played it on Greenlandic radio this morning! Pulp's Jarvis Cocker is suitably cynical on a day when the weather messes with you, but not sure. Sigur Ros is nice and haunting, but I am looking for something more uplifting.

Books: Arrrrgggh! I am out of books! I had three, I gave one to Eric to read up north, one's a pretty darn dry textbook on Ice Sheet Dynamics and Crustal Motion (possibly a snooze maker) and I had one about the Iraq war, but I demolished that. So I am effectively bookless. This is a bad way to be. Okay, I have over 2,000 academic papers (all essential reading) on my laptop, but you don't curl up in your sleeping bag in a raging storm and read a .pdf. It just doesn't work like that. I hear that Angmagssalik has a bookstore, but then I heard it has a thai restaurant too... maybe someone is teasing me? I have been eyeing up the reading material Thomas brought with him, willing him, urging him to read another page. Read faster. Come on damnit, read! In the hope I can grab some of his books once he's done.

Thomas just knocked on the door. Dinner time — he passed out this afternoon too. Can you guess what’s for dinner yet?