With the 222 helicopter disappearing to Nuuk to get new engines we now have to slot our work timetable into the 212's scheduled visits to the Kulusuk airport to pick up passengers and its scheduled, lifeline visits to outlying communities. If we had the work we think we could be put out in the morning and get picked up in the evening but we cannot really work in that mode just now, so all our flights are going to have to be wedged in, in the evening. Our last site install was to the area of Delmenhorst Nunatak. This was probably the second most interesting site to me, after the one at Kangerdlussuaq Glacier. But it’s a long long way away and due to some confusion the fuel cache between here and there hadn’t been properly established – to be fair it had been established, it's just that there was less fuel in it than expected, as we’d used two barrels of fuel when we had installed the last station in the rain. Even so the 212 pilot (a jovial chap called John) figured we could probably do the site in one go. So we flew over to Kulusuk, taking off at four in the afternoon, and got our gear together. We hadn’t flown with our gear with John before and no-one had quite told him how much we had. Weights, yes, volume, no. The lovely padded seats used for transporting peoples posteriors around proved to be a hinderance to 700kg of gear. John also kindly provided us with a big gun – polar bear protection.
The long flight over water to the site was pretty routine by now. We spent a little while getting to the fuel cache, landing on Oersted Island. John asked why we put the fuel cache there, when air Greenland had a fuel cache just a little to the north. I said I didn’t put the fuel cache there, he did, while the coordinates were suggested by Air Greenland. No idea how that came about.
Anyway flying the straight line route to Delmenhorst Nunatak was getting interesting. We flew up over a spur of the ice sheet where Fridtjof Nansen started the first-ever crossing of the Greenland Ice Sheet way back when. As we climbed over the cracked, crevassed ice I noticed that we were not flying forwards, rather we were “crabbing”, flying at about 45° to the direction we actually wanted to go. Oh no, not again. I desperately did not want us to turn around. I left it to the pilot: If we were going to turn around we would turn around. He knew the place better than I do. We flew up to the area where the ice starts to spill down into the embayment we wanted to be in. There’s a small lake, and again one look and my heart sank, the surface of the lake was whipped into a frenzy of whitecaps. “Blowing 55 knots” was the pilots comment. I know this style of helicopter shouldn’t land in more than 35 knots.
“Do you really want to go down there?” John asked.
“Not if it’s not safe” I said.
“How about we go look around?”
I said “Sure.” Wondering how bumpy the ride was going to get.
We shot down the glacier into the embayment area. It was spectacular. The maps and satellite images really had given me the wrong impression of the scale of the place. And what-do-you-know, within the embayment it was calm. Now although I wanted to put the GPS on Delmenhorst, there was no way that that was going to happen. We settled on a site 8 kilometers to the east on the amazing Trefoldigheden Island. The purpose of this site was to measure load changes occurring to the west, from the glaciers that spill off the plateau, but the glaciers on the island had obviously undergone a dramatic retreat too. Gigantic moraines circled the ice cap on the top of the island, but to make things impressive melting had caused enough water to punch through the moraines and make a few truly extraordinary waterfalls over the lip of the mountainside.
We positioned the helicopter so that we only had to lug batteries a few meters from where it landed, to the site. With the two of us, we managed to get the site installed in about two and a half hours, which was pretty good going. While there though I started to feel regret that we couldn’t have installed over the bay, where we wanted to originally. The glaciers on that side of the bay growled away; they were easily the loudest and most persistently noisy glaciers I have ever heard. They must be truckin’ along. I would estimate a good 10 minutes out of the time we were on site were spent accompanied by the roar of one particular glacier, Graaulv. It would have been amazing to be close to it, I am sure of it!
The local operations had said we could be out in the field until 10pm. I think there was confusion over whether this was local time or UTC as the light began to change, taking on the hue of liquid gold. We were a couple of degrees south of Tasilliq and it was getting darker, sooner. Time to go in other words.
We flew home through sunset, dusk and twilight. It was just…well look at the photos.
We refueled again at dusk, with full floodlights on the helicopter to show our landing spot. Further on the way, Karl, the mechanic showed that we were closer to Isortoq: “Look my cell phone gets service!” But as we neared Tasilliq things took on an ominous tone. Fog. Everywhere. And we were above it with no way down through it. We were looking at contemplating a stay in one of the mountain huts operated by Tele-Greenland, when, amazingly, we crossed the ridgeline southwest of Tasilliq. The town was a jewel of street lights, and sat under the only area clear of fog, that we could see for miles.
