Tough and Rough in the Artic
By Jim Gregson
Trekking in Milne Land, NE Grennland
August 2012
Most of the many expeditions I've made to Greenland have been full-scale mountaineering trips up on the icecap and glaciers, but there is also a lot of very exciting trekking terrain where it is possible to explore areas where nobody has ever been. Milne Land, a big island - about the size of Yorkshire! - lies deep inside the huge fjord system of Scoresby Sund in Lat. 70N and is a fascinating place to visit. This summer's trip was the third time I have been there, and my group was heading for the NE corner of the island.
From Iceland we flew into the small airstrip of Constable Pynt/Nerlerit Inaat and from there had to make a boat journey of more than 200km in zodiac-type boats. The weather and sea conditions have to be calm for safe passage in inflatables, so we actually travelled for more than 12 hours through the night to complete this journey, sailing past hundreds of huge icebergs. When we finally arrived just offshore from our intended base area, it became obvious that landing right there would not be a good idea, due to incredibly rocky and bouldery ground, and with no obvious water supply for our three week stay.
Luckily on the way in we had spotted a better location with a strong river flowing just a few kilometres back along the coast, so we turned and sailed back there. We could run the boats up to a decent beach and not far above the shoreline we found a flat area of raised beach which proved to be perfect for our tents. Within an hour we had our camp established and the kettle on! After a few hours rest the boat pilots left us and sailed away, with a rendezvous arrangement for the end of the trip. From our camp area we had fantastic spectacular outlooks over the sea, with icebergs dotted all over it, backed by rocky islands and major cliffs.
During the Arctic summer it does not go dark at night, even when the sun just dips below the northern horizon, so it is possible to have very long days without any worries about coming back late. Once we had the basecamp organised and had spent a little time in making people familiar with what we would do in the event of being visited by a Polar Bear - yes, you have to have a rifle with you, just in case - we began to explore our surroundings.
The river valley was the obvious way for us to head inland and start to make ascents up onto the hills and mountains, but as we had only very poor maps, not much better than the page of an atlas, we had to just follow our noses and see what we could discover. Of course, nowadays you can use GPS to record and plot your progress, but it is still quite interesting to realise and remember that magnetic variation out here is more than 30 degrees! We found lots of vegetation with a surprising variety of flowers, albeit past their best in August, but once we went past 200m above sea level the vegetation almost completely disappeared and we had to walk and scramble over incredibly rough rocky ground and boulder fields. This made for slow going but we had all the time in the world, and the weather was so kind to us that in three weeks we only had 5 minutes of a weak shower of rain! In fact, this year the Arctic was experiencing a sort of heatwave and we never really needed to wear a shell jacket, or even a fleece while we were up on the mountains.
The views in all directions were spectacular and we were also fortunate to see plenty of wildlife - which you don't normally encounter if you go up onto the Greenland icecap. There were lots of birds - Barnacle and Pinkfooted Geese, Eider ducks, Great Northern and Redthroated Divers,Glaucous Gulls, Little Auks,Longtailed Skuas, Arctic Terns, Wheatears, Snow Buntings, Ringed Plovers and Ptarmigan. Not so many mammals but we did see the odd Musk Ox, Arctic Fox, Lemming and almost every day our base camp was visited by a Stoat which amused us with its fearless antics as it dashed in and out of our tents, sniffed our boots, jumped in somersaults and generally defied our attempts to photograph it.
The mountains were rougher and tougher than we had anticipated and it was difficult to cover long distances easily, but we explored quite a lot of the area, finding lots of tarns hidden among the peaks, and many examples of "patterned ground" - stone polygons and stripes which are formed by the action of frost and ice. The only tiny drawback in the whole trip was the occasional presence of mosquitoes round the camp, but they were not so bad as to rival the Scottish midge for nuisance value.
The very warm weather gave us hot days out on the hill and the best way to counter this at the end of a long day was to return to camp and then, believe it or not, to take a swim in the sea with the icebergs! By the end of the trip as our time ran down, my group members had become hooked on the Arctic, and vowed that they would save up and try to come back another time.
For more information about treks and expeditions in Greenland go to www.tangent-expeditions.co.uk
For more visual information, you could look for - and buy! - my book which was published in September 2012. It is called "Exploring Greenland: Twenty Years of Adventure Mountaineering in the Great Arctic Wilderness" (Vertebrate Publishing)
If you are tempted by a visit to the Arctic, don't leave it too long as in the twenty-plus years that I have been going the signs of climate change caused by global warming are getting more evident each year. But if you do go, PLEASE don't trash it!
