Arctic Circle Trail – America's Finest Ambassador

Getting to Greenland

: It’s said that 80% of Greenland is covered in ice. The ice sheet (shown in white on the map there) is 1380 miles long from north to south, is 680 miles at its widest point from east to west, and has an average thickness of 5000 feet. As you can see, all the settlements on Greenland are found in the coastal areas not covered by the ice sheet. And circled there in red on the left half of what is known as the world’s largest island is the approximately 100-mile-long hike between Kangerlussuaq and Sismiut that has come to be known as the Arctic Circle Trail. I’d first read about this hike somewhere on the internet probably four or five years ago and knew right away that I’d one day like to try it, but until this year had been too scared to commit to it. Guidebooks say that the trail takes most hikers between 7 and 10 days to complete and, since there is nowhere to resupply between the two aforementioned towns, you gotta pack and carry all the food you’ll need for the entirety of the excursion. And although there are huts available for hikers to sleep in every night free of charge (with a couple exceptions, these are really no more than garden sheds with a few wooden platforms inside for people to sleep on), it’s highly recommended you pack your own tent just in case the huts are full or in case you get caught in a storm or are simply too tired to make it all the way to the next hut that evening. I found all this information to be very intimidating and couldn’t imagine myself successfully completing such a challenge, but decided to buy airline tickets out there and give it a shot anyway.

: Here’s a photo of the trail map from the Cicerone guidebook written by Paddy Dillon, which seemed to be everyone’s go-to resource at the time of my planning for this trip. People normally hike this route from Kangerlussuaq to Sisimuit, and for good reason. Whereas there are nicer hotels and restaurants and things to do in Sisimiut for after the hike, there really ain’t much to Kangerlussuaq aside from a small airport with a few other buildings surrounding it. Some people also argue that the scenery is prettier near Sisimiut and that it’s always better to hike towards the more beautiful stuff to avoid having an anticlimactic ending. I of course, being the contrarian that I am, decided to hike it the other way. Things just seemed to work out better that way when doing my planning and looking at dates for flights. I don’t regret my decision and wouldn’t change anything because the past is what it is, but if anyone asked me which way I recommend going, I’d probably tell em to go Kangerlussuaq to Sisimiut.

: Contemplating the mess on my bedroom floor a couple hours before my flight, fretting about how I’m going to pack and carry all this shit on my back for a hundred miles. My 60-liter bag at the start of the hike (not carrying any water) was already over fifty pounds and I ended up not being able to fit all my gear and food into it – a decent amount of it had been hanging out the top, wrapped up in a contractor bag to keep it all dry.

: Unless you live in Denmark or Iceland, the Arctic Circle Trail is not easy to get to. There are direct flights between Kangerlussuaq and Copenhagen, but I didn’t want to fly all the way to mainland Europe before going on the hike. So my route ended up being from Chicago to Reykjavik (capital of Iceland) to Nuuk (capital of Greenland) to Sisimiut (hike starting point). Here is a mural I came across at my first port of call, Keflavic International Airport in Iceland. The piece is called Silver Sabler and, according to the airport website, “partly deals with the legends of the skies, the rootlessness of modern life and the air terminal as a place of adventurous possibilities.”

: I had something like an eight or ten-hour layover in Iceland and didn’t want to waste it sitting in the airport, so I rented the cheapest car available and took a ride to this place called Sky Lagoon where they got these infinity-pool hot springs along the coast. It was kinda chilly that day – probably like 40 degrees Fahrenheit and windy – but the water was somewhere between 100 and 104 degrees which felt very, very nice.

: The plane in which I flew from Reykjavik to Nuuk

: Flying over the ice sheet. I don’t have any exact figures, but each year there are people who attempt a “Greenland Crossing.” They either trek or ski from one side of the ice sheet to the other. I think it takes like something between 30 and 40 days to complete.

: Fjords and mountains as we begin to approach Greenland’s west coast

: Miniature baggage belt at the airport in Nuuk

: What Airbnb is like in Nuuk

: As of 2023, the bustling capital of Nuuk has a population of about 20,000 people

: Nuuk is in fact so cosmopolitan that they’ve even got a Thai restaurant there. And I know what you’re thinking, but the word “porn” in Thai means “wish” or “blessing” and has nothing to do with the English definition of the word. And jokes aside, I think the presence of a Thai restaurant there has less to do with Nuuk being cosmopolitan and more to do with Thailand’s aggressive “Global Thai” culinary diplomacy policy. The program was launched by the Thai government in 2002 and aimed to increase their soft power and influence by boosting the number of Thai restaurants worldwide. With about 5,500 already existing at the start of the initiative, by 2011 the total had increased to more than 10,000 Thai restaurants outside Thai borders. I wouldn’t be surprised if that number’s doubled by now in 2023.

: Not long before catching a flight from Nuuk to Sisimiut, where I’d be starting the trek. At the time, it was like 35 degrees Fahrenheit and rainy with constant 50mph winds. Couldn’t help but ask myself why the fuck I decided to do this hike.

: Arrival at the Sisimiut Airport

: Unlike the airport in Nuuk, this one did not even have a miniature baggage belt. All the baggage was carried from the plane and dropped off right there by that one soaking wet, freezing cold guy in the yellow vest

: View of Sisimiut from the Airbnb where I’d be spending the night

: This caribou or reindeer skin drying out on the shed in the backyard was the first clue I saw letting me know that my Airbnb host was a big fan of hunting

: Piece of reindeer jerky shared with me by the host’s son

: Freezer full of other reindeer and caribou products that I wouldn’t get to sample

: The host’s son posing with his most recent kill

: The guys explained to me that they like hunting out in the middle of nowhere. So if they kill a reindeer like the one in the previous photo, they might have to carry it on their back for something like fifteen or twenty miles until they reach their boat or snowmobile or whatever. And the way they do that is by breaking the animal’s spine so they can fold it in half and strap it to one of these frame hunting backpacks. When I asked if the dead animal bleeds all over their backs while humping it across the untamed Arctic wilderness, they assured me that it most definitely does, but that it’s just part of the experience.

: My host’s son posing by one of his first ever kills

Day 1

: The morning I was due to start my hike, it was cold and damp. My Airbnb host, Jimmy, offered to give me a ride from his house to the trailhead. I thought he had a car, but when I got outside I saw…

: Cruisin’ through town on the back of Jimmy’s ATV

: As we reached the outskirts of Sisimiut, Jimmy said to me, “You see all those dogs out there in the field? They’re sled dogs.” And I said, “Do people train the sled dogs during the offseason to make sure they’ll be in good shape for the winter?” He said that, unfortunately, they don’t. He said they just kinda wander around out there with nothing to do until sledding season has arrived.

: This is right about where Jimmy dropped me off. I guess there’s been talk for more than fifty years about how they’re gonna build a road between Sisimiut and Kangerlussuaq. Although there are claims that great progress has been made during the past few years, the project is underfunded and there are no official plans as to where exactly the road will run. As of when I went in September 2023, the road probably only stretched a kilometer or so inward from the edge of Sisimiut. I’m grateful I was able to get in there and experience this unspoiled piece of nature and do what is renowned as one of the world’s greatest long distance hikes before the construction of this road completely destroys it.

: Where the road ends and turns into a narrow hiking trail

: I don’t have any official data to back this up, but people were saying that it was one of the rainiest years ever on the Arctic Circle Trail. Sure, in some parts the trail was perfectly dry. But in a lot of parts, like the one pictured, the trail had a couple inches of standing water on it. And in other parts, the trail was a boggy mess that was flooded knee-high. To prevent my feet from getting waterlogged, I used a trick I picked up from my guide in Panama while trekking in the Darien Gap and each morning before putting on my socks, I coated my feet with this Colombian-made product called Yodora that basically makes your skin impermeable to water. In spite of being in water all day every day, I didn’t experience any blisters or tearing on my feet during the hike.

: A couple hikers during their last day on the trail, heading through the fog towards Sisimiut

: Got a little snowfall at this point. What you’re looking at here is a snowmobile perched atop an island in the stream (shout out to Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers) that I’m guessing some joker left up there during the winter months when everything was frozen solid. Why? Maybe to make hikers like me curious. I don’t know.

: Valley I just hiked up and out of

: For navigation on this hike, I used a combination of a map I’d downloaded to my Garmin eTrex as well as the AllTrails app on my iPhone. Since there is no cellular service available anywhere on this trail, it’s recommended that hikers bring satellite phones and/or a PLB (personal locator beacon) with them in order to contact rescue services if, god forbid, anything goes wrong out there. I personally opted to not bring either because where’s the adventure if all’s you hafta do is push a button and someone will fly in with a helicopter and bail you out of whatever fucked-up situation you’ve gotten yourself into? I wanted to be best friends with myself, I wanted to know that I’d be able to rely on myself to get me out of there no matter what happened. And if I couldn’t get myself out of there for whatever reason…well, then I deserved to die.

: First river crossing

: From what I read online and from what other hikers had been saying, it’s not necessary to filter the water you take from rivers and streams on the Arctic Circle Trail before drinking it. I was a little skeptical at first because I definitely didn’t wanna end up with diarrhea while doing this hike, but ended up not filtering anything and didn’t get sick once out there.

: There are little unmanned huts like these along the way for hikers to sleep in if they so choose. Since it was my first night on the trail and everything was all wet, I didn’t have the balls to set up my tent and camp out. That was the case for the first half of the hike, actually. I slept in the huts the first three nights, then camped out on nights four, five and six.

: The inside of the dirty little hut, with a nice layer of soot from the kerosene stove coating the inside of the ceiling. When I arrived I had the place to myself, but a couple hours later had been joined by a pair of Dutch guys and a dude from South Africa who were hiking towards Sisimiut. Everyone slept in the back left half of the hut. Me and another guy slept atop that wooden platform while the other two crawled underneath it and slept on that white pad thing there on the ground.

: View of the area surrounding the hut at sunset

: The two Dutch guys spent the evening playing a game of chess on that mini board there that one of them had packed. They told me that the following day I’d have to cross a stream that was too deep to walk across. It’d be deeper than my waist if I tried to ford it. They also said that it was probably only like two meters wide and that I should be able to jump across it. The guy on the left half of the photo explained that he wasn’t sure if he could make the jump while wearing his backpack, so he had the idea of taking it off and throwing it across before attempting the leap. Well, as it happens, when heaving his bag, he said that at the last second he hesitated and tried to pull his bag back but couldn’t and dropped it right in the stream which right away began to sweep away his belongings. He advised to not do as he had done. With these guys, I also had a discussion about the Dutch term “swaffelen,” which means “to hit one’s penis – often repeatedly – against an object or another person’s body.” They told me the word and the act were made famous when a Dutch student made a video of himself doing it against the Taj Mahal back in 2008.

Day 2

: Here I set my bag down for a break about an hour into the day’s hike. Cairns that mark the way, like the one on the right of the photo with the red half-circle (a design taken from the Greenlandic flag) painted on it, can be seen periodically from end to end of the Arctic Circle Trail

: Mild “splishy splashy” wetness

: Heavy “where the fuck did my feet go?” wetness

: Hope that skull doesn’t belong to Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, or any of the rest of the guys in the gang

: Piece of…Arctic moss?

: Pair of westbound hikers trying to cross the river by hopping from stone to stone

: Didn’t see any trees that I can recall and really didn’t see too many bushes on the ACT. This patch I passed through on the second day was probably like 80% of the shrubbery I’d see during the whole trek

: Home stretch to that evening’s hut

: Where I’d spend the night with four other people

: A look back at the valley I’d just crossed on the way to the hut

: I really liked how this hut had a pitchfork. It made it really easy to dig a nice big hole in the ground to take a crap in the following morning.

Day 3

: Couple westbound Danish guys with whom I’d shared the cabin the night before. I asked them if they’d rather continuously walk this trail back and forth for an entire year or go spend an entire year living on a space station. They said that although the trail is difficult, they felt that being down here in nature and being able to walk around and call their families on satellite phones every now and then would be a much less isolating and less claustrophobic experience than a year in orbit, floating around the earth in a metal box.

: All the huts had guestbooks inside of them for hikers to sign

: Some jackass drew a cartoon penis inside of this one

: What the trail looked like as I set out from the previous night’s hut

: Couple reindeer running away from me down a valley to my right

: Heading up and over a mountain pass behind an American couple (one originally from Guatemala) that I’d be on the same pace with for another day or so

: It was snowier and snowier the higher I got

: Snow-covered cairns

: Still working my way up behind the couple

: I loved this day. I really did. I thought the snow was so beautiful. It felt magical walking in this winter wonderland.

: The top of the pass. Although this looks like the sort of place polar bears might exist, they say that polar bear sightings in this part of Greenland are extremely rare and, as such, should not be considered a threat to hikers on the Arctic Circle Trail.

: Heading back down on the other side

: Finally out of the snow

: That night’s hut in sight on the other side of the lake

: Photo taken from the middle of a river I had to cross to get to the hut

: View from the front porch of the Innajuattoq II hut, which I’d have to say is the nicest and most spacious one I’d stayed at on the trail. I heard good things about the hut known as Canoe Center, but wouldn’t end up staying there, so can’t say how it compares to this one.

: Kitchen table in the hut

: View of towards where I’d be walking the following day as seen from Innajuattoq II

Day 4

: All of this marshy shit I had to cross was frozen solid first thing in the morning, so that made it a bit easier to run across

: The ice was starting to thin as the sun beat down upon it

: First river crossing of the day. Super wide, yes, but slow flowing and never more than knee-deep

: Looking back towards Innajuattoq II and the marshy lowlands I’d just spent the past couple hours crossing

: Gonna head down this hill then cross that river

: View from the river crossing I’d mentioned in the previous photo

: Spent about an hour walking along the side of this calm, peaceful lake

: Cool ice pattern I noticed along the side of the trail

: More lakes

: Smooth-lookin mountains

: Did you hear the news story from a couple years ago when a Navy pilot draw a huge contrail dick in the sky above Whidbey Island in Washington state? I liked reading the whole transcript from the dialogue in the cockpit that day, but I’m particularly fond of the line, “‘What did you do on your flight?’ the pilot joked. ‘Oh, we turned dinosaurs into sky penises.’” The whole story can be found in detail at: https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/05/14/the-navys-probe-into-sky-penis/

: Not sure what type of bird this is. Might be a ptarmigan

: Bunch of parts of animals that hunters apparently did not want

: Camp spot for the night. When I got to the hut I was considering sleeping in, it was already pretty full of westbound hikers who were all coughing and sneezing, and I would’ve had to sleep on the floor there. Since that didn’t sound very appealing, I walked a couple kilometers onward, then climbed this hill to the left of the trail, found a dry spot and set up camp. Even though it’s kinda tedious to set up and break down camp every day, I liked the freedom of doing so. I liked it a lot better than breathing in the burps and farts of strangers in those cramped, grubby little huts along the way.

Day 5

: One of the downsides of camping out had been frozen shoes. They were completely soaked each day from river crossings and from passing through flooded parts of the trail and I certainly didn’t want to take those stinky fuckers into the tent with me when I went to sleep at night, so I left them just outside in the “vestibule” area and woke up to find them as solid blocks of ice. It wasn’t fun to jam my feet in there, but I figured that putting ‘em on and moving around was the best way to start thawing ‘em out.

: Not very easy to see here, but in the bottom center of the photo is a tiny wooden bridge spanning that river there that I’d need to cross

: Here’s the bridge up close. The river was deep and flowing swiftly just below it.

: Word on the trail was that the bridge had been swept away by the river’s current earlier in the season and had just been haphazardly thrown back into place sometime afterwards. Would you walk across that shit?

: Here’s the aforementioned American couple making their way across the bridge. This would be the last I’d see of them on the trail. Not because they fell in the river and drowned, but because I quickened my pace a bit and continued to camp out instead of staying in the huts.

: The next two hours of walking after the bridge there was no trail to follow. It was all half-frozen, flooded marshland that looked like this

: Here atop this mountain, I set my bag down and had a quick snack as I looked back on the marshland I’d just crossed. The bridge over the river is not visible, but is probably somewhere way down the valley in the center of the photo.

: I’d only been walking for about four hours that day by the time I reached the next hut, visible there in the center of the photo. Since it was such a nice day, I decided to blow past it and keep going.

: Nice dry section of trail

: Really can’t complain on a day like this

: Lakeview

: About to start a big downhill there on the right, down towards the lake

: Leisurely walk through a very long valley

: Camp spot that I shared…

: …with this here fella

Day 6

: I really liked the fall colors I saw on this day

: So here, at first glance, it kinda looks like I’m about to steal a random person’s canoe, but that’s not the case at all. If you look a bit closer, you’ll see that the canoe I threw my bag in says “Arctic Circle Trail” on the side of it. Hikers are free to take them back and forth along Lake Amitsorsuaq. Since the majority of hikers go from east to west, canoes often end up sitting here on the west end of the lake. Although I could take it the 20-something kilometers all the way to Katiffik hut on the eastern end of Amitsorsuaq if I wanted, my plan was to take this one and paddle a couple kilometers up to the Canoe Center, then leave it there and do the rest of the day on foot.

: Row, row, row my boat

: Back on foot after making it to Canoe Center

: I walked east along the southern end of Amitsorsuaq all day and this is more or less what the view looked like the entire time

: Shattered sand

: The front-runner for tallest cairn on the Arctic Circle Trail

: Campsite where I did my first and only bathing while on the ACT. Didn’t even use any soap. Just got in there and scrubbed my less hygienic places. The waters of Lake Amitsorsuaq were shockingly cold, but when I got out and dried off, my skin felt strangely warm and tingly.

: All natural drying rack

Day 7

: Again, I don’t know shit about birds, but I think this is a pair of falcons that posted up on this nearby rock to watch me pack up camp

: Had to do some scrambling over all these boulders that, to be honest, I wasn’t really up for first thing in the morning.

: Some more lovely shades of September autumn

: This area was so flooded that these two separate ponds turned into one. This actually might’ve been the deepest water crossing I did on the whole hike. It was mid-thigh at its most profound point

: They left the scalps still attached

: This place, Hundeso, is considered an unofficial hut on the Arctic Circle Trail. And I was considering spending the night there. But there was just so much trash everywhere and the inside was all leaky and wet and…it was just so fuckin disgusting, dude. I didn’t wanna sleep there.

: The inside of Hundeso

: The 20 kilometers between Hundeso and Kangerlussuaq is all paved road that looks just like this. My original idea had been to find a nice place off the side of the road to spend the night and then walk the rest of the way to Kanger the following day.

: I quickly abandoned that plan when I saw how ugly and shitty the construction of this road and other developments had made the environment around it. The new plan was to try and hitch a ride into Kangerlussuaq or walk the whole 20 kilometers into town if need be.

: The now-abandoned Sondrestrom Upper Atmospheric Research Facility, or “Kellyville” as it is commonly referred to in Arctic Circle Trail guidebooks

: After a couple hours of walking the road, I was able to hitch a ride into town in the back of this dude’s truck. He said he wouldn’t accept monetary payment for the deed, so I offered him my camping knife as a show of gratitude. He said that knives like that are hard to find in those parts and readily accepted.

: Hanging all my belongings out to dry in my $200/night little shitbox of a room at Hotel Kangerlussuaq

: Letting everybody back home know that I survived the hike and made it back to civilization in one piece