Greenland Ice Sheet

Here I am looking down on the town of Kangerlussuaq from the top of an adjacent mountain. Originally built as a US air base during the Second World War and with a population of like five or six-hundred, the town really is nothing more than an airport surrounded by a few houses and small businesses.

Watching a plane coming in to land over Kangerlussuaq Fjord

Double-fisting wieners at a small shop called Ishuset, which means “The Ice House” in Danish. Aside from whatever you can pick up at the local grocery store, these Ishuset hot dogs are the most affordable food option in town – much cheaper than Restaurant Muskox in the Kangerlussuaq Airport, at any rate.

One of the few things to do in Kangerlussuaq is to visit the edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet at a place called Point 660. Tours run from town several times a day from April until October.

Wreckage of an American Lockheed T-33A airplane which crashed sometime in 1968. The pilot had been the only one aboard the plane and had safely ejected before it went down. My guide said that years later the pilot came back to the scene of the crash and found his wallet perfectly intact among the wreckage. Although a cool story, I don’t really buy it. Sounds like bullshit to me.

Unmarked grave somewhere along the road between Kangerlussuaq and Point 660. I was researching local burial methods when I discovered what a huge problem suicide is in Greenland. I came across a few good articles, but this one from NPR seemed to be the most thorough… https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/04/21/474847921/the-arctic-suicides-its-not-the-dark-that-kills-you

I can’t find much information on this online, but the tour guide said that the road between the town of Kangerlussuaq and Point 660 was built by Volkswagen so they could test their cars on the ice sheet there. Apparently, the project was massively expensive, not sustainable, and thus abandoned not very long after the road’s completion.

It’s said that 80% of Greenland is covered in ice. The ice sheet (which you’re seeing the edge of here) 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. Because living on a glacier is not a sustainable way for humans to exist, all towns and settlements on Greenland are found in the coastal areas not covered by the ice sheet.

The remains of a caribou or reindeer

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.

The Greenland Ice Sheet contains about 8% of all of Earth’s fresh water

Walking with the group along the rocky path that stretches from where the road ends down to the edge of the ice sheet

Neat pattern on one of the boulders I walked past. Wonder how many millions of years of naturally occurring processes it took for this rock to develop the way it did

Almost there

On the ice

According to NASA, the Greenland Ice Sheet is as big as 80% of the United States east of the Mississippi River

This was very slippery to walk on in gym shoes. Definitely could’ve used a pair of crampons

The Greenland Ice Sheet was nice to visit for a day. Don’t know how much I’d enjoy one of those month-long excursions across it