Trip Length:		27 days
Trip Dates:		September 4 - October 1, 2004
Report Submitted By:		Tash Wright and Polly Murray
Participants Names:		Tash Wright and Polly Murray
Sponsors Names:		-
Route Followed:		A flight up the west coast of Greenland to Upernavik to meet 'Dodo's Delight'. North, through the icy wilderness to a latitude of 78 32.028N via remote northern villages, then south to be the first to ski traverse Herbert Island before returning to Upernavik.
G3 Equipment Used: G3 High Performance Climbing Skins, G3 AviTech Shovels
Comments on Gear Performance: We were so lucky to have been given some fantastic equipment by G3 for our expedition. The high performance climbing skins we used on the traverse were great under foot on telemark skis but their most valuable asset was the G3 design attachment to tip and tail they were so user friendly in high winds and in the extreme cold that we experienced. The two part backcountry shovels were light and compact for our ski traverse and durable enough for building protective walls around out tent in hard compact snow. They were also great for shovelling the vast amounts of snow off the deck of Dodo's Delight! We cannot thank you enough.

Trip Description:
And so to Greenland again! The Reverend Bob Shepton was on the phone, "Girls I'm needing crew for my next adventure" The three of us Tash Wright, Polly Murray and Jessamy Howarth had sailed to Greenland before with Bob in 2001 in his sailing yacht 'Dodo's Delight' a 33ft westerly. This time Bob's aims were slightly different, to go as far north in a fibreglass boat as possible, and along the way hopefully fitting in some ski touring and climbing. Although the idea sounded absolutely barking mad it definitely had the potential of a hugely exciting adventure and one not to be missed!

We had an awesome flight up the west coast of Greenland in a small Dash 7 plane and the weather allowed us a brief glimpse of the amazing landscape and coastline we were about to be sailing through. Accompanied with all the delights of travel, lost luggage and 2 nights accommodation in a freezer container in Illulisaat airport! we landed at Upernavik, a small island community to meet the boat.

Bob had spent the summer with another crew sailing from Scotland, making his way up the west coast climbing new peaks along the way. They had experienced appalling weather the worst summer Greenland had had for along time and so we were very nervous that the conditions would remain like that for our trip as well.

With the boat prepared and the food shopping complete {nearly bankrupting funds due to the prices of fresh vegetables!} We prepared to leave for our first port of call, Quanaq, a small Inuit community that lay 424 nautical miles to the north.

For the first twelve hours we headed west into Melville Bay to escape the coast, this was mainly to avoid the huge amounts of icebergs that had been carved off the glaciers that spilled down from the ice cap. Our first three days of the journey were a bit grey and drizzly and the only entertainment was the majestic fulmars that were constantly playing chicken with the bow of the boat.

The wish for excitement almost came too soon as we approached Kap York. At one o'clock in the morning the radar suddenly seemed to have a sudden attack of the measles! Bright blobs of fluorescent green were popping up everywhere signalling a meteor field of bergs…time to wake the skipper and start weaving our way out! At that time of year there is luckily enough light to illuminate the menacing shapes of these irregular objects that loomed out of the dim light, the most dangerous part was trying to avoid the bergy bits and brash ice that had broken off from the larger bergs, these can sometimes be translucent and float just beneath the waters surface, a very frightening enemy for a fibreglass boat!

Four and a half days later, on the 8th of September we arrived at Quanaq.

It is always really exciting arriving at these very inhospitable villages, landing on the beach being greeted with sniffs from husky dogs and small grubby faced kids, who found our rubber dinghy a fascination, bouncing up and down on it like a trampoline. We explored ashore and talked to locals, learning that much of the tradition Inuit culture still existed for example the traditional way of hunting Narwhal by Kayak, it was also very evident as our stroll along the beach took us past some large buckets of blubber and seal bits to feed the dog teams in winter. It was a magical place with a definite air of function about it.

The following day we continued north to Mac Cormick Fjord. Here we had learnt that Josephine Peary had wintered over with her husband the famous explorer Robert Peary. It was our mission to find the spot and after a lot of guesswork good imagination, some rusty nails and a door hinge we were convinced we had found the foundations of their house. Not only that but having not quite grasped the scale of the landscape there was a very excited Tash bouncing up and down pointing to a white moving object moving across the shoreline obviously thinking that she had spotted our first bear! Unfortunately disappointment sunk in as two large floppy ears appeared over a hillock, it was in fact an arctic hare! That one was never lived down!

We visited the third northerly settlement in the world Siorapaluk. This was a unique experience. It had a community of about 60 people, the whole function of the village revolved around survival. Reindeer and seal lay on raised palettes for dog food and the village kids were competing for piggy backs and showing us how they would hunt a walrus with a sharpened broom pole. We were invited into a house to look at carvings only to find skinned seal skins hanging on frames and large vats of seal meat for their dinner.

With Siorapaluk behind us we really got the feeling that we were about to go north into a very isolated and remote area of the world, very rarely visited. The first aim was to round Kap Alexander to the old Inuit settlement of Etah, which had also been a starting point for western explorers for their expeditions north.

We studied the ice faxes to find that the Greenland side of Smith Sund was free of pack ice leaving us with clear water to proceed north. We had a very windy passage avoiding some well-disguised bergy bits, the odd clink on the hull forcing a comment from the skipper! In the murky dawn of the 11th we located the entrance to Etah and carefully made our way in with little to no soundings on the charts. Katabatic winds reaching gusts of up to 45 knots were funnelling down the steep cliffs from the ice cap. We anchored 4 times before holding on the north side of the fjord, glancing up at the steep sided slopes we spotted our first musk oxen. What an amazing sight! At first these huge beasts that resembled large boulders looked very docile but before long they were clambering easily along the contours of the hillside with their long shaggy coats dangling down. We had a brief explore ashore in the old huts that still remained, small piles of antlers and oxen skulls littered the old camp a reminder of the old community that once lived here, it was hard to imagine an existence in such a hostile place. Our kew to leave came as we saw Bob whistling across the fjord in Dodo's, time for a sharp exit!

Our trip also involved a small scientific project. We were given a probe from the Scott Polar Institute, which we lowered to a depth of 400 meters to measure the salt water versus fresh water content of the sea. We did this 5 times across Smith Sund to the coast of Ellesmere Island, Northern Canada. With exceptionally sore arms after all the hauling up 2000metres of rope! We reached the pack ice off Cape Isabella on Ellesmere island where we saw our only sign of the polar bear, huge paw prints crossing a piece of pack ice, they were definitely not hare prints! We were convinced an encounter with a bear was very close. With such a good weather window we pushed north to reach the latitude of 78 32.028N. It was an unbelievable place. The sea became a slushy consistency and pancake ice started to form around us threatening to freeze us in. It was dusk as we reached our final northerly point and the sky, coloured with pinks and oranges left us all with an image of a seascape we shall never forget.

Herbert Island

With one more objective left to complete we sailed south to Herbert Island. Polly and myself had spied it as we sailed north. It was 30 km long and resembled a wedge like shape and we both hoped to be the first people to traverse it on skis. We decided to start the traverse on the high-sided end. With a small weather window we set of up the 800meter climb to the top, to then head due west along a ridge to where we could hopefully put our skis on, and ski down hill to the western shore. The first afternoon soon gave us a taster of things to come. The mountainside was made of a scree consistency covered with a foot of fresh snow, with heavy packs and telemark boots on this made going quite tricky.

After a cold night we were greeted the next morning with a strong easterly wind that was whipping round the ridges, making it very uncomfortable to pack the gear up. The climb proved to be very hard work and with 5 hours passed we reached the top to see the most amazing sight, below us the ground fell away into red and orange sandstone cliffs that plummeted into the sea, and the view to the south was spectacular, the sea shimmering with the small white dots of ice bergs. Glancing along the ridge we knew it was going to be a long day and we were not wrong! In the end it took us ten hours to go three and a half kilometres! Very exhausted but happy that we had hopefully conquered the worst of the up hill, we made camp looking north over Murchison Sund to the red cliffs of Mac Cormick Fjord.

Luckily the following day we could pretty much put skis on straight away. We were by now on a glacier so harnessed and roped up we skied across the vast landscape of whiteness pulling our delightful pulk that we had decanted much of our stuff into. Once again the wind continued to blow very strongly and by the end of the second day our faces had been whipped by the wind. The temperatures were 25 degrees below and we were both feeling the cold, Tash had frost nip on her toes and passed a very uncomfortable night with agonising hot aches.

On the final day we skied 18 kilometres but also got some great telemark turns in, at last we could make proper use of all the fresh snow!

With the end in sight and radio contact made with the boat we walked down into a steep sided gorge, which lead to the sea. This turned out to be terrible mistake as the gorge narrowed we were soon walking down into frozen waterfalls, navigating over small rocky cliffs, it was time for a hasty retreat, and just when we thought the hard work was over! It was not the situation we wanted to be in after three hard days.

Eventually we found a way down to the coast and rather by brute force than technique we lowered our packs down the bouldery cliff to the sea, we were ecstatic to see the boat again and to get some warm food inside us!

The journey home was not with out its excitement. Two days of southerly storms brought snow and strong winds not to mention sailing head on into the relentless rain and sleet. We arrived back in Upernavik on the 1st October and headed straight for a shower and a very expensive beer but it was definitely worth every penny!

The summary of the trip is that we had all had a once in a lifetime experience. We had met some amazing people little affected by the western world, seen some fantastic views of baron, wild and icy landscapes and sailed through some of the wildest and beautiful stretches of coastline in the world, we new had been very lucky to have had the chance to experience a small part of this icy wilderness.