40miles, 2 days

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"It wasn't that I wanted, like Cook and Amundsen and Vancouver and Bering and all those other dead explorers, to turn terra incognita into terra cognita, the world into a map.  Quite the opposite.  I wanted to turn a map into a world."  

Donovan Hohn,  Moby Duck

~

Last weekend (June 30-July 1, 2012) Karen and I hiked along the river that flows west from the ice sheet, through desert valley, into Watson River and the Kangerlussuaq, Spillway.  Our goal was to reach the tongues of ice that wrap around the island mountain approximately 20 miles outside Kangerlussuaq.  We had two days to cover the estimated 40 miles, round trip, distance.  An 18.5 mile one-way distance was estimated on Google Earth...and our path was certainly not the blocky, straight segments we traced out on the map (one way map and elevation profile above).  The back-country trail system is made and maintained by the local musk ox and reindeer.  It consists of a pretty consistent network of stamped out single track.  Without these trails, the terrain is challenging to navigate on account of ice heave hummocks and thick willows hiding numerous rabbit and fox holes...a recipe for ankle twisting, and, it turns out, mega-blisters...  Unfortunately, the game trails are not totally consistent, forcing us onto uneven terrain for half, to one third of the hike.  The thought of seeing the two glaciers converging around a mountain kept us moving forward despite sore feet.

First third of the hike, we couldn't see the ice yet... The piece of land that extends into the river bed in the top left of this image, is around the half way point.  We started the hike around 8am and reached the half way point around noon; ~10 miles in 4 hours.

This slow flowing river cuts deep into the thick peat and sediment of this flat grassy valley.  The depth, around 3-5 feet, seemed abnormal for such a slow moving, meandering river. I wondered how long this stream had been cutting the same wavering path.

Gyrfalcon spotted along our route!

As we crested a small ridge we startled a musk ox harem (this is the typical term used, the females congregate with the young, and the bulls roam solo), sending them bounding along the lake shore.  In the image above the mother is in front and the youngest, baby musk ox, is trailing in the rear.  

View from the finish point: the end of a high ridge line looking directly towards the convergence of the two ice tongues.  The mountain creating this phenomenon is green with vegetation, an island in the ice.   

I'm struggling with merging my panorama shots... more to come.

Clouds at camp.  See the viking ship, oars and billowing sails, moving to the right!?  :) The sun nearly sets this time of year, providing a couple hours of sunset lighting around 10pm before rising again.

Camp. One of the best and lightest tents I have ever used, a single wall two man tent by Black Diamonds, called the limelight.  Its a cheery lime green.  The light weight poles are set up inside the tent.  We dozed with the screen door open, a cool breeze coming off the ice kept the mosquitoes at bay and the temperature in the 40s to 50s that night.

On our hike back we were so focused on reaching the car, heads trained on the uneven terrain and a rapid gait, we inadvertently snuck up on and startled a reindeer, musk ox and nesting goose. The reindeer, once it noticed my proximity (about 50 feet) freaked and bolted, thundering hooves moving faster than I had ever seen an animal run. The goose was as startled as I was, when it burst from its nest, flapping and squawking. It cranked at us from the near by lake as we peered into its down filled nest filled with five smooth white eggs (photo above). The close encounter with a musk ox was by far the most intimidating. I gave a yelp when, the ox snorted and took two pounding gallops to where it stopped, about 100 feet from us, and stared us down. I'm not sure I would have taken a photo even if I had my camera out... Fortunately, when solo, the males seem uninterested in charging. Karen clapped and yelled at it. My brain was concocting the best way to move behind the large rock just to the right of us...which really would have been more of an "ostrich head in the sand" move... After a face off, the ox turned and galloped up a hill, fortunately deeming us unworthy of a fight. We hiked from 8am to 8pm the first day, including stops, photos and a rest at the final turn around point, up until we sat down to make dinner. Day 1 was an estimated 21+ miles. Day two began at 10am and ended when we reached the car at 5:45 pm, covering around 19 miles in 8 hours, with average, estimated rate of 2.4 mi/hr.