TeddytoArctic2022.blogspot.com

  Grilling Arctic char and loon/diver. (The diver got caught in a net set for char.) The meat of the diver was superb. Turner Island, just south of the entrance to Scoresbysund Dryas octopetala Hot water spring. This is about 5 feet in diameter. The red boat is La Belle Epoque, owned by the Austrians Jurgen and Klaudia Kirchburger. Ther circumnavigated the Americas, did the Northwest Passage, wintered over in a remote location in west Greenland on this boat, spent time in South Chile, Tierra del Fuego, the Antarctic, and South Georgia. Check out their website: fortgeblasen I met them 10 years ago in S Iceland & we stayed in touch. We got very close. Minor ice field offshore. We sailed to where the ice had cleared, according to the continually updated Danish ice charts available online, and we did not encounter any major icefields. 

                                                            South channel, Milne Land                                Karl's friend Dina in front of her house, Ittoqqotoormiit Karl with Dina's son Jacob.                                         The supply ship, an icebreaker. First visit of two visits a year for supply. French sailors in front.  Greenland boletes. Superb as sauce with pasta. Mike did not take it so well, and was up all night spewing out his guts. Not a problem for Karl & me, or for a couple on another boat. Jurgen & Claudia joined us for a walk. Jurgen carries his rifle, me my shotgun.  Mike baked a lot of bread. This one on ...

                                                                  Bear track. Arctic fox track to right.                                                                              Bear track. Lake trout                                                              Bear hides curing, Ittoqqotoormiit                                                     ...

                                                       Some landscapes are ALL boulders                                                                                    Glacier                                                                                      Hekla Havn                             Hot spring funnel, good bathing in pool downstream.   ...

   On polar bears.    In East Greenland, one always carries a bear gun. This means a rifle or shotgun that will kill a bear. Among the Inuit, carrying a gun in country is a given. Wherever we landed and walked, we always carried a loaded gun.    I saw a bear, on a small islet in the Bear Island archipelago deep in Scoresbysund, east of Milne Land. He knew he was spotted and he went to ground. We circled the islet close in, but did not see him again. The crew missed out. Going ashore to look for him was not an option: he would have swum away, or attacked us.    Bear spoor was everywhere in some places. A lot of tracks, some huge, some fresh. Polar bear have wide feet; this is an adaption for swimming and for walking on snow. A lot of bear stool. One stool was made up of white bear hair. I have read of male polar bear killing and eating the cub; possibly this was what happened.     Often we came across driftwood that had been partly s...

Four weeks of total wilderness, with the perpetual uncertainties, at sea of the ever-present bergs, and floes, and on land of the possibility of running into a polar bear.  Some snapshots & thoughts from East Greenland. Muskox. We saw quite a few of this primeval beast from the age of the mammoth. Their bones lie everywhere. In summer they shed their undercoat fur, an extremely fine wool, ultra light and of top quality. They rub against boulders to remove some of this fur. Here, and everywhere we walked, Karl and I picked a few bags of this wool. The hide can be brought at Ittoqqotoormiit. It is a solid 3 inches of wool; dense and heavy. The muskox is impervious to the cold and wind of the Arctic winter. At a lake we caught a lot of trout. 14 to 25 inches long (35 to 67 cm). Massive. Roasted over a fire of driftwood, breaded and fried, and fish soup. Walking up the side of a glacier. On its lateral moraine. Seeing the various features of the reduced glacier. Undulating steep wa...

Two days ago we got back to Iceland, to Talknafjordur in the Westfjords. The transit across the Denmark Strait took two days and was without drama. We left sailing true south with a good NE wind on the stern quarter, passed through the ice field of the East Greenland current, which was extremely diminished, and as the wind gradually died the next day we motored the rest of the way. Greenland is intense. A wild chaos of powerful impressions that will take a while to process. Most of the visit was in total wilderness, the ice is always present, and there is always the possibility of running into a bear. We went through Scoresbysund, rounded  Milne Land with its massive mountains lining the passage, anchored at various places and had many fantastic walks. The farthest inland we went from the mouth of the Sound was 130 NM, or 150 miles. Then to Ittoqqotoormiit, a village of 350, the village farthest north up the east coast, and no communities to the south for 400 NM. This is an extreme...