WORDS: MIKE KEEN

PHOTOS:
MIKE KEEN &
ARINA KLEIST

IG, Threads and YouTube: @mikekeencooks
https://www.mikekeen.co
mike@mikekeen.co 

South to north Greenland solo (part 2)

Part one: https://paddlerezine.com/south-north-greenland
The line between being ok and being very much not ok is a fine one and one that is very easily crossed. I never capsized out there, but several times, I got into weather that made me a bit twitchy. It can’t be helped despite having the latest weather apps and tech to ensure I had up-to-date reports.

Sometimes, the crossings were just too far for it to be spot on all the time. My longest crossing was 38km in Disko Bay, a day or two after leaving Ilulissat and its incredible ice fjord, but there were plenty of crossings around the 15-20km mark. The weather apps were pretty accurate; I used PredictWind, which worked with the satphone for updating when I wasn’t near a settlement or phone connection. When I did have a connection, I also used Windy to cross reference for extra peace of mind. When the waves picked up, it was reassuring to know that it (probably) wouldn’t turn into something nasty – or at least I’d convince myself that.

Despite the unseasonably bad weather, I didn’t lose too many days to storms – it was much colder than expected. The worst weather I experienced was a day or two north of Maniitsoq. I knew the wind was going to pick up and turn gale force sometime late evening, so around mid-afternoon, I’d come out of a fjord system and pushed it a bit across a fjord to a tiny bay that looked like it would be sheltered from what I could see on the map. And again, because of the unseasonal weather, there was still an ice shelf just above the high water mark on most bays and beaches I visited. And this particular bay only had one spot where it was possible to land and drag Scorp up and over.

The temperature had dropped considerably, and whitecaps were appearing in the bay behind me, so I was keen to get the tent up and out of the biting wind. As I often found when I’d spotted a suitable site, the Inuit had been there before me – stone circles indicating where they’d made shelter hundreds, possibly thousands of years before. It was somehow reassuring to get this historic validation of my choice of campsite.

Hunkering down
It felt wrong to camp inside the circle, though, so I always pitched on the periphery. I put the tent up in the now driving wind and spent 30 minutes hefting rocks and placing them around the tent’s base – the app had said the storm would be 36-48 hours so I prepared to hunker down for a while. That feeling when you’re dry, you duck inside the tent and zip the wind outside is a beautiful thing. The wind speed was increasing by the hour, and the snow that started falling was now a blizzard.

The tent was a teepee style with a single central pole and was now shaking alarmingly; the noise was incredible, but it was tough, and I felt secure. My mind kept wandering to that circle of rocks a few meters away, and I got to imagine how people would’ve survived out here way back. To have to hunt seal to provide clothing and tent materials as well as food to survive on was something my Western mind found hard to comprehend. It was almost impossible to stand up in the wind (which made toilet breaks interesting), and after rechecking the weather app, I saw with dismay that the forecast was now saying it would last for three days.

I had just enough walrus stew bagged up and a good backup stock of dried food to last me. Still, it got me thinking about that fine line again – imagining how a family would have survived this storm hundreds of years ago, and it made me appreciate why the Greenlanders have a prevalence of dried food in their diet – weather like this would make it impossible to hunt or fish and without a good stock of preserved food starvation would’ve been constantly looming.

Tent suddenly collapsed
I’d ventured out twice now to collect more rocks, and I’d dragged Scorp up to the tent and turned it upside down to act as a deflector for the wind – the guy ropes were starting to fray the fly sheet and that driving snow was still coming down. With the noise and worry that the tent would take off, I didn’t get much sleep, and every time I checked the time, it seemed my watch had stopped. And then, at 02:00 hours, the tent suddenly collapsed, dropping the wet fabric on me and the sleeping bag and turning everything instantly wet.

It was light outside as it had been for nearly the entire expedition to date, and I scrambled through the wet fabric, located the zip and struggled to see what had happened. Scorp wasn’t there. Panicking slightly, I squinted through the snow, doubled over against the wind and, walking around my now pancaked tent, saw Scorp 10 metres or so up the hill behind me – the wind had picked it up, sent it through the tent, snapping the central pole and leaving a gash under my eye.

Suddenly, I had crossed the line from being ok to not at all. I dragged Scorp back down and put a few rocks inside the cockpit. There was no chance of fixing the pole, so I duct taped my spare paddle into a makeshift one and wedged it up inside the tent so at least the cold and wet tent wasn’t laying directly on all my gear any more. Most of my dry clothes were as wet and cold as my sleeping bag, but I managed to get inside my dry suit and climb into the bag again, feet pressed up against the paddles to keep the tent upright.

Worried about hypothermia
Rechecking the app, I saw that it was still about 24 hours until the wind was expected to die down, and I was cold and now a little worried about hypothermia. I did small exercises inside the bag to warm me up and, in between, fired up the satphone to monitor the weather and make contact with a hunter from the next settlement – about 50km away. I knew there was a cabin about 20km north of me, which was initially my plan A as soon as the wind dropped – but the hunter offered to come and pick me up, which immediately turned into my new Plan A!

And so I waited out the remainder of the storm until the boat showed up on day three. I’d never been happier to see another person as when that boat rounded the headland and into the bay. I had managed to keep myself warm (ish) and had been able to pack up and get out of there, but at the time, that small boat felt like a lifesaver, and it brought home to me how fragile existence out in the wilds of Greenland can be.

My goal had been to average 30km each day, which was purely based on the one time I’d ever done than 15km, and I’d cracked out 34km on a 6-hour round trip to the hot springs a couple of years ago in the south of Greenland. I’d done a lot of gym work back in the UK, all aerobic stuff like rowing, ski machine and arm bike all aimed at building stamina, but I knew I couldn’t ever get close to what I’d be doing once the expedition started.

To my delight – as I’m no spring chicken any more – I found 30km was pretty ok. And after a couple of weeks, I was hitting 40km plus with a few 50 km and even 60 km in there. I attribute it in large part to the diet. I’ve always been pretty fit but have never hit the levels of energy I had the entire time in Greenland. Even after an eight or 10-hour paddle, I felt like I could keep going, and the main reason for stopping was the air temperature dropping.

The difference was extraordinary and especially so as it vindicated my decision to stick to a natural diet out there – which makes sense as the Inuit survived and thrived on it for thousands of years. It’s almost like nature is providing the right food sources for the environment you’re in. So for 95 days, I didn’t eat any vegetables or fruit (save for about a kilo of crowberries) and no carbs at all – at least not in the form of rice, pasta, potatoes etc. a 100% keto diet – just meat and fat.

I think this has enormous implications for future expeditions, it’s a bit more seat-of-your-pants paddling, only having enough food for up to a week, but it saves all the organisational headache of carrying enough bulky ration packs or at the least arranging pick-up points. It means you’re eating tried and tested natural food that is known to have kept humans alive in that environment and stops you from having to eat the heavily processed food that is often standard expedition fare.

A bonus is that it forces you to interact with locals to search for food. And the people of Greenland are the friendliest you’ll ever meet. The generosity and support I received were mind-blowing. When they understood I was only eating their traditional foods, I was greeted at each settlement by people clutching bags of food – mattak is almost the national food. It is the skin and blubber of a whale, eaten raw and usually cut into little squares.

The blubber part is creamy in taste and texture and almost melts in your mouth; the skin takes much more time to break down and is jokingly called Greenlandic chewing gum. Oddly enough, it was harder to get hold of traditional Greenlandic food in the larger settlements, of which Nuuk, the capital, is the biggest, with only 17,500 people. Every settlement has a shop in which you can buy almost anything you’d expect to see in a European supermarket with a strong Danish slant. But to find the Greenlandic stuff, it’ll be in a small section of the freezer next to frozen pizzas and pork ribs. And it will also be quite pricey.

Get yourself to the harbour and chat with the fisherman and soon you’ll have a fantastic choice. So, what about the medical results? They’re still coming in, and the bacteriological ones will be a while as they undergo gene sequencing and fancy tests. But I lost 13kg, almost two stones (!), in the first four weeks. It was rare to find scales to weigh myself, but I was worried that I was using up my fat reserves quickly and that I’d crash at some point, but it levelled out naturally without having to do anything.

My body fat percentage went down by 10%, and, most incredibly to me, my cholesterol level halved. We’re forever told in the media that animal fats are bad for you, but in my case, it seemed the opposite was true. The 5-a-day mantra that has become part of Western life also went out of the window and I thrived on my 0-a-day diet.

The oft-asked question was, what about scurvy? Well, it turns out that whale skin and blubber, as well as the dried capelin fish (ammassat), are naturally high in vitamin C, so the diet covered all bases for me. I’m not advocating that everyone should be on a meat and fat-only diet, but my takeaway from this is we should be eating the food that naturally grows in the environment we’re in.

Disko Bay proved to be a turning point in the expedition – it signified me passing the halfway point which also coincided with the weather finally showing an improvement – mainly by not snowing but also giving me tantalising glimpses of the sun. But even better than that was that it seemed to press a magic whale button. I’d seen only about three whales since leaving Qaqortoq, which was a lot less than expected – but rounding the corner after Aasiaat and paddling into Disko Bay proper and I saw them every single day – the feeling of insignificance, when a whale pops up, coating you in a whoosh of fishy spray whilst simultaneously scaring the crap out of you, is pretty damn incredible.

You’re just paddling along, but then everything changes, and there’s suddenly a 2-tonne whale 20m away gently going about its business. Whether it’s tagging along next to you on purpose or you’re both just by chance on the same route doesn’t matter. Although I’d say, it was for the interspecies companionship option every time.

Disko Bay Glacier
Disko Bay is home to the northern hemisphere’s most productive glacier as well – being a stone’s throw from the town of Ilulissat, it’s made this beautiful town of about 3500 people Greenland’s most popular tourist attraction. Paddling from the tiny settlement of Ilimanaq, which is on the glacier’s southern side, you have to cross the aftermath of 35 million tonnes of ice PER DAY calving from the glacier – depending on the weather, it can be a breeze with plenty of clear channels to navigate through, or it can be jam-packed with bergs and bergy bits like a giant slushy.

It was the latter for me, and it took four hours to travel the 18km through. But what great fun – pushing a way through could feel a little hairy at times, especially when trying to steer well clear of any big icebergs that, if they calve or spin over, would make life very difficult for an errant paddler. But the chunks of ice are generally small enough to enable you to create your channels.

Disorienting
It can get a little disorienting when all you can see is the whiteness of ice wherever you look, and the sound of hunters and tourist boats echo all around without you being able to pinpoint the craft. But I highly recommend it – if the ice is too dense to get through, you can head out further into the bay. The ice usually dampens down the waves, making the paddling often easier going on mirror-like waters. If and when you get to Ilulissat, walk out to the ice fjord from town – there are some tremendous marked trails, and the view will take your breath away.

The ice here in Ilulissat was really dramatic and astoundingly beautiful, but it amazed me how the mood of the ice can change – as explained before, the sea ice had been an issue in the south and had caused some problems already, and it always had the potential to become a bigger problem in the far north. The weather patterns in the last few years had varied wildly from their norm, and I was worried about not being able to complete the last leg of the journey between Upernavik and Qaanaaq.

I was in contact with several folks in the sparser settlements in the north who all told the same story: the ice wasn’t breaking up. I’d never paddled through serious sea ice before, but I tasted it in Upernavik Kujalleq – a small settlement a couple of days paddle from Upernavik itself. As I’d padded into Kujalleq, I’d seen in the distance the telltale white line on the horizon that meant sea ice lay ahead, but leaving the following day, it seemed to have blown away.

Football field-sized ice chunks
It was only after rounding a headland several km out that I realised it lay directly in front of me from the rocks on the coast stretching out as far as I could see. This sea ice was a different beast than the smaller chunks in the south. Some of these were football field-sized chunks that would weigh in at several thousand tonnes, and oddly, despite the sea being calm – a fortunate side effect of so much ice, it appeared that there were several strong currents at play.

Just sitting there with a sea fog rolling in to make it more interesting and observing the ice, it’s almost like hidden rivers were moving within the water, carrying these enormous pieces of flat ice in all directions. My previous ice paddling had involved plenty of brute strength on the smaller pieces, which generally behaved and could be moved out of the way to clear a way through. But there was no chance with these.

The Greenlanders love telling a story, and I’d heard plenty about the dangers of the big sea ice – it seemed everyone had an uncle who’d lost his legs after getting squashed between two opposing ice chunks. With this in mind, I paddled carefully for about an hour, going deeper into a maze of ice but keeping close to land. At this point, my Garmin had decided there were no satellites to use, and my position on the screen was a hundred or km south of where I knew I was.

Water channels opened up
Eventually, though, it became impassable – I knew from the locals and the satellite images that it didn’t stretch on forever, so I pressed on, this time on land, dragging Scorp over the football-sized rocks with the ice field directly to my left as I went north. After almost an hour of this and sweating from the exertion, channels opened up again. I launched into the sea, this time finding larger and wider channels until I suddenly broke into open water, and the ice was behind me.

I was heading north again at a good rate, and the geology had changed again – the landscape was still very dramatic, but instead of the occasional gentle slope with possible camping spots, it became ice-capped mountains plunging steeply into the sea. Despite the slow couple of hours getting through the ice, I was now making excellent progress, and instead of stopping at a cabin at the 50km mark, I decided to carry on.

I passed the cabin that marked 65km, and by that point, I only had 20km left to Upernavik. I saw my first (and last) walrus around this point. A great brown, domed head poked out of the water about 50 metres ahead, instantly making me take a rapid 90-degree turn towards land. Something I hadn’t been aware of before setting out, but luckily, the Greenlanders relished telling me was that walruses have been known to attack kayaks – especially red or orange ones (mine is very orange). Brilliant, I’d thought of adding another hazard to the list. Luckily, this one decided I wasn’t interesting enough and didn’t surface again.

I’d been in constant touch with people in the northern settlements, and the more we spoke, the more apparent it became that the last few hundred km would be a challenge, if not impossible. Melville Bay lies between Kullorsuaq and Savissivik, the two settlements bookending the infamous bay – it’s 300km of unrelenting ice with only two cabins to offer respite. The sea ice was so thick I would have to paddle way out to sea to get past it, and I would need a support boat to shadow me.

The consensus was that if I waited another four weeks, it should be ok to pass by close to land – this was four weeks longer than I could afford; unfortunately, I made the hard decision to end the expedition in Upernavik. At the time, I was pretty gutted, but it seemed apt and not a little ironic that an expedition trying to highlight climate change and the effects it was having on weather patterns and the environment was having to be cut short due to that exact reason.

Still, I thought I’d completed 2,200 km all by myself, living off the food that humans have survived and thrived on for thousands of years until modern Europeans got their claws into it and showed that a natural hunter-gatherer diet, effectively eating your environment was more than likely by far the best option for those attempting to live in it. I’d also proved to myself that, by dint of research and good planning, I could achieve something I’d previously thought only pro paddlers would have a go at.

So I guess if there’s a message to be gained from this, it’s that you should never let your insecurities make you give up on something you want to do – there’s always a way, and you don’t have to be the world’s best to make it happen.