Words: Mike Keen

Photos: Mike Keen &
Arina Kleist

South to north Greenland solo

I’m no seasoned paddler. Like so many things I wish I’d learnt when I was younger, paddling is up there with the guitar. But sadly, time travel hasn’t been invented yet, so I’m stuck with it. Just before covid, I was off to the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland on a food research book project; I knew I’d have a chance of a paddle and also knew I’d regret it if I had to pass due to not knowing what I was doing so I did a day’s kayaking course just before I left Suffolk four years ago.

Fast forward three years, and I’d spent each summer since that first trip to Greenland cooking, travelling and, yes, kayaking. One of the more unexpected things to be relished in Greenland is the language – super hard to pronounce, let alone understand for a heathen such as myself – the amount of Qs is enough to give a Scrabble player a hot flush. Place names, in particular, sound so cool – Qaqortoq in the far south and Qaanaaq in the far north, for example, and the word kayak comes from the Inuit qajaq – the craft they invented and have been using for millennia.

And so it was, over a couple of beers, a conversation kicked off an expedition idea – Qajaq from Qaqortoq to Qaanaaq. It’s got seven Qs in there! Some back of a beer mat workings out, and a couple of dips into Google gave me the basics – 3,000 kilometres in total, so an average of 30km per day would give me a 100-day expedition. That’s doable, I thought, and the rest rolled into place over the next 12 months.

Rolled may be a bit glib – I managed to get most of the equipment sorted by amazing companies – all the clothing and kayak gear from Palm, Scorpio kayak from P&H, tent and bags from Bach, tech gear from Global Telesat Comms. Getting any hard cash for the myriad of other expenses proved particularly difficult, though, and it came down to a crowdfund and smashing a couple of credit cards (which I’m still paying off).

The plan for the expedition was for it to take around 100 days and for me to leave Qaqortoq in the south of Greenland towards the end of April. Because of sea ice patterns in the south and the north, the paddling had to take place over the summer. To add interest, the weather patterns have been a bit screwy for the past three years, which affects what happens with the sea ice, so I was half expecting things to go awry.

Drawing on my background as a chef, and very much into natural cooking and preservation, I’d decided to eat only a traditional Inuit diet for the duration of the expedition – so pretty much only sea mammals, muskox, reindeer and fish. I give talks and demonstrations on fermentation and the wilder end of cooking. I also have a keen interest in how humans have evolved with food in different regions of the world – as part of that journey; I had a great network of microbiologists and other experts. I managed to get some in-depth medical tests done through Tim Spector at St Thomas’ Hospital in London just before I left and the same ones on my return.

In addition, I was to send samples of my gut microbiome (through the medium of poo) before, during and after the expedition to a team of microbiologists to measure how my gut and body were reacting to the diet.

Thick sea ice
Straight away, the weather and ice started acting up – the ship carrying my kayak couldn’t get through the unseasonably thick sea ice in the south, and it was delayed by about eight days. By that time of year (late April), the wind has usually blown any remaining sea ice way out towards Canada.

Having been so tight on money, I couldn’t afford to spend any downtime and the extra accommodation costs, so I got down to Nanortalik (even further south) and worked on a building site for a week while waiting for the ship to get through.

Eventually, Scorp was delivered, and we reunited (my craft is a P&H Scorpio MK2, MV, imaginatively named Scorp and gender unspecific, hence the ‘it’). And I found myself at the quayside in Qaqortoq on a cloudy and cold day in late April, all togged up and scorp waiting patiently for me to get going. The national news had featured me the evening before, and seemingly half of the town of 3,000 souls had come to say farewell.

Facebook user percentages
With the population of Greenland at around 57,000 people – the entire populace could comfortably fit inside Wembley stadium – and spread over a landmass the size of Europe, their relative isolation means that modern comms are used to their full advantage. Not only do most people watch the nightly news, but the country is number three in the world in terms of Facebook user percentages; this would come in handy for me as I progressed with communities posting updates on social media and following me closely on the tracker map on my website.

The harbour resounded to the sounds of beeping cars and flag-waving, cheering schoolkids. I thankfully managed to get in without capsizing and gracefully paddled out of the harbour, swung west into the fjord and headed in the general direction of Canada. After just a few hundred yards, the crowds and noise of the harbour died away, and I was truly alone at last. I remember feeling that the adventure had finally started, and a shiver of trepidation washed over me briefly before the metronomic monotony of the paddling kicked in as my thoughts turned to the map and where my first night would see me.

The fjord was calm, with not much of a breeze, and I made good progress through the sea-ice laden waters – visibility was good, and I could pick my course through the ice from a fair distance away. Well broken sea ice is not as imposing as icebergs and, with it being frozen sea (as opposed to great hunks that have calved from a glacier) means it’s a lot lower and closer to the surface of the water – that being said, I did have to about-turn and find a clearer path several times – going closer to the land invariably worked. A lot further north, when I encountered serious sea ice, the only option was to stick to the land and drag Scorp a few kilometres until the ice thinned out.

Checking the satellite photos
I’d had a couple of Danish old timers knowingly shake their heads, roll their eyes at each other and recommend that I start a few hundred kilometres further north as they didn’t think the ice was passable. I’d done some homework, though, and had been regularly checking the satellite photos from the Danish Meteorological chaps, which showed that the heaviest ice was in the first 50km. So, I was pretty happy to have knocked out 36km on the first day without too much hassle.

I’d never done an overnight camp with a kayak before, and even though I’d done plenty of camping, that was a fair few years ago. One of my concerns pre-expedition was whether there would be many camping opportunities – on my previous visits, I’d travelled in a few fjords where the mountains just descended steeply into the water with no chance of landing, let alone setting up a tent. So I was pretty happy to find a potential site at the end of a headland sometime around 1700hrs.

Dragging Scorp
At that time of year in the south, it didn’t get properly dark, but you could tell the sun was getting low, and the temperature had dropped to about -3C, so I was keen to get dry and under cover soon. The cove I’d picked had plenty of small bergs in, and it was a little hairy trying to get through and land onto a handy kayak-sized shallow ledge and, from there, drag Scorp up past the high water mark. With all the gear loaded, the total weight was about 58kg, so it wasn’t suitable for any steep drags without having to unload first. As soon as the kayak was ok, I stripped off and put on dry gear.

This became the routine throughout the expedition – on pontoons, ice shelves and rocky beaches, I’d immediately get out of my dry suit and into the land clothes. The sweat build-up inside the suit and rapidly decreasing temperatures meant that whenever I stopped paddling, I’d start shivering straightaway. So, to get dry and warm was an absolute priority. Once changed, I could take a little more time to find a decent camp spot.

Bears
Another one of the many concerns was bears. The highest likelihood of an encounter is in the north, not so much in the middle, but again, the chances jump up in the south.

Here, the bears tend to hitch a ride on the ice as it comes around from the east coast, then they hop off and make their way back east over the ice cap – it’s way narrower in the south, so it isn’t quite the epic scale it takes on in the far north. Being solo made it take on more of a life-or-death perspective for me, the main issue being that I had to sleep and couldn’t take turns to watch.

As security, I had a bear rifle and a starter pistol that fired a double-blank cartridge. I also had a bear trip wire set up for the tent. This consists of four poles – one to be set up at each corner around the tent. Then, two trip wires between each set of posts are attached to a blank cartridge with a spring-loaded spike to set off the cartridge should a beast walk in. This would be a reasonably straightforward exercise if the land were covered in turf.

Laughed itself silly
Greenland, however, doesn’t have any turf; it’s either solid rock or a thin layer of moss and lichen on top of solid rock. This means that each pole has to be wedged upright by a bunch of rocks; it has to be solid, or the wind will set off the trip. This turned into an hour’s worth of work, which I gave up on after a long day on the water. Instead, I decided to rely on my inability to sleep for longer than 30 minutes at a stretch, simultaneously clutching the pistol like a cross between James Bond and an Arctic Norman Wisdom. I think any self-respecting bear would have laughed itself silly before being able to eat me, which would give me time to let off a blank.

But wow, it was cold. Average temperatures would have been around zero C overnight, but in the first three weeks, the highest temp was -5C. Which put a dampener on any hopes I had of relaxing once I’d set camp, maybe a cup of tea as I gazed out upon the magnificent landscape. I even had aspirations of getting a bit cheffy and putting some effort into a lovely meal. But no. In those temperatures, the overriding priority is to get dry and into the tent.

A purely functional activity
Most nights, I slept in two pairs of socks, hiking trousers and longjohns, t-shirt, long sleeve t-shirt, pullover, coat and a hat. And cooking becomes a purely functional activity. On the rare occasion I caught a fish, it was too cold to bother taking the bones out, so I mashed it into the pan with salt and seal fat over high heat with a handful of snow or ice. And as soon as it was almost cooked, you get it in your mouth, spitting the bones out the front of the tent.

So easy and quick to cook cuts of meat and fish were the only way to go – this I figured out pretty quickly, and so whenever I got to a settlement and had a chance to cook, I’d cook up a seal or whale stew, bag it so all I had to do was reheat. Or eat it cold. Being on a Greenlandic-only diet, I had to make sure I was eating enough fat – supposedly, around 40% of my diet was to be fat, which my 10-year-old self would have recoiled in horror at.

Staple foods
Luckily, after three years in Greenland, I had gotten used to it, actively enjoyed it, and, more importantly, quickly noticed the increased energy levels. I could write a book (and funnily enough, I am) on the food aspect alone. Any outsider looking at the environment in Greenland would have to question how on earth anyone could survive there. But the range of foods available is extraordinary. Seal has been the staple food for the Inuit over several waves of migration over the last few thousand years – also on the menu are whale, walrus – land mammals such as reindeer and muskox, birds such as little auks, seagulls, eider ducks. Fish included halibut, red fish, cod and capelin – shellfish such as mussels and scallops, sea urchins, prawns, and lumpfish roe. And there are plants too! Crowberries, mushrooms, angelica and roots.

I had started the diet ten days before the paddle commenced, as soon as I got to Greenland. I had been forewarned about the possible explosive effects the new diet may have in the initial transition stages, and they were spot on. I’m delighted I got that out of the way before locking myself into a dry suit.

Sea Kayaking Anglesey
My background in paddling was limited, and pretty much all of it has been done solo; before heading out this time, however, I thought it prudent to do a couple of weekends at Sea Kayaking Anglesey, which was the first time I’d been out with a group, I was apprehensive that I’d be way below the level of the others, but I seemed to hold my own – I even squeezed in a rolling session in a pool which didn’t do much for my confidence but at least meant I had a basic roll. I did wonder how that would pan out with a loaded kayak with bags and rifle strapped to the deck and figured I’d give it a go, but I expected I’d have to pop the skirt and do a self-rescue.

Waking up on the first morning to a snow-muffled tent was unexpected because the snow was pretty unusual for that time of year but seemed to be a constant companion for me in that first month of paddling – the snow gives a different sound quality, and you can tell it’s there before you open your eyes. The second hardest part of each day was making that first move to get out of the sleeping bag. I was cold most of the time, even with all those layers and inside a bag and hanging around wasn’t an option, the goal being to get paddling ASAP and up the warmth levels.

The packing of the kayak didn’t change much over the entire expedition – I had all my dry clothes in the front hatch. I have a sleeping bag, roll mat, bear gear in the rear hatch, all my tech stuff – cameras, GoPro, powerbanks as well as first aid kit, toiletries and a ‘useful things’ bag (compass, duct tape, another knife, matches etc) in the hatch directly behind the cockpit. Food and cooking gear was strapped to the rear deck, tent and rifle to the front deck. Everything was in dry bags, which I thought would be sufficient, but no. Water gets into every hatch – especially when the wind is lively and waves wash over you from all sides.

The cold dry suit
I quickly learnt to put any sensitive objects – i.e. anything electrical, inside a plastic bag with a clip-on, sometimes double bagged, which makes getting organised in your tent pretty crucial if you don’t want to spend ages looking for an item. I got a little quicker each time at packing/unpacking, but it still took 90 minutes from start to finish. The most challenging part of the routine was getting into the cold dry suit – I left this bit until Scorp was loaded and ready to go. Just the tent left to pack down, removing your toasty warm and dry clothes to put on the cold drysuit was a miserable task, only alleviated by knowing that you’d be on the water soon and paddling to warm up.

I didn’t do any planning really to work around tides, and I didn’t notice them too much when I was out towards the coast – only through a couple of fjord systems did it affect me. Once, heading through an icy fjord in the south, I heard something that soon turned into a dull roar, and I could feel the water tug. Paddling hard towards the land, I soon saw the fjord narrow, and the water was rough about 100m ahead. Not knowing the water and being by myself, I didn’t fancy giving it a go, so I wound my way down into a small cove, landing on an icy beach. I hopped out to see if I could portage past that fast-moving water over the hill. And yes, I could.

I dragged Scorp about 200m over ice into a cove on the other side of the narrows – feet breaking through the icy crust and soon losing any feeling as I managed to launch through some heavy ice and carry on with the journey. Two other times, the tide was too strong to paddle against, and both times, I pulled to the side and waited it out. It’s not ideal when it’s so cold, but it wasn’t long before the current had lessened enough for me to make some headway against it.

Greenlandic paddlers
I didn’t encounter any other paddlers until I reached Sisimiut, when a group of Greenlandic paddlers came out to meet me a few kilometres from the harbour. I am in awe of these paddlers, in their homemade craft that are so sleek and low in the water. The silence of their wooden Greenlandic paddles made me feel a little clumsy. I was in my dry suit, throw rope and PFD, bits of equipment hanging off me and Scorp, whereas they were in a regular jumper (with jeans and sneakers, I found out when we landed), no lifejacket or emergency beacons in case anything happened.

I often thought of those traditional qajaqs alone, paddling or waiting out a storm. Scorp is pretty bombproof – tough moulded plastic split by bulkheads into four separate sections, so if one section floods, it’ll still float. But these wooden qajaqs, with canvas or stretched sealskin the only thing between the paddler and the freezing cold waters, had no such luxury – it would just take a mishap with a sharp piece of ice or a walrus attack, and that would be it – there would be no chance of making it to shore before hypothermia took hold.

Part two – next issue.

Greenland