Larry Lunt - OnEarth Magazine, from NRDC

Greenland, Days 15 and 16: The End of an Adventure

Nearly two weeks of isolation have come to an end with the arrival of the Spanish team (9 people and 52 dogs strong). Now, our minds have started honing in on "home." But first, we'll set out with four Inuit hunters to track polar bears and hunt seals. During our time with them, I learn quite a bit about the Inuit hunting culture. One fascinating note is that they convert their sleds into tents so that they can venture out for weeks on end.
The transformer "tent-sled."
Above: The last generation of Inuit hunters? Below right: Polar bear tracks.

...read full post

Comments (4) | May 11, 2009
Greenland: Questions Answered, Facts and Figures

Editor's note: We forwarded a reader's question along to Larry and Alain, and they were kind enough to fire up the laptop and respond.
Question:
Lisa Speer wrote on April 29, 2009, 09:51AM :

Larry and Alain,

An amazing trip, beautifully described. Your photos and descriptions bring
home the fragility of the ice landscape, and the vast changes underway up
there. Alain's surprise at the extent of the melt is another example of the
fact that our models and expectations, no matter how pessimistic, are not
keeping pace with the rate of Arctic change.

I am testifying next week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on
the Arctic -- any message you'd like me to convey to the Senators?

Sending dreams of chocolate and nuts, and breakfast on the patio. Be safe.
Response:
This is Alain speaking: I have been in the high arctic each ...read full post

Comments (0) | May 9, 2009
Greenland, Day 14: Second Homes for Seals

Happy to be back at sea level, we ski along the river bed all the way down to the coastal fjord. Along the way we see many enormous erosion patterns, revealing just how much meltwater flows through every summer.

Once we reached the fjord, we skied onto the sea ice that still fills it this time of year. In the distance, we could see many little black dots scattered about the ice. As we got closer, the dots wiggled and vanished, as if sucked into the ocean below. Eventually we come across holes in the ice where the little dots had been.

A "little black dot" before disappearing in the distance.

The dots, it turns out, were seals sunbathing, and the holes are where they disappeared to. Seals apparently carve these proprietary holes through about four feet of ice, then treating them ...read full post

Comments (0) | May 8, 2009
Greenland, Day 13: Wildlife

Today starts with Alain giving me a refresher course on how to use the Magnum 44 in the (hopefully) unlikely event of a polar bear attack. I remembered reading once that the best defense (if you don't have a gun) is to lie on the ground motionless, and that 95% of the time the bear would leave you alone. Ignoring how difficult it would be to lie motionless, I'm now wondering how they came up with that statistic.

We are now in a place, according to Alain and the people of Qanaaq, that nobody has ever been. Our location can't be reached by dogsled, and there's no interest for the Inuit to come this far inland. There's plenty of wildlife around--guinea fowls, rabbit, reindeer, and fox--as evidenced by the tracks in the fresh snow. At one point today, we crossed the tracks of a bear, who was, fortunately, going in the other direction. We do have a natural defense mechanism, of course, in that we haven't bathed or changed for nearly two weeks. Our odor will ...read full post

Comments (2) | May 7, 2009
Greenland, Day 12: Clearing the Ice

Today we reached the end of icecap. But before setting foot on solid ground, we trekked about 30 kilometers over the course of 11 hours, and were forced to cross several ice canyons. Finally, we were rewarded with a toboggan ride down the final slope off the glacier. We knew we were getting close when two guinea fowls flew over our heads, welcoming us back from the ice. What an incredible feeling to see another living being after so long.

The view of the glacier spilling over the rocky mountain peaks is spectacular. It's hard to picture the place three months from now, when the seasonal melt will form rivers and streams that bleed through the heart of the icecap, careening into broader channels and into well-formed riverbeds near the coast, before finally dumping into the ocean.
Right: An "ice ...read full post

Comments (3) | May 6, 2009
Greenland, Day 11: Call from the Prince

This morning, while I was still tucked in my sleeping bag with the tent's ceiling dangling mere inches above my nose, I'm able to confirm that Alain is weird. After a raucous night of wind flapping the walls of our collapsed tent--sounding much like a bad drummer--Alain tells me that he slept like a baby. That it had been his best night yet!

While I'm still processing this absurd comment, he tells me that he has to turn on his phone--that he's expecting a call from Albert. Albert, I will soon find out, is the Prince of Monaco. He's also a friend of Alain's who happens to also be in Greenland at the moment. Alain and Prince Albert share the same passion for defending the polar environment. Prince Albert has visited the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica, the world's first zero emission research station, which Alain and his colleagues at the International Polar Foundation have built. And the Prince is also heavily ...read full post

Comments (3) | May 5, 2009
Greenland, Day 10: The Winds Return

Today was supposed to be monotonous and uneventful. It didn't turn out that way. Shortly after we left camp, the clouds rolled in, and soon it started to snow. Then, once again, the infamous and dreaded katabatic winds picked up strength. After about six hours, they were blowing so hard that we were forced to stop. The snow was blowing in our faces at 70 kilometers per hour, and visibility was down to zero.

Deciding to take shelter, we set out to raise the tent. But a strong gust (which Alain later estimated at about 120 kilometers per hour) caught the tent and snapped a pole, instantly flattening the tent like a pancake. While Alain secured the base of the tent to the ice, I crawled inside with my sled, standing it on its side to prop up the roof and create a little space inside. It's not ideal, but it's ...read full post

Comments (6) | May 4, 2009
Greenland, Day 9: Excited for Instant Soup

It is official: today was monotonous. We trekked in a straight line for 25 kilometers on flat terrain -- for nine hours. The vista never changed: an ocean of white ice, and a very cold and very blue sky.

So, let’s talk about something else: food. But wait, that’s as monotonous too. We eat the same thing every day. Clearly we didn’t come here for the food.

Alain made all our food in his own home before we departed, and he followed recipes has used to prepare for expeditions much longer than this one.

So for those who have been curious (and I know some of you are), here’s a bit about what we eat out here.

We take in 4,000 calories a day: about 40 percent are from fat, 12 percent from protein, and 48 percent from sugar. A normal diet has a ratio of 30:10:60.

Breakfast: Muesli + sugar + ...read full post

Comments (2) | May 1, 2009
Greenland, Day 8: We Reach the Summit

Day 8: The wind was still blowing hard when we woke up this morning. It was hellish outside but sweet inside our tent, so we gave ourselves a bit of a treat and stayed in bed most of the day catching up on conversation. I read a great and inspiring book that my friend (and daughter) Alexandra recommended: Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson. It’s the story of Mortenson’s work building schools in the most remote parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan after a failed attempt to summit K-2, the second highest peak in the world.
Around mid afternoon the wind stopped as quickly as it started, a great relief. So we decide to go for the summit. The summit is kind of a joke as on this enormous icecap covering the whole of Greenland -- it feels like trying to identify the highest point on a bald person’s ...read full post

Comments (9) | April 30, 2009
Greenland, Day 7: Panic in the Tent

DAY 7: I am sound asleep when I feel the whole tent lift up and begin to slide around. At first I thought that I had overslept and that Alain was playing a little joke by unfolding the tent while I was still in it. But when I saw him in his sleeping bag looking as alarmed as I was and I heard the wind howling outside our tent, I realized that the wind was behind the shakeup. Panic in the tent! Alain rushed out to stabilize the tent with ice screws and ice picks. We had not experienced winds like this since we arrived in Greenland, and were very tired last night, so we were negligent in anchoring the tent. (We have vowed that this will not happen again!)

The culprit is the katabatic wind, or Piteraq, as it is know in Greenland, where it has been recorded at speeds of 230 kilometers per hour along the East Coast. Katabatic winds are also known as fall winds because they occur when cold, high-density air flows from a high elevation to a ...read full post

Comments (1) | April 29, 2009