
DAY 6: As usual, we start our morning ritual with a long, warm bubble bath followed by breakfast on the terrace with Belle Hill Farm eggs, Canadian bacon, and Cumberland sausages served on chinaware. While we eat, we look forward to the end of the day when we will get our 2-hour oil massages...
Wishful thinking.
Today we decided to give our skis a break so we loaded them onto Moby Dick, our trusty sled (see above). Our feet were our chosen mode of transportation as the terrain is a steady incline on an unbelievably chaotic glacier. It looks like a rough ocean with 6-foot-tall whitecaps, frozen solid.
We zigzag through this terrain pulling our sled, which is much less disciplined than we are. Melting water rushes around us -- it is the kind of landscape that you normally find at the end of the summer. Alain curses a few times as he struggles to find a way through, bactracking several times to find a passage. The defining phrase of the day was Alain’s, when he said that he would have never come this way had he known how much ice melt had already taken place.
We pass by two moulins, or glacier mills, which are only beginning to be well understood (see photo at right).
In the summer, when the melting ice forms a stream and then a river, the water either flows down on top of the glacier or it falls into a hole or a crevasse in the glacier, which acts like a big vacuum. The rushing water disappears into the hole and runs all the way to the bedrock where it forms lakes. These lakes decrease the friction between the glacier and the bedrock and increase the rate at which the glacier flows.
Finally, we make it through. After a huge, 10-hour effort, we reach the end of our day at the ice cap, at an elevation of 2,500 feet. This ice covers the whole of Greenland: 2,000 kilometers long by 600 kilometers wide. It is a much smoother terrain, and we will be on it for the next 100 kilometers -- a great reward after today. I’m beat!
[Editor's note: Over the course of two weeks, Larry Lunt, a member of NRDC's Global Leadership Council, and Alain Hubert, a Belgian explorer and founder of the International Polar Foundation, will trek some 200 miles from the town of Qaanaaq across Greenland's Humbolt Glacier, the Northern Hemisphere's largest and fastest moving river of ice. Along the way, as special contributors to OnEarth's Greenlight blog, Lunt and Hubert will post dispatches from the ice: stories of a culture and wilderness in flux and lessons for what our own future may hold. Follow the journey at our Destination: Greenland page.
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.
larry, i am so jealous. keep it up, as you represent many people that know you as well as thousands that do not. you are carrying the "one little candle" that can make a difference. travel safely my friend.
OK...I know my questions are dull ...but do you have a supersonic Blackberry with 3 weeks of battery life ???
How does that work when you guys are in the middle of nowhere ?
Larry used a SOLIO (solar charger and battery pack) to power up his devices. www.solio.com



![On the back of a Dragonfly [B&W] On the back of a Dragonfly [B&W]](http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6194/6128449851_14ec409b56_s.jpg)





Lawrence (Larry) Lunt is a private investor from Belgium who operates the U.S. arm of his family's business, Armonia. Armonia focuses entirely on innovative, sustainable investments ranging from direct investments in individual companies to investments in private and public
...Lawrence (Larry) Lunt is a private investor from Belgium who operates the U.S. arm of his family's business, Armonia. Armonia focuses entirely on innovative, sustainable investments ranging from direct investments in individual companies to investments in private and public equity funds as well as sustainable hedge funds.
In 2007, Armonia helped seed the launch of TBL (triple bottom line) Capital, a venture capital fund focused on the needs of entrepreneurs who place equal value on people, planet, and profit. TBL Capital is a core investment of the Armonia strategy.
Engagement in education: Lunt is an active member of the board of several schools, including the Convent of Sacred Heart of Greenwich, where he founded the Barat Foundation to educate students in philanthropy. He helped restart the international education program Up With People, a youth program with over 30,000 alumni around the world building bridges of understanding to promote world peace. He also helped launch World Campus International, an education program for students offering unique access to Japan. Lunt also helped launch Ashoka in Belgium. Ashoka promotes the world’s leading social entrepreneurs.
Environmental engagement: Lunt has a strong interest in preserving the Arctic, which he visits every year. He is a member of NRDC's Global Leadership Council, as well as the Belgian International Polar Foundation.
Lunt has a degree in Economics from Louvain University in Belgium and an MBA from Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan.
He and his wife, Victoria Lunt, have three daughters, ages 15, 14, and 9.
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