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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 head.
We packed up our camp around 4PM and trekked for six hours on an incline so gradual it was hardly noticeable. Thanks to our altimeter and GPS, we reached the highest point of our trek, 1,400 meters (4,500 feet), and crossed the 78th parallel.
The setting is incredible: a full 360-degree view of flat ice -- nothing else in sight. As we set our camp for the night, we head and then saw a tiny plane in the sky, the first sign of civilization in a few days. Without thinking I started waving both arms at the pilot, like a lost soul on a desert island...
We will celebrate tonight by opening a box of Choco Prince cookies, the only thing I could find in the Qaanaaq store to replace the festive items lost in my suitcase.
[Pictured above: Larry and Alain's snowed-in tent, after the katabatic winds had passed.]
[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.]
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