When you awake to the conditions we had this morning it doesn’t really matter what is on the agenda. Case in point: for the past few days, since we pulled away from Baffin Island en route to Greenland, all eyes have been set on Ilulissat, Greenland’s only UNESCO World Heritage site. Famous for it’s proximity to our planet’s fastest flowing body of ice, Ilulissat Glacier, Ilulissat is associated with big ice. Icebergs on an Antarctic scale can be found in and around the 60 km-long fjord system that contains, and sometimes releases, this glacial ice into the surrounding Disko Bay area. With expectations high, it was the very glacial ice we were there to see that kept us from today’s visit to the town of Ilulissat proper.
During our early morning transit through breathless conditions and soft pink skies, a greater and greater variety and concentration of glacial ice tapered our approach to Ilulissat. By the time the town’s modest skyline was in view it became apparent something drastic had happened since National Geographic Explorer’s last visit a mere 12 days ago. A very dense concentration of brash ice had replaced last trips easy approach and rendered entrance to the harbor via ship or Zodiac virtually impossible. So close yet so far… but don’t forget about the weather.
By the time shore side reports confirmed the difficulty of our approach it was still early and conditions still flat calm and cloud free. Deciding it best to head for less congested waters we repositioned west/southwest to the southern coast of Disko Island and a site only one amongst us (our Canadian ice pilot Ray Jourdaine) had been to before. While the weather was doing its best to numb the disappointment of being iced out of Ilulissat we approached a coastline beyond our expectations. Imagine taking the planets finest examples of columnar basalt (the Devil’s Post Pile of central California or the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland), shrinking that columnar jointing down to the diameter of a thin aspen tree trunk and then letting Jackson Pollok splatter them across the coastline.
This was the scene in cross section as we approached Kuannersuit, on Disko Island’s southern coast, and option B for the day. Still beneath heavy blue skies and calm seas we took to the water in Zodiacs and kayaks to explore this remarkable stretch of land. Poking in and out of caves, grottos and arches of columnar basalt, circumnavigating exquisitely sculpted icebergs and looking up at verdant slopes of arctic willow and soaring Peregrine falcons quickly made plan “B” into a world class alternative of its own.
