Day 36–Waiting For Instructions

June 16, 2010 8:18pm

Flying the Peace Flags on our way down the glacier

We’ve stayed put for the last thirty hours. For one, the winds were howling most of the day and night, a tad strong for kiting amidst a lot of crevasses. And downright unpleasant to walk in, if you can avoid it. The disappointment of not having benefited from these winds a couple of days ago–whilst we were struggling to keep the big kites up in the air–is silly, but inevitable. It is wholly irrational, of course (you can’t get mad at the weather). But considering we have barely used our seven meters Frenzy’s which are a blast to fly–and this was the perfect weather to fly them in–we were chomping at the bit!
This morning the wind died. All day, the air was still and warm. We are electing to travel at night when the temperatures cool down to firm up the bridges over crevasses. Besides, we are waiting for directives on how we are getting picked up from the coast to reach Qaanaaq. If a helicopter is unavoidable, there isn’t much point in scaling down twenty kilometers off the glacier. The plateau we are presently on would be perfect for that. But we are getting restless as one does after spending this amount of time in a baking oven–which is what the tent feels like as it gets blasted by the sun.
Consequently, this was a day of house cleaning: arranging the sledges; discarding extra food to reduce weight; and in my case viewing and cataloguing the vast amount of footage and images from the trip. Eric napped.
I also started writing the featured article commissioned by Men’s Journal covering this trip, which will likely come out this fall. It will feature some pretty dope images!
The trip is winding down, and I am arranging the various flights to get us back into the civilized world. I will spend a couple of days in Iluissat shooting icebergs. Also called Disco Bay (God only knows why), Iluissat sits at the mouth of a fjord dominated by a glacier that spits icebergs like an ice cube dispenser. It is one of two of the best places in the world that I know of for witnessing a high concentration of icebergs (the other is the remote Otto Fjord which I photographed a couple of years ago in the company of my friend Luc and Eric’s Mom, Matty and our Young Ambassadors of the Arctic). I have been wanting to visit Disco Bay for some time, and though I won’t have my sequins on, I hope to get a chance to capture it!
We need to hear back as to the mode of pick up from the coast–and when–before we begin our descent down the glacier. We have a very comfortable margin of time as there is only one flight out of Qaanaaq per week; there was one today, and the next one is in a week. Still, at this stage, I am beginning to fantazize about a bath…soap…shampoo…

One Response to “Day 36–Waiting For Instructions”

  1. Beata says:

    I’m highly apcntiiating this movie and am going to try to see it before it leaves the theatre. I’m hoping for a spectacular view of how the climate is warming and seeing the direct impact on the polar ice. Glad you liked it..

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