Point 660
Day 1 and 2 of the Arctic Circle Trail
Km hiked: 37
I miss: A wider camera lens. I only brought a 50. Next time I’m not even going to care about the weight. Taking photos on the trail is so much fun and so worth carrying a second lens.
I had never seen anything like it. Endless ice. Just white, as far as you can see. We took a tour out of Kangerlussuaq to Point 660, the alternate starting point of the Arctic Circle Trail, a 200 km route through the Greenlandic wilderness all the way to the coast and to a town called Sisimiut. 300 people hike it every year. We saw about 10 others during the entire trip. When the trucks filled with tourists finally left, I felt free. We were alone, surrounded by beautiful landscapes and rumbling glaciers. It was quiet. Magic. I couldn't help but smile. We hiked 12 km south from Point 660 to Russell Glacier along the Greenlandic ice shelf, where we set up camp for the night. Russell is constantly in movement. It makes these really low, scary sounds that come from deep within. You can literally hear with how much power the ice moves. The glacier is flanked by a river, so the thick ice sheet from further north keeps pushing until parts fall off the edge of the glacier. It's truly spectacular to watch. 4000-year-old ice splashing into the river never to be seen again. We slept right at the edge of the glacier and heard the breaking of the ice all night.
The next day we got up and stared at the glacier because we just couldn't get enough of it. We were only distracted by a cute little black arctic fox who put his little head up behind a rock. Only about 300 meters further down the path, we spotted musk oxen standing by the river staring at each other. They are massive. Like truly massive, and they look like creatures straight out of Star Wars. We were carefully tracking them for a while until they started charging up the hill. That's when we realized how powerful they are, and we increased our distance from them. There's this unwritten rule that says you should never stand between a musk ox and the hill because it will always flee upwards. So always stand downhill, never above them. I thought that was kind of interesting.
On we went, back to Kangerlussuaq. We spontaneously decided to hike up Sugar Loaf mountain, the local hill, and the view was amazing and so worth the little climb. Kangerlussuaq is a very interesting place. It's an old U.S. Army base, and the airstrip is the center of the tiny town. There are scattered containers and houses around it, and that's pretty much it. The town has two bars. One at the airport and one on the other side of the airstrip. The same bartender works at both of them, so when the first bar closes, he just heads to open the second one. That's how small Kangerlussuaq is.
