Day 13 - numb nuts, teeth and bergs: a spontaneous paddlathon! Part I

The weather was simply perfect.  I was eager to move on and there was nothing to stop me this time.  I embarked on what was to become a twelve-hour paddlathon, from the previously dubbed "white sands" campsite all the way to Spraglebugten: a bay on the otherside of Uummannaq island.  I was heading home!  I did not, however, realise that I was going to be paddling quite so far when I set out, it just turned out that way.

Of course, I was slow to start as usual.  I took plenty of photos to document what was likely to be the last time I camped in this beautiful place.  I also wanted to try to emulate the photos taken by kayakers I admire like the team from Adventure Philosophy in New Zealand.  Whereas I wasn't paddling in the extremes that they experienced in the Antarctic and around South Georgia, I did meet Graham Charles in Uummannaq and enjoyed paddling with him a few times. 

The water, when I was finally to get on it, was crystal clear with hardly a ripple to be seen.  The icebergs were behaving - in this area anyway - and I was good to go.

I blasted straight across the fjord, heading for the point from which I could then see Saattut.  Why oh why there is always another point I do not know, but it is sadly often the case.  I began to feel as though the paddle to Saattut would take forever.  My bum and various appendages were becoming hot, sweaty and numb.  Lovely!

The icebergs were a welcome distraction though.  As usual, they made good way-points to break up the long paddle.  I still had not realised just how far I would paddle this night but as the hours passed and I approached the late evening I began to think that the weather could not get any better.  Rounding the point I spied Saattut and the tiny islands before it.

Whereas the population of the settlements might be small the population of the tiny islands that surround them, especially Saattut, are both small and furry.  How friendly they were was disputable.  These tiny islands though were going to be my lifesaver in terms of getting out of the boat and stretching my legs.  Whereas I might have wanted to spend a bit more time walking around, the number of dogs on each island quickly determined how long I would stay.

As the sun moved behind the mountain my new-found canine buddies and I took leave of each other and I paddled on, racing to get back into the sun to warm up.  Saattut was still tantalizingly out of reach and I began to contemplate where I would be spending the night, or if I would paddle through it as the sun moved around me.  I made my decision on the next island, and nearly lost my boat as an iceberg calved before me.

Day 12 - trapped inside my head: lonely musings

 

Straight from the diary ... hold on, weird musings and anecdotes ahead!  Og til MorAnne - jeg håber Google Translate can klar dette indlæg! ;O)

I sleep too long.  I sleep well, but too long, every day.  It is now 10:15 and I am just starting to get up.  I don't think it is quite apathy, but the thought of packing all this is just ... eurch!  It is the same every time.  If the boat packed itself I think I would get further each day.  Alas, it does not and I just have to get it done.  It is the problem of dishes that slows me down every time.  The "big kitchen" dry bag has the most bits in it, including the Trangia that sits in the very bottom.  Until it is clean the bag can't be packed which means the tent remains a mess.  A pain in the arse but true.  The Trangia dominates camp life!  And it determines how quickly I move on from place to place.  Amazing really, it is three pots.  Well, I can read a few more pages and then get moving damn it!

It was a very leisurely paddle today along the coastline, looking for foxes - didn't see any!  I am now back in my favourite campsite - White Sands.  This sounds crazy, but the fact that I have returned and confirmed that the hunter's tent is indeed a Quasar, makes my decision to take five and not seven settlements all the more palatable.  Silly, eh?  Just another one of those "Chris things" that make me, me and gives other people a hard time trying to figure me out.

I had a melancholy moment earlier; I think I need to see people I love and soon.  It is day twelve and it will be day eighteen before I see Jane [I never did see Jane until the end of the expedition].  I usually share these outdoor experiences and it is weird not to.  Don't get me wrong, I now enjoy being alone too, but I think I am discovering a definite period of time when solo is okay and when two would be better.  Perhaps ten-day solo trips are the perfect period for me?  I am also getting a little homesick for the creature comforts of home.  Problem is, our home is in six containers and the prospect of making a new home for us is going to take some time to realise.  Exciting though - who knows what our new home looks like?  Whatever and wherever, we will make it "homely", we are good at that.
 

Different bits of kit now need replacing.  A lot of it is very old now and showing signs of wear and tear.  In complete contrast to technology, I love aged outdoor gear, with holes and dents that remind you of how and where you got them.  There comes a time though when stuff just needs replacing.  Unfortunately, we are moving into an economic period (Jane minus job) when that will be hard to do.  We'll figure it out though.

Just looking at my salty "paddlers' hands", cool.  Do love that.  Reminds me of my old poem "Neoprene Refugees", not sure about the title but the content has always been spot on.

“Neoprene Refugees”

by Chris Paton

30th August, Glasgow 1999

Salt encrusted windows,
blistering blue paint,
sand-drenched wicker mats,
air with heavy seaweed taint.

Kayaks parked out back,
wet boots dripping on the porch,
fatigued biceps, mildewed toes,
inspecting callouses with a torch.

another painful days' paddling
over brilliant blue water
thru dip and swell; the bow from hell
curses thru sun-kissed laughter.

Beaching in the gloaming,
paddles braced side by side,
pulling cramped limbs from the cockpit,
"another burst around the point?"  I lied!

Cosy on a sunken coach,
wet legs entwining one another,
steaming bodies and steaming mugs,
damp, salty kisses with my lover.

Edited 15th March 2010

I have deliberately not said much about Nansen.  I am thinking of him now as there are a few photos of him left on the pocket camera and I already deleted a lot of him from this winter.  I think he has a good home at the Children's Home in Uummannaq.  I saw a kid give him a treat on the very day I delivered him.  There are lots of kids that get a lot out of the dogs.  Plus, he will adapt and quickly learn who takes care of him.  He won't get nearly as much fuss and attention as he got before but neither will he be lonely, and he has always been a good "Uncle" to pups.  Yeah, he is going to be alright.  I was walking him less and less towards the end.  I was just too busy and didn't make time for him.  We won't have dogs again in Qaanaaq.  It is too demanding, both physically and emotionally.  I will enjoy dogsledding again and look forward to going out with new colleagues, friends and maybe hunters, but no more dogs of our own.

Thinking of Qaanaaq is very exciting!  I am curious as to life so far north.  Haven't had much time to really think about it.  That time will come - it is going to be a long, dark winter!  Can't wait!

Now Hamilton's "The Naked God" is getting interesting.  Perhaps I needed to be ready for it?  Lying in the tent in this beautiful and peaceful campsite, distant waterfall, few birds tweeting, warm - not too hot ... I am enjoying reading and relaxing.  I have finally started dinner; playing with the Trangia always reminds me of Sam Gamgee's pots that he carries with him from The Shire.  Reading about Ombey's Royal Marines reminded me of Afghanistan and that, unfortunately, I truly do not have any idea of the hardship nor the horrors of war and its effects on the population of war-torn countries.  My fascination for war is boyish, I am a "boy" still, at heart.  I mean no disrespect to the soldiers and civilians affected by war but I find it all-engrossing.  Must remember to reflect both sides in my writing from now on.

 The hunter's tent is a "Quasar", damnit!  With snow valances!

I miss my wife!  It's been two weeks - doesn't sound that long, but it all happened so chaotically.  That last day, those last days, packing, cleaning, leaving ... it was all shit, really.

It got cold suddenly - sun dipped behind the mountains again.  It's just circling - will be back in a few hours time.  I'll gird myself to go out for a pee soon.  Last one before bed!  Shouldn't drink any more coffee now!

 

It's weird being so totally alone.  Not even a distant drone of a boat.  I'm out here, in the Arctic, alone ... cool!

I sometimes - more often than I should - think about what I/we would do in the event of of an outbreak of war or natural disaster.  We have nearly all the essential gear, but it's nothing without food and water.  "The Road" was a tremendously thought-provoking book.  Must read it again sometime.  The image of pushing a shopping trolley, one eye fixed on the rear-view mirror, taped onto the side, a gun with one real bullet and five wooden ones designed to deceive the "threat" ... just brilliant.  Tragic.  Desperate, but brilliant.  Of course, it's not all that brilliant if we experience it ourselves now, is it?  The Greenlanders would do okay.  The hunters and fishing families anyway.  Of course, it would take a backward shift to compensate for the lack of fuel and bullets, but their culture is not so very far removed from the old days of kayaks and harpoons [most definitely not in Qaanaaq - daily life here!].  Of all the northern peoples, they would cope.  The majority of them [hunting and fishing families] I see have simple needs and desires too.  Once the booze was all used up we might start to make real progress!  It wouldn't be too great a stretch of the imagination to think of Qaanaaq cut off from the rest of the world.  With one flight a week and only two ships a year ... they are practically cut off.  What am I saying?  We will soon be cut off right along with them!

There are rocks falling down the mountainside as I write this, that and a gull, a stream and the tiny movement of water on the shore is all I can hear right now.  Rocks must have fallen from some height ... still falling ...

Day 11 - the turning point

After my failed attempt at getting into town the day before I finally got it right this time.  Paddling in to Ukkusissat was a pleasure.  Beautiful blue skies, snow-capped mountains and the promise of junk-food!  One has to get one's priorities straight and clearly, I hadn't.

In town

The shop

I had been to Ukkusissat before, arriving by 4x4 having driven across the sea ice.  This was a different approach and a very different time of year.  I was stunned by the beauty of the place which I had failed to appreciate during my visit in the winter a few years previous.  Ukkusissat is a pearl to be discovered in the Uummannaq fjord system.  It is little surprise that it is a frequent destination for cruise ships.  I wondered if I would be received as a tourist or as something in between.

I didn't have long to find out as I met a previous student, Karl-Ole, in the shop.  Juggling my two hot-dogs we chatted about the past in Uummannaq and what he was doing.  Karl-Ole accompanied me throughout much of the time I was in Ukkusissat but left me alone to make my phone calls to Lars and Jane.  It was decision time.

I called Barbara in Nugatsiaq first to let her know I had changed my plans and would not be paddling on to the most northerly settlement.  I also told her she could eat my food and other goodies that I had sent on earlier by boat.  I was later to change my mind about this.

Lars and Jane understood my decision and we agreed that I would keep them informed of my progress, backtracking through the fjords to Uummannaq.  It would be five settlements not seven after all.  I had been wrestling with this decision for many days and was feeling pretty good that I had finalised my plans.  The sudden arrival of Tukummeq in the shop lifted my spirits even further.  One of my star pupils of the last two years, Tukummeq has a huge and promising future ahead of her.  (Watch this space, you might be reading one of her books one day!)

Karl-Ole was a practised guide having worked with tourists many times and we spent a bit more time wandering around the settlement.  He invited me to a kaffemik in celebration of his brother's confirmation.  I had the offer of staying over but, as I had realised earlier, I was beginning to get used to my own company and I felt the need to get back to camp.  Here is where the goals began to blur in my expedition plans.  I was using a lot of energy on the change of physical goals, whereas the social goals had suddenly been met and yet I wasn't ready to make the most of them.  It would be later in Niaqornat that I would begin to experience this element of my journey.

I thanked Karl-Ole as best I could and made moves to get out of "town" and back to camp.  Walking back to the boat I came across some beautiful dogs with incredible masks.  Of course, I spent some time photographing them before struggling into my dry-suit again.  While getting ready to leave a fisherman sailed over to within a few metres or so.  I honestly though he was going to land so I asked if I should move my boat?  He didn't say a word, just ate and stared.  Having played tourist for several hours in town I figured it as okay to be on the receiving end of his curiosity.  After five minutes or so he threw some rubbish over the side and sailed back to town.

Ukkusissat was far from a let down, but my expectations were so focused upon physical goals that I was losing sight of the human element.  I think I assumed too much.  I think I felt that I should be able to blend in more than the tourists and when that didn't happen I was disappointed, and yet when it did, I failed to appreciate it.  Strange but true.

Paddling back to camp was uneventful.  I was lost in my thoughts of the coming days and what I had to do to make the rest of the expedition "work".  I made my decision based upon my safety issues and the safety net I had put in place.  I had been brooding over the problem for the past few days - actually since the satellite phone died and the dry-suit ripped back in the desert - but the fog outside of Ukkusissat had helped put everything into perspective.  It was time to move on, in body and mind.

As I landed back at camp I was treated to the arrival of René and Lars (another Lars).  They too had had to change plans for their summer adventures due to fog and injury.  It was reassuring to talk to others about the importance of prioritising safety.  I was also heartened by the fact that even their group, with the benefit of support from local hunters, was just as disappointed in not achieving their goals as I was.  (Incidentally, in the rush to move my kayak to accommodate their three speedboats, I nailed my leg on a rock.  The cut is still healing some months later.  Big rock!)

Day 10 - the first taste of fog

Leaving the white sands of the previous campsite, I stole along the coastline, heading up the fjord towards the next settlement of Ukkusissat.

The photographs I would loved to have included in this blog post are just not good enough to show you the three tiny Arctic Fox cubs I found playing among the boulders a kilometre or so beyond my campsite. The small camera I had in my buoyancy aid just couldn't capture them. I contemplated pulling into shore and taking photos with the larger DSLR but didn't want to disturb them. I contented myself with observing them from a few metres distance as I bobbed among the icy debris from calving icebergs.



After spending so much time over the rifle I had found, cleaned up and put back in its proper place, I was paddling into the morning on this lonely stretch of my journey. After a short break on a beach, enjoying the last of my year-old Starbars, a present from Hilary and family, I put into the water again. Once firmly back in the seat and getting into a rhythm, I noticed the icebergs in the distance were being swallowed, whole, by the fog. Around 2 am I began to feel more than a little threatened by the encroaching blanket of white.


I have not paddled much in fog. I had never, up to this point, paddled in fog around icebergs. My worst nightmares were coming all too true. I could hear calvings in the near distance, but I could neither see the iceberg nor the direction in which the wave and debris was heading. It felt a little like playing Greenlandic Roulette with several thousand tonnes of ice that I couldn't see. I was more than a little on edge.


Infuriatingly, as my world became smaller, more intense, I was illuminated by a light orange glow from the midnight sun, somewhere above me. I don't think the fog was more than 10 metres or so high, but it was not evaporating any time soon. I considered pulling into the shore but I was not heartened by the steep-sided cliff faces and lack of suitable parking places. After a few more minutes of bobbing undecided about, I figured it was safer to crack on and not worry too much about what lay ahead. I would deal with that as and when it became necessary.


The first potential campsite I found around the point I vetoed on account of it not being close enough to Ukkusissat. I did want to get off the water as I could not see anything beyond the wall of fog, but I wanted to find a decent spot to camp. Then, shrouded in mist, "my" beach appeared and I headed straight for it. The usual camping routine was a welcome relief to the stress of being alone at sea with the bergs.


Well into the early morning I crawled into my tent and fell promptly asleep only to realise, a little later, that I had pitched the tent side on to the sun. As the fog burned away I was at once forced out of my sleeping bag and into the bright morning of a new day. There are some downsides to paddling through the night in the Arctic.


Knackered, but happy, I found little to complain about regarding my new view.


Ready for my first junk food of the trip I decided to walk into town, never mind how tired I was. I also needed water if I was going to keep up with my serious camp-coffee addiction. I found water, lots of it, but that was part of the problem. It might sound ridiculous but there was no way I was going to cross this raging Arctic river. I did walk up and down the sides looking for a suitable crossing point but I found nothing that wasn't going to require me wading through metre-deep icy water gushing down from the mountains above. On another day it might have been different. Recently, however, Greenlanders and Norwegians alike have closely followed the story of three Norwegians believed drowned in a river around Kangerlussuaq. I was not aware of this but I decided to return to my new camp anyway.


The settlement of Ukkusissat could wait a day and I decided to paddle in following a good night's sleep. Filling up my MSR water bladder - a seriously good bit of kit - I plodded back home, stumbling a few times out of tiredness.


Concerning camp abolutions I am reminded of a quote about which I can neither remember the author nor the exact words. It wasn't Edward Abbey, although he has plenty of excellent words to describe the wilderness. However, several cups of coffee later and I was reminded, not for the first time, of a few lines of particular aptness that I would like to paraphrase for you all now:

"If you are going to take a shit in the wild, choose a John with a view."

Several cups of coffee and a hot camp meal later and I was ready to choose my John with a view. The timing is critical. Too late and it is too cold to enjoy the moment as the sun has moved behind the tallest peaks. Too soon and it is hot enough for the mosquitoes and friends to make life miserable, or at least cause one to rush over the latest edition of the Financial Times.

In true Abbey-style, that night I got it just right!

Day 9 - blissed out and gunned up! Part II

It has taken a while to get back into the blog.  Several hotel rooms, numerous planes and one big boat later and I am ready to catch up on my kayak adventures of the summer.  As I sit in this hotel room in Ilulissat, the smoke from the chimney of Knud Rasmussen’s house creeping through the window, the sun playing on the icebergs in the bay, I think back to another time and place, not so very far from here.

I signed off the last blog entry with a quote from Capone about kind words and a gun getting you further in life than kind words alone.  Well, I found a gun at this campsite and I spent a lot of time pondering over what to do with it.  I was curious about the hunters’ tent and amazed that it was an English brand, the same as my own.  What amazed me more was finding a Savage .22 rifle, rusting on the rocks not two metres from the tent door.  I sat down and played with the bolt, trying to free it.  Gradually, I worked it free and found an empty casing in the chamber.  The rifle was missing its magazine and the rust rubbed off on my fingers as I sighted icebergs and birds through the otherwise intact scope.  I found it hard to believe that the rifle was just lying there, abandoned.  The knives and other hunting material lying about were a common sight now, something I had grown used to during my four years in Uummannaq.  But a rifle, well, that was something new.

I finally decided that I would take the rifle with me, clean it up and make it work.  In the back of my mind I realized that I had no way of knowing how damaged the rifle was, nor if it would ever be safe to fire, but I was determined.  Back inside my tent I stripped the rifle, removed the bolt and scope, packaged everything in watertight combinations of gaffa tape and pastic bags, and then began to break camp.

As I piled all my gear up I was still questioning my actions, remembering Frederick’s comments about good hunters not stealing food from others.  I also considered that it was quite likely that a hunter would return one day, pick up the rifle, chamber a new round and shoot a seal, before discarding the rifle again.  I thought too how the hunters’ camp was no different than a boat moored in the harbour, full of gear, ready and waiting to go.  Could I really just take the rifle?

I argued with myself – there was no one else in the neighbourhood – about how dangerous it was to just leave a gun lying around for anyone to find, about what might happen if some kids found it, etc.  I tossed the question back and forth, remembering that these waters were the stomping grounds of a hunting society, that the camp was no different from the boat, that my views on firearms and safety were different than a hunter’s views.  I spent quite a while on this when suddenly another Arctic Fox announced his arrival. 
This was all the distraction I needed as the fox and I played tag over several hundred metres.  As I gave up trying to catch the fox with my lense I walked back to the camp, clear in my mid about what I must do next.

It took me ages to remove all the protective waterproofing tape and plastic.  It took another while to screw the rusted scope back onto the rifle.  More time was wasted trying to remove what little grease there was from my hands.  I then plodded back over to the hunters’ tent, paced out two metres from the tent entrance and laid the rifle on the rocks, all the while conscious of the fox watching me from on high.

Two hours later than planned, I paddled on up the fjord.