Celebrating a birthday on the freezing Greenland Ice Sheet

My birthday on the ice sheet

Well, that was my day. I just turned 43 years old on the ice sheet. When we got up this morning, it was biting cold. It was -22 outside and with a little bit of wind, it felt like -31 according to our wind gauge and thermometer. It was quite a challenge to pack up the tent.

Today’s weather and distance

Once we were on our way, the weather was lovely. It was nice and sunny and we had a great view. We fully enjoyed it today. We also covered over 26 kilometers again. As we mentioned yesterday, today we crossed the summit of the ice sheet.

Over the summit of the ice sheet

Now, don’t go thinking we’re standing there with our tips down doing alpine skiing with some speed behind us. This was the ‘butt of an egg’, remember. It’s actually more of a massive plateau on top where you’re not quite sure if you’re going up or down. There are still sastrugi you have to cross and it bumps and rolls a bit. On balance, we can mainly see on the GPS that we are now heading down.

Weather forecast and comparison with previous trip

I just got the weather forecast from Basecamp and it looks like this stable weather will last until at least Saturday. That really is the best birthday present I could wish for. After last week, we’ve been ‘like Ole’ enough. For the people who weren’t on the three-country trip, I should explain that. We were sheltering in a small hut during the three-country trip last March because a storm was coming and the wind was going to hit 65 km/h. We thought: we can’t set up that huge tent in this. Besides, it was quite warm, so everything would get wet. There were eight of us in a two-person shelter. During the afternoon, just after lunchtime, someone knocked and it was Ole. He was a Norwegian guy out on his own, also on our route. I don’t remember exactly where he came from, Kvikkjokk I think, and he was heading somewhere to Alta in Norway. That is a truly massive trek. He came inside to sit with us for a bit to warm up, dry his things, and eat a sandwich. Then Ole went back outside to keep skiing, so we waved him off. For the rest of the trip, every time things got tough, we said: we must be like Ole. Well, we certainly managed to be like Ole here last week. It’s a real joy now to have this beautiful weather.

Life in the tent and daily routine

When you go into your tent in the evening — and yes, evening, we finish skiing around five o’clock — we set up the tent. It’s nice and warm inside. If you stick your nose outside, it almost freezes off, because it’s still -14 out there. But in the tent, the sun actually warms it up to t-shirt weather. You can just sit there very relaxed, without gloves or a jacket, with the door closed. That obviously makes life a lot easier. It also means we mainly want to use those hours for skiing. We don’t get up in the middle of the night now, which is great, but around five-thirty. Then we’re on our skis around seven-forty-five. Nine hours later it’s about five o’clock and the day is done. It looks like we can keep up that rhythm for a while.

Snow conditions and planning

We just need to see what the snow does tomorrow. Today, the second half of the day was still quite tough skiing because the snow got soft. Then it’s hard work again to pull your pulk through it, even if the GPS says it’s slightly downhill. It’s possible we might get up a bit earlier to use more of the colder hours of the day when the snow is still a bit harder. We’re going to talk about that in a moment while enjoying a bowl of popcorn, because of course we can just make that here on the ice sheet.

Cold, face protection, and today’s photo

The photo with this blog is from this morning, arriving at the first break. It’s quite damp outside and you can see we all have slightly icy faces. Even though you can almost ski in a t-shirt under your hardshell because the sun is so warm, you still have to wear your mask and goggles on your face. As soon as you don’t, you’re at real risk of frostbite. And we don’t want that, of course, because frostbite means the end of the trip. So everyone is being very careful to cover their faces well and avoid any accidents.