{"id":28772,"date":"2026-05-21T00:01:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T22:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcticadventure.nl\/verjaardag-vieren-op-de-ijskoude-groenlandse-ijskap\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T00:19:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T22:19:47","slug":"verjaardag-vieren-op-de-ijskoude-groenlandse-ijskap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcticadventure.be\/en\/verjaardag-vieren-op-de-ijskoude-groenlandse-ijskap\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating a birthday on the freezing Greenland Ice Sheet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<style type=\"text\/css\" data-created_by=\"avia_inline_auto\" id=\"style-css-av-1gwz1si-65b00dbab9504b8c861c7b322dfe2eba\">\n.flex_column.av-1gwz1si-65b00dbab9504b8c861c7b322dfe2eba{\npadding:0 20px 0 0;\n}\n<\/style>\n<div  class='flex_column av-1gwz1si-65b00dbab9504b8c861c7b322dfe2eba av_one_half  avia-builder-el-0  el_before_av_one_half  avia-builder-el-first  first flex_column_div  '     ><section  class='av_textblock_section av-mc64ztu3-ecb9863e6085779f3701ce94be0d98ca '  ><div class='avia_textblock' ><h2>Listen to the Greenland Expedition Update<\/h2>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-28772-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/arcticadventure.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/audio-blog-27.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/arcticadventure.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/audio-blog-27.mp3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/arcticadventure.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/audio-blog-27.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>\ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7 <a href=\"https:\/\/arcticadventure.nl\/en\/onderwerpen\/greenland-spring-2026\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read all blogs in English.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\uddfa\ufe0f <a href=\"https:\/\/arcticadventure.nl\/en\/expeditions-overview\/groenland-expeditie-voorjaar-2026\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Our live position in Greenland.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udce2 <a href=\"https:\/\/arcticadventure.nl\/en\/expeditions-overview\/groenland-expeditie-voorjaar-2026\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read all previous posts.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n<style type=\"text\/css\" data-created_by=\"avia_inline_auto\" id=\"style-css-av-1bmxhhu-f5224d651b560eb192fac74ab38ea33f\">\n.flex_column.av-1bmxhhu-f5224d651b560eb192fac74ab38ea33f{\nborder-radius:3px 3px 3px 3px;\npadding:10px 10px 10px 10px;\nbackground-color:#f2f2f2;\n}\n<\/style>\n<div  class='flex_column av-1bmxhhu-f5224d651b560eb192fac74ab38ea33f av_one_half  avia-builder-el-2  el_after_av_one_half  el_before_av_hr  flex_column_div  '     ><section  class='av_textblock_section av-mc64zgdb-764a03b10f56dacf5f241b503f2c1109 '  ><div class='avia_textblock' ><h2>Sign up for the Expedition Newsflash.<\/h2>\n<p>Receive alerts of new blogs in your email during the expedition.<\/p>\n                <div class=\"ml-embedded\" data-form=\"HO1phZ\"><\/div>\n            \n<\/div><\/section><\/div><\/p>\n<div  class='hr av-s1j460-8b84e45465358f2aa3aef05aedecf6b4 hr-default  avia-builder-el-4  el_after_av_one_half  el_before_av_one_full '><span class='hr-inner '><span class=\"hr-inner-style\"><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div  class='flex_column av-rnnpki-558c6bf59fdaafc19ab18598bf38c424 av_one_full  avia-builder-el-5  el_after_av_hr  avia-builder-el-last  first flex_column_div  '     ><section  class='av_textblock_section av-mc64ytx1-f782ba5f3613bbe73186e5a4eaf44b03 '  ><div class='avia_textblock' ><h2>My birthday on the ice sheet<\/h2>\n<p>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.    <\/p>\n<h2>Today&#8217;s weather and distance<\/h2>\n<p>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.    <\/p>\n<h2>Over the summit of the ice sheet<\/h2>\n<p>Now, don&#8217;t go thinking we&#8217;re standing there with our tips down doing alpine skiing with some speed behind us. This was the &#8216;butt of an egg&#8217;, remember. It&#8217;s actually more of a massive plateau on top where you&#8217;re not quite sure if you&#8217;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.    <\/p>\n<h2>Weather forecast and comparison with previous trip<\/h2>\n<p>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&#8217;ve been &#8216;like Ole&#8217; enough. For the people who weren&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;s a real joy now to have this beautiful weather.                <\/p>\n<h2>Life in the tent and daily routine<\/h2>\n<p>When you go into your tent in the evening \u2014 and yes, evening, we finish skiing around five o&#8217;clock \u2014 we set up the tent. It&#8217;s nice and warm inside. If you stick your nose outside, it almost freezes off, because it&#8217;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&#8217;t get up in the middle of the night now, which is great, but around five-thirty. Then we&#8217;re on our skis around seven-forty-five. Nine hours later it&#8217;s about five o&#8217;clock and the day is done. It looks like we can keep up that rhythm for a while.          <\/p>\n<h2>Snow conditions and planning<\/h2>\n<p>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&#8217;s hard work again to pull your pulk through it, even if the GPS says it&#8217;s slightly downhill. It&#8217;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&#8217;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.    <\/p>\n<h2>Cold, face protection, and today&#8217;s photo<\/h2>\n<p>The photo with this blog is from this morning, arriving at the first break. It&#8217;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&#8217;t, you&#8217;re at real risk of frostbite. And we don&#8217;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.     <\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a freezing day of -31 degrees, I celebrated my 43rd birthday on the ice sheet. We covered 26 kilometers under a brilliant sun. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_joinchat":[],"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[311,513],"tags":[307,486],"class_list":["post-28772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-en","category-greenland-spring-2026","tag-expedition","tag-greenland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticadventure.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticadventure.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticadventure.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticadventure.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticadventure.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28772"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/arcticadventure.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28775,"href":"https:\/\/arcticadventure.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28772\/revisions\/28775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticadventure.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticadventure.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticadventure.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticadventure.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}