I Camped on the ‘Fringe of the World’ in Greenland—This is What It Was Like

My eyes performed tips on me in the dead of night. It was 2 a.m. on the sting of a bay in Greenland, and our tented camp appeared like a black-and-white {photograph} within the mild of my headlamp. I watched as an iceberg passed by on the water. The mountains had been wreathed in a spectral fog within the moonlight. Polar bears are a really actual risk on this a part of the world; I might bounce each time I heard the sound of a humpback whale spouting within the bay or a tent flap snapping in the wind. 

My six fellow campers and I took rotating solo shifts of bear-watching all through the night time, armed with flares and a whistle, ought to we have to alert our guides. I walked across the camp’s perimeter, weaving between our 4 fluorescent-orange tents, all my senses tuned in. The Inuit have a phrase for this sense, ilira, which roughly interprets to “awe accompanied by a creeping concern.”

I used to be on a brand new land-based expedition with Hinoki Travels, an ecotourism firm. Our weeklong August journey had begun in Kulusuk, a Tunumiit (or East Greenlandic Inuit) village of about 225 folks. Kulusuk is on an island of the identical title, just under the Arctic Circle. Of the 140,000 vacationers who go to Greenland yearly, the bulk discover solely its western and southern reaches by cruise ship. Lower than 5,000 guests land in Kulusuk yearly by aircraft. However with a brand new airport in Nuuk, the capital, and twice-weekly United flights from Newark Liberty Worldwide launching this summer season comes critical concern concerning the affect of tourism on the setting.

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Greenland is taken into account floor zero for local weather change: the Arctic is warming almost 4 instances quicker than the remainder of the world, and meltwater from the ice sheets and glaciers is the most important contributor to rising sea ranges globally. To discover this fragile ecosystem responsibly, Hinoki set us as much as journey by kayak and on foot, with solely a small motorboat assembly us at distant campsites with heavier gear and our provide of freeze-dried meals. Hinoki founder Bethany Betzler additionally collaborates with a conservation biologist, Jesse Lewis, to develop a sustainability technique for every vacation spot the place the corporate operates. To drag off our journey, Betzler partnered with Pirhuk, a neighborhood mountaineering firm based by Matt Spenceley, a Brit who arrived in Kulusuk 24 years in the past to climb and backcountry-ski and later moved to the island. 

The brilliant blue home he shares along with his spouse, Helen, serves as a lodge, and our group spent two nights there earlier than setting out into the backcountry. I woke to Kulusuk’s sled canine howling within the daybreak. Outdoors my window, homes appeared to glow within the violet mild. Aside from a smudge of an airport, a small normal retailer, and a faculty, there’s nothing in Kulusuk however wilderness stretching in each route. Pack ice drifting down the shoreline from the Arctic Ocean makes it tough for ships to method and has left the island remoted. The neighborhood depends on fishing, foraging, and looking seals and whales, with a couple of provide shipments arriving by boat in the summertime. “There’s a circulation of ice, animals, and water that’s at all times in flux,” Spenceley instructed me once I arrived. He mentioned residing there will be powerful, particularly throughout winter, when the land is obliterated by snow and there are only some hours of sunshine every day. 

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Because the morning solar warmed the village’s rocky hillsides, our group equipped in dry fits. We had been guided by Spenceley and a Tunumiit hunter, Jokum Heimer Mikaelsen, who additionally goes by Jukku. In kayaks, we paddled out into Tunu Sound towards the white tongue of Apusiaajik Glacier, six miles away. We skirted the aquamarine halo of an iceberg. “Kayaking was invented right here!” bellowed Spenceley up forward. For hundreds of years, Arctic peoples have used a looking boat known as the qajaq, which is designed for velocity and silence and is fabricated from sealskin stretched over a whalebone or driftwood body. 

“Let’s make our approach over there,” Spenceley mentioned, pointing his chin to our far left. “See if we are able to get some massive whale motion.” Our kayaks bobbed precariously. “I’d be good with some medium whale motion,” mentioned one among my fellow vacationers, Jonathan Baude, and we exchanged a nervous chortle. Not distant, the elegant curve of a humpback broke via the floor. Our group “rafted up,” holding the perimeters of each other’s kayaks for stability. One other whale appeared, misting the air with its breath. 

That night time, we camped on the water’s edge with a transparent view of Apusiaajik, which was marbled in blue and white. One other visitor, Paul Piong, lingered within the chilly, portray a watercolor of the scene. I retreated to my tent, realizing I might be again up at 5 a.m. for my bear-watch shift. I emerged simply as the primary mild was coaxing the world out of darkness. White boulders shape-shifted within the twilight, and the sound of a calving glacier ricocheted like a gunshot between the mountains. I retrieved the whistle from beneath the down jacket I used to be carrying (even in summer season, temperatures can drop beneath freezing). The daybreak mild drew a silver veil over this land of unnerving magnificence, reminding me of work by Caspar David Friedrich and William Blake. For the Nineteenth-century Romantics, chic referred to not one thing pleasant—because it’s generally used now— however to a way of awe in nature inseparable from terror or hazard. Ilira. 

Our journey that day continued on foot, taking us up over the glacier alongside a dogsled route that dates again to the Thule, the Inuit’s predecessors, who settled in Greenland round 800 years in the past. We walked single file in silence, with the squeak and rasp of ice underfoot, lastly arriving on the fringe of a moulin, a gap in a glacier that funnels meltwater from its floor to its mattress.

Spenceley regarded round distractedly, wide-eyed. “I’m a bit shaken,” he mentioned, explaining that the glacier had misplaced greater than six toes of ice because the earlier summer season. As temperatures heat, moulins have change into extra widespread, and the ensuing circulation of subglacial meltwater is accelerating the motion of ice towards the ocean. 

This moulin marked the doorway to an ice cave. “A cave collapsed on a bunch of vacationers in Iceland a couple of days in the past,” Spenceley instructed us. He defined that it’s essential to have a information who can learn the ice and the climate, and that we might transfer via the primary, tight part of the cave as shortly as doable. Being barely claustrophobic, I used to be joyful to walk-crawl underneath the low, frozen roof, swiftly reaching above with naked fingers to really feel the cave’s glistening floor underneath my fingertips. As soon as we had been standing upright, it appeared like we had stepped inside a blinding jewel. 

Later that day, utilizing crampons, we trekked up a slick slope and down via the sector of the glacial moraine. We discovered no trails, no sheltering bushes. The one hint of humanity was a discarded bullet casing on the bottom. I regarded all the way down to see the fuchsia stars of niviarsiaq, the nationwide flower, pushing up via the bottom as we jumped from rock to rock throughout small streams. We walked throughout the spongy tundra and traced a lake, the place we noticed red-breasted mergansers, a species of duck, flying in good V formation.

One night time, we savored a dinner of pan-fried fresh-caught cod. “I’ve a shock,” mentioned Jukku, who had remained a quiet but encouraging presence all through the journey. He stepped behind a close-by boulder and reemerged carrying polar-bear-fur pants and sealskin boots and carrying a standard Inuit drum comprised of a polar-bear abdomen stretched over a picket body. To the sonorous beat of the drum, he sang a wistful Tunumiit music a couple of star-crossed raven and goose. That night time, the northern lights rippled like inexperienced fireplace throughout the sky.

Till this level, we had lucked out with sunny days, however the fickle climate Greenland is thought for lastly arrived on our final day of mountaineering. We took shelter from the rain and lashing wind in a mountain hut Spenceley had constructed with mates and toasted the tip of our journey with thimblefuls of whiskey. It was cheerful and heat inside. However the chilly of the Arctic waters, of the traditional blue ice, stayed with me for weeks. 

Seven-night Interdependence: East Greenland itinerary with Hinoki Travels from $6,750 per particular person.

A model of this story first appeared within the April 2025 situation of Journey + Leisure underneath the headline “High of the World.”