Day 22 - The day became longer than expected

Day 22, 25 June
Position: N 73,25733 W 54,33915
Wind: 7-14 m/s
Distance covered (day): 226 km

We spent most of the day filming. Got some detail shots which together with the rest of our material could come together to something viewable. By now we have some 12 hours with HD-footage from our trip. At about 20.30 we started sailing west, towards the end of the glacier by Upernavik. For some reason we assumed the distance to be only 120 km. The wind was good and we figured we would cover the distance in about 3-4 hours. But it turned out that the actual distance was about the double. The distance of 120 km turned out to be only to a temporary GPS check-point we used as an aiming point during our previous record attempt. Anyway, we sailed with good power in our kites. After about 90 km we switched to parawings. The wind had by then pick up and we were getting closer to suspected crevasse areas. The parawings' advantage compared to a kite is mainly that the parawing, in addition to be a safer tool in high winds, also enables the user to stop much quicker if necessary. By now it was night, but the midnight sun was high in the sky and the low snow drift was covering the landscape in something resembling a magic carpet. Today's picture shows Hugo struggling with his parasail in strong wind in such environment.

Luckily we never came across any crevasses. When we in the early morning was about 50-60 km from the ocean we noticed a nunatak (a mountain breaking trough the glacier). This was the first mountain we had seen since the start of our trip on the 3 June. The settlement of Upernavik was in the same direction and hence we got ourselves a nice land mark to aim for. On the other hand, nunataks are often surrounded by dangerous crevasses. Consequently we decided to stop some km before we reached it. The distance to the cost was by then 20-30 km. The GPS showed that we then had covered a distance of 226 km in air distance and descended from 2500 m above sea level to 880 m above sea level. The snow conditions were very icy during the last 50 km, and Hugo who had decided to cross the Greenland ice cap on powder skis, would once again learn that those skis are not made for icy conditions. On the other hand we can now clearly notice that our bodies have been toughened and that we now can take longer sailing distances without any stops than we could at the start of our trip.

The plan is now to charter a helicopter and get down to Upernavik, a settlement with some 1300 inhabitants. From there we will get a plane home to Norway.


Addon: When we are sending this update we have reached the civilisation where there are plenty of electricity for our PC. During the last days we have not had sufficient power to send pictures together with the updates. Therefore, this time we are posting three pictures. The other picture shows our GPS after our record break. The GPS was reset about 10 minutes before start and the picture was taken in the tent about 20 minutes after finish. The actual stop time is therefore be a bit shorter than shown on the picture. The third picture shows Bjørn Einar's sledge on the icy surface.