Expedition

4300 km unsupported circumnavigation of the Greenland icecap by means of a Windsledge. An expedition within the 'Windsledge project' - An innovative, sustainable, low operating cost and global impact project.

24.9.14

Windsledge tracks crossed on skis

Ski crossing Isortorq to Kangerlussuaq, 27 days

In the biggest white room 6 little dots snakes their way through a thick white carpet. Once in a while the head of the snake drops off and slides down attaching itself to the tail, as a new head pushes forward head down finding extra strength and the snake continues eating meter after meter. White cords are sticking out of the dots heads, when needed delivering dreams, flow, distraction and power.
This is where nothing exist but the grandness of the white space and the sliding of one foot after the other in a lulling rhythm, until the sun starts its performance on the horizon and they can finally rest.
This is where a cup of hot water during a break and eating crushed potato chips with a spoon gives you the biggest pleasure and laughs are frequent and easy.
This is where no one needs to explain, everyone is longing for the finish and everyone is dreading the finish, as they know they will long back as soon as it is reached.
This is the ' Kamelose' Greenland Crossing deep into their adventure.


Karin, Josh, Bengt, Frode, Zac, Frederik
A successful crossing in every sense, thanks to a great team with lots of humour. After being dropped off by boat near Isortorq 65km south of Tasiilaq, we jumped, sprinted, skipping the pulks across the melting streams and zigzagged our way past the crevasses up the icefall reaching the plateau. Here we met unusually warm temperatures for the year, heavy snowfall, deep and wet snow clotting to our skis making the pulks very heavy to pull. This made the progress in the beginning very slow delaying us quite a bit. But the team was strong and ones the condition got better we made a big effort to catch up with lost time, with days of effective skiing from 9 up to 11 hours and 34km a day. The weather threw everything it had on us, from sneaky freezing wind getting in where it shouldn’t, coming from all directions to storms having us stay in the tents, but also kindly gave us stunning sunny days with powder condition making the pulks fly. Going down the icefall to Kangerlussuaq was epic and even trying to read how Bengt navigated through the never ending icy maze, that didn't seem to want to let us through, I never figured out how he managed this. This really requires skills.
I had to pinch myself twice when the GPS showed we were crossing the invisible tracks set by the Windsledge Expedition less than two months ago…very surreal and feeling very lucky getting to experience both.

Why we ended calling the crossing 'Kamelose' a word shouted out very often during the trip… well a Norwegian joke on the Danish language on Youtube  that some may get (in a kind of English) Kamelose.



Daily updates and more pictures from the crossing Ousland.no
Also check out Zac & Josh's cool project 4Caps.