I had a 9am flight to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland this was a 4½ hour flight on Air Greenland that headed north from Copenhagen over southern Norway, then across the North Sea to the north of the Faeroe Island and over the northern part of Iceland before crossing the Greenland Icecap. I had a window seat and as it was a nice day I was able to follow progress out the window.
I then transferred to a smaller plane for the fight to Nuuk the capital of Greenland a 55 minute flight down the West Coast of Greenland. Nuuk only had a small airport until November 2024 when the new runway opened allowing large planes to land there. The runway extension at Nuuk was difficult to build as there is no flat land so considerable work had to be undertaken to flatten the very rocky landscape.
I then had a third 1½ flight from Nuuk to Kulusak from the west coast of Greenland to the East coast straight over the Greenland ice cap, there was broken cloud and again I had a window seat so was able to see some of the ice cap.
Greenland is a vast country 2,500 miles long and 700 miles wide. Most of it is covered in the icecap with towns only around the coats. There are no road outside of any of the towns and a population of 56,000 people with 18,500 living in the capital Nuuk. The icecap covers 678,000 sq miles has a volume of approximately 680,000 cubic miles. The highest point on the icecap is 12,100 ft and the ice is millions of years old and thousands of feet thick in places 80% of Greenland is covered in ice.
I arrived in Kulusak, my start destination, mid-afternoon to be met by the mini-bus from the hotel. The airport is one small room and the runway is gravel so only some planes can land here.
There was a bit of a wait at the airport as they were expecting a helicopter flight in from the town of Tasiilaq 30 miles away with more passengers. As there are no roads between towns in Greenland and most towns do not have an airport, they are connected via scheduled helicopter flights.
The hotel was small, and dinner was served at 6.30pm so with a few hours to spare I walked the mile or so into the town. There is no tarmac road in Kulusak just gravel and I only saw two cars whilst there, the hotel minibus and a 4×4 belonging to the airport. Everybody uses quad bikes in summer and snowmobiles in winter.
Kulusak is a small town with a population of less than 250 people. It has a shop, a post office, a school, youth club, church, a 1 room museum and a small wharf. Yachts were moored in the bay, but Global Surveyor had not arrived yet.
I headed back to the hotel for the buffet dinner with my fellow guests. There is no choice but to eat in this one hotel in the town. There is not even a coffee shop or similar in the town.
The other guests were interesting, I was talking to an English couple that had been coming to Greenland for 40 year and owned a house in the town of Tasiilaq 30 miles away and visited regularly. There was an American group planning to walk and ski across the icecap to Kangerlussuaq 450 miles away. They were expecting to take a month to get there. There were no towns on route so had to pull all their supplies on sleds.