IN GREENLAND’S GRANITE HEAVEN
My head slams into the roof of the small motorboat as we ride eastwards into the swell. Karta, my taciturn boat driver, smiles back from behind his dark shades and walrus-like moustache. I look past him to the sculpted forms of half-a-dozen icebergs trailing in our wake. Rugged, treeless slopes bound the fjord, vanishing quickly into a lid of thick cloud and swirling mist. The dark water below appears cold and menacing.
“Sirmiq!” (glacier) shouts a suddenly animated Karta above the deafening whirr of the boat’s motor. He points to a gleaming, cream-white mass that seemed to hover in the distance, at the head of the fjord. For a fleeting few seconds I also make out a far-off fang of rock soaring and skewering the canopy of cloud like some fantasy pinnacle. It’s got to be a figment of my imagination, I think. My brain struggles to equate the contours and features from weeks of map-gazing with the topography emerging in front of me.
I can sense, too, the tingle of excitement that every wilderness traveller recognises. When the years of dreaming, months of planning, and days of travel to get here are distilled down to this one moment. The moment of arrival. But the anticipation is also laced with a feeling of inevitable anxiety. Was it a good idea to come here alone?
If you were to take out a globe and dust if off, then point your finger at the southernmost tip of Greenland, here you will find the Tasermiut Fjord area. It’s home to not only some of the most spectacular mountains on the entire island, but also some of the finest granite walls anywhere in the world, their peers found only in Patagonia, the Karakorum, and Yosemite.
