As per last posting we’re in Kangerlussuaq, its Thursday.
We were lucky with our holes in the weather. Sondestrom/Kangerlussuaq (aka Blue West 2) is up a 120 km fjord. Our route kept us high (-35degrees C) and clear so not much ice threat but we had to descend over to be level 3000 about 7 miles down the fjord. Slightly nervous of icing but all ok
Kangerlussuaq is basically an airport and a hote. There’s about 250 people there and they all work either for the hotel or the airport.
The hotel is an extension of the departure lounge and used to be the US military accommodation. It has been refurbished very well. The airport used to be ‘Blue west 2’ during WW2 and was used for staging ferry flights of warplanes
There are quite a few commercial flights – its a long runway – we were awoken about 2am by a 777 taking off.
The lounge is awash with back packers of all ages – well I suppose its the new frontier for urbanites.
We ate in the restaurant – I chose Musk Ox. The areas like many arctic and subarctic areas is their natural habitat and they roam free.
Now they look a bit like buffalo dont they ?
I can report that they are actually part of the goat family
But the meat was delicious and tender – I’d recommend Jamaican goat curry also but that was another trip altogether
We’re hoping we might just have got a jump on the weather which was threatening to keep us in Iqaluit for a week or more. Tomorrow does look promising – It is better to the east of Greenland too. We might even get a tailwind for the first time on the trip.
The trip tomorrow looks OK but all the way to Iceland is 840 miles. we made 680 from Goose to Iqaluit on Tuesday with 30 knot headwind and we were nervous so 840 we’ve decided is a bridge too far even with a tailwind so we’re going to go into Kulusuuk a gravel lstrip on the east coast.
The forecast calls for clouds up to 15k over the western half of Greenland – icing level 1500 so nowhere to run unless we get on top. Eastern half look sunny with quite a good leg to Iceland if we can do both in a day