Category Archives: Greenland

This image was shot about 12 miles from Thule at J-Site – home to a part of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, or BMEWS. These antennas were about the size of a football field and emitted enough EMF to cause my Walkman Pro to slow dramatically as we drove by on the bus. Scary stuff.

If you look VERY closely, (and squint a bit) you might just make out Radio Mast Thule – one of the world’s tallest structures.

Shot on the same hike as seen a few entries ago, the picture on the left shows thedude holding a piece of ice. Why? I guess because ice was so hard to come by in Greenland.

On the right, thedude and friends walked out onto the Greenlandic ice cap and decided to walk “just out to there”. The funny thing was that the ice rose up so slowly that the horizon never changed. No matter how far we walked, we could never actually get “there”. The Greenland icecap eventually reaches a thickness of more than two miles.

After seeing this shot, I always fantasized about shooting a bikini-clad girl on a beach chair with an umbrella out here on the ice cap, but I could never find a beach chair. :-(

Both of these were taken on the day of the big Thule Open Golf Tournament atop Mount Dundas. Along the way on the hike to the mountain, we encountered this cemetery. I wish I knew a little of the history of it. The helicopter was shot from the top of the 900 foot “mountain” as a friend scrambled to set up his view camera. I had one of the most exciting rides on my life in that helicopter – flying full speed 100 feet above canyons of blue ice on the way to the northernmost place I’ve ever visited. I’m hoping to find those slides for a later post.

Thanks to recently re-connecting with a couple friends from my Greenland adventure, I’m once again motivated to hunt through my archives for cool arctic images. (Pun intended.)

That’s thedude on the left in the summer of 1986 at J-Site – about 13 miles north of Thule. You can’t tell from the image, but the cliff he’s standing on drops off straight down for a good 500 feet. On the right is a friend cooling off after a long hike – proof that the human body can easily adjust to extremely cold climates. It was no more than 45 degrees in either of these shots.

I sure am glad that I have these pictures. I’m not likely to have an opportunity to see sites quite like these again!

UPDATE: I just located Thule on the incredibly cool Google Earth. (Sorry – Windows only.) If you have Google Earth installed, (it’s free!) you can fly there now by clicking here.

One the most distinctive features of the Thule area is Mount Dundas. Once a year all of the residents of Thule climb the 900 foot mountain to participate in a golf game. The object of the game – to get a ball somewhere near the “holes” – marked with a red flag. Lucky golfers were able to get one of their quota of 3 ball within ten feet of the flag – the area marked off in yellow paint. Most players watched as their balls bounced off the top of the mountain never to be seen again.

Each visitor to Erik’s cabin was offered the privilege of signing his one-of-a-kind guestbook. As you can probably gather from what you see here, I was one of the few Americans ever to visit this place. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of the page that I wrote in his guestbook, so I can’t share (or remember) what I wrote. :-(

Just when I thought things couldn’t possibly get any cooler, two of Erik’s Eskimo friends dropped by for a visit. Erik expected them to show up at around noon, but instead arrived by dogsled somewhere around midnight. Evidently, Eskimos have little need for clocks – especially in the long night of winter.

I don’t know the spelling of the names of these two people, but his name was pronounced Cah-go, and hers was Ta-beet-ah. I think they were about 28 years old. He had been educated in Copenhagen but had decided to move back to Greenland after completing school. He spoke Danish and Inuit, she spoke only Inuit, Erik spoke English and Danish, and I speak only English. This meant that anything we shared was translated repeatedly from English to Danish to Inuit and back again. It was really cool to hear my words spoken in Inuit.

The two of them were quiet, introspective, and in no hurry to do much of anything. I asked them what they were going to do tomorrow. They looked at each other for a few seconds and then back at me and shrugged. They had no plans whatsoever. They seemed not even to make much of the concept of today and tomorrow. I asked them where they came from. They pointed into the blackness on the other side of the frozen Baffin Bay. I could not see a thing in that direction, so, I asked them how many people lived in their village. They talked among themselves for several seconds and held up seven fingers.

Erik eventually broke out his Walkman and we took turns listening to Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell CD. As if this wasn’t fabulous – and hilarious – enough, the hash under glass helped make things even more surreal. (Disclaimer: I never inhaled – and even if I had I’m sure I would not have enjoyed it.) ;-)

UPDATE! I just received this e-mail:

Hello thedude

My name is Johnny Jensen and I am from Qaanaaq and I believe u know where is Qaanaaq.
That picture from nearby Thule air base, I knew them and they live here in Qaanaaq..
That man in picture he´s name is Qaaqqutsiaq Kristiansen and he´s wife Tabitha Kristiansen

Inussiarnersumik Inuulluaqqusillunga / Med Venlig Hilsen

Johnny Jensen
Qaasuitsup Kommunia
Telefon: 971077
Telefax:
E-mail: john@qaasuitsup.gl
Webside: www.qaasuitsup.gl

Amazing! So now I know the names of the people in this photo, and of the existence of a very cool Greenland website!