Snow Cat

Shot on the same day as the previous entry, I’m about to take a noisy, bone-rattling ride across the frozen Baffin Bay in a Snow Cat. If you look closely, you can see a bunch of sled dogs in the background resting after a 70-mile race held each year during the Julemand (Christmas) festivities. I’ll…

Wolstenholme Fjord, Greenland

My latest scanning project keeps turning up gems. I am so glad I shot this panorama of Wolstenholme Fjord — purportedly the only place on earth where three active glaciers join together. If I could have anticipated today’s technology, I might have made a much more detailed shot than this one – consisting of just…

A Pattern Emerges

I’ve always been drawn to symmetry in my images, but when you view a few of them in a group, the effect can be ridonculous! Or maybe not. What do you think? This is the barracks I lived in from September, 1985 until March, 1987. It must be summer, because my pals are firing up…

Greenland Sunset

For a month or so in the spring and fall the sun’s trajectory became very shallow – barely rising above the horizon and before setting again. The cool thing about this process is that it took a long time, so moments like this lasted for hours. I didn’t notice all of the antennas when I…

Mount Dundas

The distinctive Mt. Dundas was a popular destination during the brief summer in Thule. Carved from the landscape by ancient glaciers, the thousand foot high pile of rocks offers a spectacular view of the confluence of three huge glaciers. I’d love to see the place now, although it might be depressing to see how far…

Living with Permafrost

In Thule, everything was built above ground. Buildings rested directly on the ground — held in place by heavy concrete slabs. Utilities which would be buried underground or carried on telephone poles in warmer climates were exposed to the elements. I can’t remember if this is due to the hardness of the permafrost or to…

Unexpected Treasure

Every few months one of us discovers a cache of negatives in some far corner of our storage space. This always propels me into a scanning frenzy. However, the scanning and retouching process is so time-consuming that I’m pretty picky about what I scan. This image didn’t make the first cut or the second. The…

Pete on Top of the World!

It turns out that Facebook is actually good for something — finding old friends. Normally, I don’t even want to connect with any more old friends, but when I found Pete, it motivated me to fire up the old scanner and send this shot to him. Pete was my next-door neighbor during my stay in…

Troels and Jesper Do Germany

My circle of old friends is getting wider. Yesterday I received a long e-mail from Troels Nørlem – another old pal from Greenland. What a thrill it is to hear from Troels – the official Thule Air Base Photographer! Sounds like he’s is doing well with his wife and two kids in what he refers…

Thule Barracks Fire

There have been more than a few occasions in my life when I felt that I was witnessing something that few people will ever see. You could say that everything that each of us experiences is by definition, a once-in-a-lifetime event. The thing is that in this case, I was smart lucky enough to have…

Now, That’s C-C-C-CRAZY

Not all of my Danish friends in Greenland were this crazy – but Erik and Randi got this idea… When you live in a place where the average temperature in February and March is -30 degrees Centigrade, it’s only a matter of time before someone will ask to have their picture taken in an unheated…

Reconnecting – Again

Many of you know of my never-ending scanning project. Well, the scope of the task expanded this afternoon. Through the miracle of the Internets, my old friend Erik Larsen found a photo I shot of a cabin he built near Thule Greenland. You can view this image both on the Panaramio web site and on…

thedude’s Photo in Copenhagen

Hey Dude, Have a look – it looks super cool! – it’s dye-sub printed directly on a sound-absorbent panel. Thanks for allowing us to use the pic!! Best regards from Copenhagen – Sten Jauer, Art Director LAND DESIGNLAB APS | VESTERGADE 12A 3 | DK-1456 COPENHAGEN | DENMARK Thanks, Sten! I think it looks great…

Thule Radar Screens

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…

Hiking Greenland

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…

Back to Greenland

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…

Summer in Greenland

Thanks to recently reconnecting 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 me in the summer of 1986 at J-Site – about 13 miles north of Thule. You can’t tell from the image, but the cliff I’m standing on…

Long Ago in a Frozen Land Far, Far Away…

This week I received e-mails from two people I have not seen in nearly twenty years. The first came from my ex-girlfriend Cheryl. That’s her on the left with a somewhat younger and slightly thinner dude. Evidently, she stumbled onto my site while Googling Thule Air Base in Greenland. She sent a link to my…

Mount Dundas

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…

Thule Guestbook

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…

Partying with Eskimos

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…

Inside Erik’s Cabin

Finally we’re inside Erik’s cabin! The fisheye lens makes the place look much larger than it really is – a mere 8 feet by 16 feet. The cabin was just tall enough in the middle for me to stand up. I shot this shortly after we arrived and fired up the stove – the top…

Thule Star Trails

Here’s another shot I’m quite proud of. Again I attached the camera to my tripod, pointed it back towards Thule and opened the shutter. I ran back inside the cabin to stay warm during the 45 minute exposure. In the distance you can just make out the unique profile of Mt. Dundas.

Hotel Thule

You know, it’s a good thing that the site is really intended primarily for me. I’m probably the only one who can make any sense of it. I was looking at it again tonight and I realize that my recent entries are all all over the map – no pun intended. The main reason for…

Thule Inuit

I rarely saw the native population during my 17 months in Greenland. Fortunately, the air base sponsored a (70 mile!) dog sled race with a grand prize of a rifle. This was enough to attract Inuit families from many miles around. There was one other much more personal interaction with the natives of Thule –…

Picnic in Thule

By popular demand, another image from frozen Thule, Greenland. This image was made during a winter in Thule. If I recall, it was shot around noon – in almost complete darkness. I set up my trusty Pentax 35 mm camera on a tripod, and painted light onto the picnic table with a flashlight during the…

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Thule, Greenland is visited by some strong winds. Some say the World’s highest measured windspeed occurred here. (See: Burt, Christopher. Extreme Weather. NY: Norton, 2004, p. 249.) During the worst of these storms – known as “Phase Three” storms, sustained hurricane speed winds make Thule a very dangerous place. This shot was taken during a…

The Inuit Mind

I have never understood how it is that a culture who live in a largely desolate environment often completely devoid of color would create such colorful, complex geometric patterns in their art. I bought these beaded items from an Inuit woman in Greenland in 1986. My recollection is that I paid five dollars a piece…