Skiing Greenland’s Southwest Fjords
Story and Photos by Andrew McLean
Sitting in SkyDancer’s cockpit, I’m listening to Nick explain his historical version of the Vikings:
“They just vanished. Nobody knows what happened to them.” he says with a smile, but I’m not buying it. I know a Viking when I see one, and Nick is for sure a living, breathing Viking. There are plenty of obvious clues, including a discrete pierced ear, an unruly beard, a commanding presence and the most obvious of all, we are in his battle-proven sailing vessel in the frigid Labrador Sea. I suspect he has a five foot long broadsword named “Leg Biter” hidden beneath the floorboards, but don’t know him well enough yet to ask. As further confirmation, Nick is accompanied by Estella, who bears a striking resemblance to Skadi, the Viking goddess of winter, mountains and hiking. Seemingly innocent and quiet, she blows her cover a day after learning to play Wordle when she solves IGLOO in two tries. In English no less, which is her second, or third language. “What a fun game!” she chirps while her vanquished foes grumble into their morning coffee. Definite Viking material.
With a distant history of plundering and pillaging just for fun, Vikings had good reason to go into hiding. But that’s all in the past and now we’ve joined forces to hunt down and pillage some powder in the fjords of the fatherland, Greenland. We are aboard SkyDancer, a 73’ steel and aluminum schooner that Admiral Estella and Captain Nick live aboard. The ship is registered out of the town of Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen, which at 78 degrees north, boasts most of the world’s “farthest north” claims, including the farthest north whisky bar, Thai restaurant, coal mine, ghost town, post office and Madonna’s old stretch limousine, as well as plenty of Polar Bears. But, after eight years of taking skiers, photographers and scientists into the wilds of Svalbard, the farthest north wasn’t far enough and SkyDancer migrated west across the notorious Greenland and Norwegian Seas to set up operations on the west side of Greenland in 2022. According to Nick, “All bad weather in Europe is born in Greenland.” which apparently keeps the riff-raff away. When we met SkyDancer in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland in the southwest corner, there was only one other skiing sailboat operating in the area, while Svalbard has grown to over 25.
SkyDancer was built in Horsens, Denmark and finished in 2007. From the start, she was intended for cold, icy, high latitude charters with room for ten guests. Her classic lines conceal a workhorse functionality that makes it perfect for skiing based charters. There’s hardly any fussy high-maintenance teak and the ample deck space is ideal for gearing up and walking around in ski boots. There are two large sitting saloons, plus a place to hang skins and dry gear overnight, as well as four roomy cabins and two bathrooms. Sleeping bags and pooping in buckets is not required. The hull is a deep blue and bears beauty marks from icebergs and paint scratches from mooring in places with huge tidal shifts. In reality, most sail-to-ski trips involve short hops from place to place, often against the wind and usually on a skier’s timeline, so there is very little actual setting of sails. In 2023, a new engine ensures SkyDancer’s timely delivery to the skiing zones, as well as a generator for power, watermaking and heating. But best of all, SkyDancer is owned by Nick & Estella, who operate her like maestros, making docking, shore deliveries and transits look easy. As a fitting touch, the name comes from SkyDancing Tantra, which is the practice of experiencing the expansion of our multi-orgasmic potential through a SkyDancer, who is the female awakener. A perfect name for a Viking sail-to-ski ship.
Named by Erik the Red, a blood-thirsty Viking explorer with a sense of humor, the only green in Greenland is a bit of moss, seaweed or nowadays, tourist’s dollars. It’s a ski mountaineering paradise and I suspect Erik considered Snowhaven, Powderville and Shredcity as names before settling on Greenland. The names Greenland and Iceland stuck, but really should have been reversed. If you are looking for the land of snow, ice, glaciers, fjords, striking couloirs and remote wilderness, Greenland is it. Imagine the couloirs of Baffin Island, the grandeur of Antarctica, the Wild West feel of Alaska and the sailing adventures of Svalbard all rolled into one. It’s Valhalla of Norse mythology – a heavenly land where souls go to frolic, engage in battle, feast, fornicate and imbibe without consequence. A snow heathen’s paradise.
Greenland is second only to Antarctica in terms of frozen fresh water reserves, which to the skier’s mind, means it has the second most skiable terrain on earth. It is larger than Alaska and yet only has 90 miles of roads, of which only 40 are paved. The history of skiing in Greenland goes back to 1888 when Roald Amundsen crossed the southern tip of the island from east to west as a warm up for later being the first person to ski to the South Pole in Antarctica. Other more ambitious crossings followed, but for backcountry skiing it is still in its early stages with a few heliskiing operations and boats going back about 25 years. Most of the skiing takes place on the southwestern part of the island, mainly because that’s where the cities with airports are. The eastern coastline has equally rugged terrain, but with far fewer airports and it is much more ice choked. On Roald Amundsen’s maiden ski crossing, it took him a week just to get from open water to the eastern shore over a maze of shifting icebergs. Air Greenland operates an extensive helicopter network, which is in part why heliskiing has become relatively popular there.
Getting to Greenland from North America involves an appropriate amount of travel trauma – it’s not hard, but it’s not cheap or easy either. From the USA you first fly across the island, then backtrack either on a weekly flight from Reykjavik, Iceland or on a daily flight from Copenhagen, Denmark. Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark and uses the Danish Krone for money. The entire population of 56,500 people would fit into Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, or equals roughly 15 square miles per person. Greenlandic is the official language, but English and Danish are common, which is fortunate as a phrase like “What do Polar Bears eat for lunch?” translates into “suna nannut ullaakkorsiummut nerivaat?” (Answer: Iceberg-ers.) While direct flights into one of the four international airports are fairly reliable, connections within Greenland are sporadic and problematic as many of them only operate a few days a week and are at the mercy of the notoriously bad weather. A missed or cancelled flight out of Mantisoq can mean two days of waiting for a connection in the abandoned US Military town of Kangerlussuaq. Bring a good book.
The modern history of Greenland took off after World War II when America installed a constellation of Distant Early Warning radar stations and military outposts across the Arctic to protect against missile attacks coming over from Russia. Known as the DEW Line, most of these stations have since been abandoned, but the infrastructure still remains. In 1951, a small trading village in northwest Greenland named Thule was turned into an American military outpost almost overnight with 8,500 people arriving to create an instant arctic village complete with a 10,000’ runway. The runway was used as a fueling pit stop for intercontinental flights and today, the town of 600 people still operates as a US space base and Danish listening station. As of 2023, most of the Americans have left and Greenland is moving at glacial speed towards independence from Denmark.
Back in Nuuk where we met SkyDancer, it’s apparent from the number of construction cranes that the capital city of 19,000 people is booming and has everything a skier wants – bars, restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, a deep water harbor and quick access to the labyrinth of fjords west of town. Nick runs through a quick safety meeting (don’t fall overboard and be careful about what you flush down the toilets) before moving on to a map of the area. The plan is that there is no plan. We are the first trip out for the season and it’s been a very low snow year, so we’ll head out and see what we can find, or go window shopping as Nick calls it. The meeting is adjourned to the sound of popping Tuborg caps, mooring lines are cast off, the JBL PartyBox 100 bluetooth speaker is connected and we’re off.
Within a few hours, I’m having visions of a magical ski mountaineering nirvana created by ChatGPT which is too good to be true. There are huge glacially cut granite walls all over that run straight into the water, sweeping open bowls, nice rounded peaks and splitter couloirs galore. It would be better with more snow, but the wind has filled in all of the dark, shady couloirs and it will be easy to piece together snow fields to make it up peaks all on skins. We find a quiet spot to anchor for the night, dig into one of Estella’s culinary masterpieces for dinner, drink some whiskey and set our alarms.
The first run on the first ski day is an encouraging sign of things to come. After picking our way around snow patches right off of the beach, we wrap into a skinnable couloir that leads to a beautiful bowl, up to a ridgeline and tops out on a nice dry, flat summit. The run back to the beach is perfect corn and I happily tick off a box I’ve been anticipating for years: ski Greenland – CHECK! The party has just begun and the rules are pretty simple; cruise around for a few hours to find a nice spot to anchor for the night, wake up, Zodiac shuttle to shore in two groups of five, climb, ski, repeat, back to SkyDancer and do it again the next day. Even with low snow, there’s no shortage of objectives and many of them are larger than they appear. What looks like a little afternoon warm-up run turns into a 3,000’ cruiser we name Arctic Fox after seeing a set of the namesake’s pawprints. The fjords themselves are like a jigsaw puzzle of passages and ridges. After a day of skiing, we move the ship for a few hours and climb another peak the next day only to find tracks, which turn out to be ours from the day before. We’re here in at the end of April and beginning of May where the temperatures are balmy and people are stripping down to t-shirts on summits. Winter can be brutally cold, but springtime is quite pleasant.
As an evening activity, there’s a short, stout fishing rod on SkyDancer with a crude banana-shaped metallic lure that hits the bottom with a distinct thud about ninety feet down. The local protocol is to take it up about three feet, then jig up and down, which almost immediately results in a fish strike. Most of our catches are eightish pound Cod, but we also get a few Flounders and later hook a massive 40lb Wolf Fish, which is like an aquatic Pitbull complete with a locking jaw and a fierce rack of teeth. The fishing was so easy we quickly went to catch & release with an afternoon record of 27 Cod. Little wonder Cod fishing is the primary business in the area. Later, one of our landing sites was so thick with mussels, we harvested two buckets full for an après ski snack steamed with seasonings and white wine. On another occasion, to commemorate a sunny day in a skinny little couloir, Nick and Estella brought a BBQ grill ashore and grilled up skinny little Danish hot dogs on the beach. Heliskiing cuisine is known for producing a Heli Belly, which in our case is a Boat Butt. We never came close to going hungry or thirsty.
The logistics of getting ashore with piles of people and gear loaded into a tiny 12’ boat can resemble storming the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, minus the gunfire. It doesn’t always go as planned and usually involves a variation on the classic inflatable boats generically known as Zodiacs. First you have to pass all of the skis, packs and ice axes into the Zodiac, then load 5 to 10 people into a wet, bobbing boat all while wearing ski boots, find a cozy seat and cast off. An easy landing involves a short commute on calm water to a deep landing next to a flat rock and then chaining the gear ashore to an awaiting snowfield. This rarely happens. A tough landing involves a long, choppy, wet commute to a shallow beach that leaves you too far from shore, requiring a reset to another landing that is steep, covered with slippery seaweed and breaking waves where it’s hard to keep the surging Zodiac in place as everyone steps out in boot-top deep water, getting their boots soaking wet, then finally shuttling all of the gear ashore before a long walk on slippery boulders to reach an overhanging snow shelf that collapses and sends you back into the wet rocks. Good times. In general, Greenland has plenty of good landing sites, although low tides can often leave you stranded far from a shallow beach requiring a piggy-back ride from Nick to get ashore with dry feet. (Dragging screaming humans to and from shore is another key indicator of Viking DNA…)
On a few occasions, we found docks at small villages scattered throughout the fjords. Greenland has a unique system where land is allocated by the municipalities, but you can’t own the land on which you build a home. Over time little clusters of brightly colored cabins have taken root in places that used to be fishing outposts or just scenic bays. By tradition, the houses are color coded according to their function and inhabitants; red is for churches and commercial, yellow indicates medical, green is mechanical and blue is fishing related. Most of the cabins were empty in late April, but appeared to be well used in the summer months.
Like much of the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic, Greenland is predominately inhabited by indigenous Inuit people. They are generally quiet, resourceful, self-reliant and no nonsense. Snow is their natural state of water and winter isn’t so much cold to them as summers seem hot. They’ve survived for centuries with almost no structural building materials and have gone on to invent kayaks for the water and dog sleds for the snow with no mechanical fasteners. They’re comfortable with long periods of silence and are curious, but not necessarily impressed with your latest survival epic in their backyard. It’s what they do on daily basis. While Southerners (anyone from below the 60thparallel) obsess over guns and flash-bang perimeter fences for Polar Bear protection, the Inuit have lived with Polar Bears for centuries using nothing more than sharp sticks for self-defense. On a trip to Baffin Island in 2002, our Inuit guide said, “Polar Bears can sneak up on a seal in daylight. They’ll eat you if they want to.” As nomadic people, they are incredibly good hunters and fishermen, a trait that has accelerated with the advent of snowmobiles and rifles. In another discussion with our Baffin Inuit guide, we were nervously discussing a pick-up time and place for three weeks later somewhere in the vast Artic expanse, when he cut us short. “Don’t worry. I’ll find you.” Which he easily did by following our old, faint ski tracks over wind swept ice. Although ski trips are inspired by peaks and powder, the lasting memories are of the amazing people like the Inuit that you meet along the way.
Ski mountaineering in Greenland requires channeling your inner Thor. All runs start at sea level and there’s often walking over slippery rocks, skinning over mossy hummocks or kick-turning up ice choked gullies just to reach consistent snow. From there, it could be anything from blue ice to thigh deep powder with an occasional crevasse or avalanche thrown in for added flavoring. The weather can change from nice to nasty in a matter of hours, seas can get choppy, blisters can form and legs can get tired after days of skiing. It’s not quite as hard as rowing an open vessel across frigid seas to engage in Viking swordplay with strangers, but almost as exciting.
Resources:
Ice Axe Expeditions – Sail to ski trips aboard SkyDancer. www.iceaxe.tv
SkyDancer Sailing – www.skydancer.no
Two Ravens – Local guiding company based out of Nuuk. https://tworavens.gl
Nuuk Water Taxi – With a range of up to 8 hours. Drop you ashore for a week? https://watertaxi.gl
