The arrival into Thule was lovely – flying in over the sea, with the sun low, and catching the edges of icebergs so they glowed orange while the sea ice around them stayed white. The sea was still frozen in the bay, creating interesting patterns with plenty of icebergs and pressure ridges. A denser patch of icebergs announced a glacier nearby, and land soon came into view. We came in over snow-covered hills, and some of the landscape was marked by very distinctive flat tops. One of these was Dundas Fjeld (Uummannaq in Greenlandic) in the photo above.
On the base our living quarters are very comfortable, but it still pays to get a lift in a vehicle if we want to travel across the base – it’s pretty cold out there, especially when the wind blows. Around the base, it isn’t uncommon to see arctic foxes and hares. The foxes I have seen have been dark, and moved quickly, the hares on the other hand are white and fuzzy and pretty well camouflaged and seemingly unfazed by our presence, even following us around if we look interesting – watching us with big, black eyes. They have very long legs made for running, but I haven’t seen it happen.
Weather permitting we look forward to a full field season of measuring and assessing this northern reach of the cryosphere.