Mosquitoes, Greenland's royal air force, are relentless in their search for blood; clouds of them torment hikers between Sisimiut and Kangerlussuaq.

By Rudy Brueggemann

Written July 1998

It's raining again, the second day in a row. One can't complain about rain in Greenland's wilderness, just north of the Arctic Circle. Precipitation means cooler weather, thus fewer mosquitoes. Still, they swarm thick around my head and shoulders.

Ahead stretches the kilometer-wide marshy valley called Itinneq, or Ole's Lakseelvi. Here, water from the massive freshwater Lake Tasersuaq flows into the fjords, at Maliguaq, about 60 kilometers due east of Greenland's second-largest city, Sisimiut.

I'm on the fourth day of my trek between that coastal city and the old U.S. airbase, Kangerlussuaq, meaning long fjord in Greenlandic. Known during World War II as Bluie West 8, and later during the Cold War as Søndrestrom Air Base, the airstrip sits at the head of the world's third-longest fjord, the 185-kilometer-long Søndre Strømfjord. (See this map of Greenland's west coast, courtesy of the of the Greenland Tourism Office.)

In the broad marshy valley of Ole's Lakseelvi, hikers between Sisimiut and Kangerlussuaq must swim across a fast, swift river.

The airport's stable weather made it an ideal refueling stop for America's Europe-bound war planes during WWII. Today, Kangerlussuaq serves as the primary international air hub for expensive, commercial flights to and from Copenhagen and Iqaliut, Canada.

The popular Lonely Planet guidebook I'm using claims the Sisimiut-Kangerlussauq trek is "destined to become one of the great walks of the world." As usual, Lonely Planet authors use hyperbole to promote a wilderness experience to jet-traveling tourists.

I, however, have dubbed this walk the "slog in the bog." I've called it many impolite things, too, over the past few days. It's not ideal, nor great. It's very hard, and unforgiving. In other words, it's wilderness, which is why I've come here. Here I reconnect with those parts of me that modern living has nearly blotted into oblivion. Here, I appreciate the struggle just to get through a day.

And I have it easy.

I've brought sturdy leather boots, a high-tech gas stove, more than $2,000 in outdoor gear -- backpack, tent, synthetic sleeping bag, and clothes -- plus food and medical supplies. The Inuits who have lived in Greenland for 4,000 years had no such luxuries, yet they flourished with tools and clothes earned from the land. In the word's of Greenland's famous first son, explorer/writer Knud Rasmussen, the Greenlanders' "simple and ingenious ways of hunting have made their harsh and barren country one of those oases in the world where they live genuinely happy people."

This Greenland family lives on the fjord south of Sisimiut near the town of Sarfanguit and meets many Western trekkers walking by.

Only now can I begin to appreciate their resilience and brilliance.

During the past three days in this treeless terrain, I've squashed forward, over bogs that sink four inches or more with each step. My feet have been drenched two days straight. I have to wring out my soaking socks every two hours, just for peace of mind. Stopping more often would mean more mosquito bites.

So far, I've experienced fog, blistering sun with clouds of cursed blood suckers, snow -- yes, a hard snowstorm! -- and rain. I preferred the cold fog the most. The landscape took on an ethereal, primal quality. When clear, I found myself surrounded by majestic mountain scenery and clear lakes.

The ground in this broad valley is not suited for walking, but I have to cross here to begin my ascent to a high lake-filled plateau, and then down to the Canoe Center at the head of another massive lake called Amitsorsuaq.

Hiking in Greenland is wet business, where your boots will sink several inches with each step.

In the winter, in March, the famous Arctic Circle ski race passes over these frozen lakes and this frozen valley. The cross-country ski contest follows my path, from Kangerlussuaq to Sisimiut. Sledge dogs and snowmobiles also use this route nine months of the year. And all of us passing this route follow the red-painted 200 stone cairns that have been erected the entire 180-kilometer distance.

Burdened by my wet 50-pound pack, I'm thinking that I'd rather be on a sledge now, with a noisy pack of strong Greenlandic dogs pulling me.

Today's challenge is crossing this river. Because it's mid-June, the water from Tasersuaq runs deep and fast. The Sisimiut Tourism office said I'd have to fjord it with water up to my shoulders. But when I reach the riverbank, I see a torrent far deeper than my head. With Sisimiut three hard days behind me, I don't want to turn back. And I have a reservation on the KNI ferry systems "Sarpik Ittuk" boat, which is sailing down Søndre Strømfjord. There will be no backtracking.

I pull out my Therm A Rest mattress and inflate it. Then I stuff my huge backpack in a large garbage bag I've brought for this situation. Still wearing thermal long underwear, I step into the river until the water hits my knees. Then, I start swimming.

The pack weighs the mattress down, but it floats. The current is stronger than I expected. It pulls me fast downstream. With my free arm and legs, I paddle. My left arm pulls the mattress. Halfway on this 20-foot crossing, I think how easy it would be to get sucked downstream, or drown or see my pack sink. Frantically kicking and paddling, I finally reach the opposite bank, grasping some willow branches by the river's edge.

I pull myself up, heavy in my soaked polypropylene. I scream out, "Yes!" Though the mossies attack, I ignore them in my dripping glory. The worst is behind me, though not all the hard times.

After a quick lunch, I march up the valley, where the long hill climb begins. I follow the trusty cairns, as there is no trail to guide me. In three hours, I reach the newest hunters hut on this trail, a single-room shed with a fully supplied gas furnace and sleeping space for six. It's only 2:30 p.m., but I decide to stop to dry out my things and relax. Everything that isn't wrapped in plastic bags is soaking now.

Just outside of Sisimiut sits the first of five huts (lower left) open to trekkers, hunters, snowmobilers, and participants of the 180-km.-long Arctic Circle Ski Race.

In about an hour, all of my gear is strewn throughout the hut. I cook rice and beans and achieve trekking bliss with hot food in my body. The arctic light is playing games with the spectacular scenery outside. Lakes to the east sparkle like gray-blue gemstones. The whole landscape shimmers in a kodacolor glow that one can only find at these extreme latitudes close to the poles. I'm straddling 67 degrees north now. It's June 20, and it will stay light 24 hours a day.

I go to sleep at 6 p.m., planning to wake at 2 a.m. to hike at night and avoid mosquitoes. Hikers on this trek use this technique to moderate success.

At midnight I'm awakened by noise outside. I look and see three hikers in the distance, the first backcountry travelers I've seen on my trip. I'm the first person this summer to hike towards Kangerlussuaq, according to Sisimiut police office, with whom I'm required to register; and these three are the first heading the opposite direction.

When one meets another person in Greenland's wilds, one stops to talk. Greenlanders do this still, instinctively. Here, one's life can depend on information or help from a fellow traveler. I scream to them about the river, and they scream back in English before running over to learn about the crossing.

John, Rich, and Peter are young wilderness lovers from New England. They said they wanted to experience uncrowded wilderness. Greenland fit the bill.

With 59,000 residents on a landmass covering 2.17 million square kilometers, the arctic island remains one of the world's least-inhabited places. Most residents of the "land of the people," or Kalaallit Nunaat, as they call their home in their Inuit language, live in the west coast communities.

Large settlements are only possible on the coast, as the bulk the island lies beneath a vast ice sheet as thick as 3,000 meters in some places -- so heavy, the interior has sunk into an immense-concave shaped bowl that actually dips 360 meters below the sea level at spots.

John, Rich, and Pete have a Therm A Rest, but no big bag, so I give them mine to help with the crossing. I wish them luck as they continued their midnight walk.

The next two days of my hike remain a painful blur. I still can't believe I reached the tip of Søndre Strømfjord in 48 hours, covering 80 long tundra kilometers. I only sleep six hours: three at the Canoe Center at the west end of Lake Amitsorsuaq, and three more at an old fishing camp about 18 kilometers from the end of the trail.

The Canoe Center, which the tourist officials for the Home Rule government oddly put in the middle of the wilderness, has no staff. Based on the logbook there, only 30 or so people have been here since summer 1997. About half the entries are written by participants in the Arctic Circle Race, from March 1998. The center is also a bit dirty, but big, with room for 14 beds.

I eat my early dinner and decide to sleep at 4 p.m. By now my body no longer works on regular sleeping and eating clocks. I sleep when I can and eat when I must. At 8 p.m. two Danish hikers, Denny and Peter, arrive. They are tired and covered with mosquito bites.

Lake Amitsorsuaq stretches nearly 20 miles long in the interior on the Sisimiut to Kangerlussuaq trek.

The pair tell me the reindeer track along the south shore of the 25-km.-long lake is easy. It will be the only halfway decent trail of this nearly 180-kilometer walk. Though I see many hoof prints, I see none of the estimated 30,000 reindeer who live in this open land. I do see antlers aplenty and skulls and a large number of reindeer bones.

The bleached-white bones testify to the unforgiving, harsh land. The Greenlanders never settled this interior region, preferring the coastline for their settlements, where fresh seal meat was abundant. But, for hundreds of years, Greenlanders set up seasonal fishing camps on the large lakes, using dams on rivers to capture char, a tasty migratory trout.

There's not much other game, but birds aplenty. One sees white-plumed birds called snow bunting, as well the Lapland bunting and common and hoary redpolls, which sit on rocks, nervously watching you pass. In the air and water, one also sees the noisy white-fronted geese, who scare easily and take to seemingly mad circular flights above unwanted intruders, squawking constantly. I also spotted two alpine hare with brilliant white coats, but I only heard the yelps of the blue and white arctic fox.

At 10:30 p.m., I bid farewell to the two Danes and hike into the daylight of the longest day of the year. Not accidentally, the island's national holiday falls on June 21, and I'm far from the festivities tonight.

At midnight, I see the light of the sun in the east and light in the west. It's cool outside, so I blessedly see and feel no mossies. By 4 a.m., I reach the last official cabin on my walk, located on the far east side of Lake Amitsorsuaq. It's the dirtiest of four huts I've seen. I push on another two hours and pitch my tent on a swampy plateau that used to serve as another Greenlandic fishing camp.

By now I've completely lost all of my natural body rhythms for eating and sleeping. I'm exhausted but wide awake, full yet hungry. There's only another 16 kilometers to the trailhead on Søndre Strømfjord, and I can't sit out the next 12 midday hours in my tent hiding from mosquitoes.

After a three-hour nap in my tent, I pack and hit the trail in the midday sun. The midday sun literally fuels the land, awaking millions and millions of mosquitoes from their water-borne larvae.

It's another tough, hot day on the trail-less route, but the well-detailed topographic maps point the way through a landscape of rocks, lakes, and open tundra. By now, the mountainous landscape has flattened, slightly, but that doesn't make the soft ground any easier to march on.

Finally, at 5 p.m., I see the last mountain, Mt. Evans, where the dirt road to Kangerlussuaq begins. It's the hardest half hour of my entire trek.

The sun beats down like a hammer, and the mosquitoes are so thick, I inhale them. Tormented, I scream aloud about the attacks and the deceptive landscape, which constantly tricks your eyes into thinking points on the horizon are closer then they really are.

At the end of the Sisimiut-Kangerlussuaq trek sits Kellyville, an atmospheric research base for Danish and American scientists.

When I reach the blessed hard surface of the dirt road, a wind blissfully picks up. Two kilometers down the road sits Kellyville, a permanent scientific community. Here Danish and American scientists, sponsored by the Danish Meteorological Institute and the National Science Foundation, run the Sondrestrom Incoherent Scatter Radar Center, studying the ionosphere and ozone layer. It might pass for a U.S. trailer-park community, were it not for its massive radar dish.

After clicking a photo, a Greenlander driving a four-wheel drive Toyota pickup pulls over and offers me a lift for the remaining 20 kilometers to the international airport and its adjoining community. I happily hop in the truck bed.

Dressed in my filthy long underwear and muddy boots, I wander inside the modern airport/hotel complex that is Kangerlussuaq's main employer. Dozens of reserved Europeans sit, waiting for their 11 p.m. flight to Copenhagen. I feel so out of place now, in their clean company. They eye me suspiciously (no doubt they smell me, too).

Kangerlussuaq airport, once a busy U.S. military air base, now is the main hub for tourists coming to Greenland.

I walk past them, straight to the cafeteria for my obligatory victory beer, an expensive and imported Danish Carlsberg. Four hours later I'm showered on one of Greenland's three wonderful west coast ferries, the "Sarpik Ittuk." For the next 12 hours, we cruise Søndre Strømfjord, one of the finest waterways open to powerboats anywhere in the world. At midday, I'm back in Sisimiut, civilization, where I began my wilderness odyssey a week ago.

During the following week I spend there, my exhausted body recovers. The imaginary black specks that once clouded my weary mind fade as I sleep. By the time I leave, my mind's eye can only conjure the clear lakes and rivers that shimmer under the never-ending summer light of the arctic north.

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