“From our vantage, we gazed across mountains cascading inland as far as the eye can see, surrounded by a carpet of glaciers that wind their way to the horizon. A mosaic of sea ice drifted in the deep blue-black water, and patches of ice and snow were plastered to the steep mountainsides and in the dark valley shadows.” — James Dziezynski, writing from a peak above Tasiilaq, Greenland in August 2011
Lunch stop in Kangerdvitsiaq Fjord, East Greenland. Image copyright Olaf Malver.
James Dziezynski is a hard-core adventurer and freelance writer from Boulder, Colorado, who had the good fortune to travel to Greenland with Olaf Malver, CEO (that’s Chief Exploratory Officer, of course) of Natural Habitat Expeditions, on a kayaking expedition last summer.
While Dziezynski had been to Greenland previously, this outing marked his first visit to the remote, difficult-to-access east coast. In a story for The Adventure Post, he describes this realm as a place where “fractured fjords and inlets, which can extend hundreds of miles inland, offer no great trade route. Enormous, jagged peaks rise upward of 4,000 feet from the sea, and the unpredictable waterways can be clear one moment, and choked with enormous icebergs and flotillas of sea ice the next.”
Stuck in the brash ice in Nansen Fjord, East Greenland. Image copyright: Olaf Malver
It’s no wonder East Greenland, so difficult to navigate, has remained off the well-sailed path. Yet it is a land of exceptional beauty and a small number of supremely hospitable, resilient people.
Read Dziezynski’s gorgeous first-hand account of his journey with Malver and their small group of Natural Habitat Expeditions paddling companions — the only way to experience East Greenland more vividly is to get there yourself!
You can, of course, on one of Natural Habitat Adventures’ expeditions to this exceptional wilderness adventure destination:
Base Camp Greenland
Spitsbergen, Iceland & the European Arctic
Greenland & the Canadian Arctic
Midnight on Greenland’s Forbidden Coast. Image copyright: Olaf Malver.
Mountain Air, at his website, Mountainous Words. He is also the author of the best-selling guidebook “Best Summit Hikes in Colorado.”
