Posts by: hogan

Upernavik, End of the Line

I was nervous about Upernavik. It’s extremely far north, though it’s amazing how much more of Greenland lies beyond it. Upernavik is also very small––it’s an island with a circumference of just a few miles––and planes fly in and out only sporadically. I landed on a Saturday, and there was no option to leave before […]

Uummannaq

North of Disko Bay is where you really break free of the travelers––not to mention amenities like restaurants and places to sleep (to be fair, there is one of each in Uummannaq, though I’d soon be doing without either). The town is still a ferry terminal, however, so for the few hours that the boat […]

Qeqertarsuaq

It can’t be more than thirty miles from Ilulissat, but tiny Qeqertarsuaq––the only active settlement on Disko Island––is worlds apart in every way. For one thing, the island is relatively new (in geological terms), so the bizarre basalt cliffs and thick, verdant vegetation are markedly different from anything to the west. But the town itself […]

Ilulissat

“This is it,” raves the Lonely Planet. “This is why you came to Greenland and spent all that money. Ilulissat is one of those places so spectacular that it just makes everything else pale in comparison.” Well, call me contrarian, but there are a half-dozen towns and settlements I’ll look back on more fondly. Home […]

Aasiaat

Aasiaat, an island on the southern edge of Disko Bay, means “the spiders” in Greenlandic. The town was taken enough with its name that it developed a coat-of-arms featuring a very graphically appealing spider’s web. Recognizing its appeal, all of the rest of the municipalities in Western Greenland quickly followed suit with their own, equally […]

Kangerlussuaq

After nine days on the trail, Emily and I wasted no time seeking out what the former US airforce base Kangerlussuaq had to offer in terms of R&R. It turns out not much: the artificial “town” exists solely for its runway––because of the facilities the military left behind after the Cold War, it’s now the […]

Arctic Circle Trail, Part II

Day 4 to N67º03 x W52º38 We got rained on only once, but it was a killer––ten hours of downpour, observed restlessly from the tent, before deciding we couldn’t bear to wait it out. We spent a while strategizing how to cook breakfast and break down our camp most dryly and efficiently, but of course […]

Arctic Circle Trail, Part I

The 100-mile trek between Sisimiut and Kangerlussuaq is variously described as a “backpacking classic” and “one of the great walks of the world.” I’m a sucker for just that sort of thing, and decided early that the hike would be central to my proposal. In the past, I’ve found that after three or four days […]

Sisimiut

While planning my trip, I mostly thought of Sisimiut as the staging area for my backpacking trek, but as I should have anticipated the place has a great deal more to offer than that. At 6,000 residents, it’s Greenland’s second largest town. And due in part to the fact that its waters are home to unusual […]

Maniitsoq

The Arctic Umiaq Line (AUL) is Greenland’s only long-distance passenger ferry, so I was expecting something a bit bigger––leaving the harbor of the capital city, mind––than the Marie Martek. Alas, the Marie was what I got––smaller than a fishing boat, with seating for twelve, though the only other passenger between Nuuk and Maniitsoq was a homesick […]