PolarQuest´s guides blogs on board Ocean Nova. Here you can read an excerpt from the expedition cruise to Northeast Greenland.
11th September - Harefjord, Rödepynt & Rödefjord
Early in the morning we strayed up the muskox path across a slope blanketed in dwarf birch and proceeded up a side moraine by the crevassed back of the glacier. The tortured ice showed sweeping patterns attesting to the fact that it is “bendable”.
hard, brittle, - yes. And at the same time plastic: folding was clearly shown, and at the terminus the ice bent back, almost in under itself! Structures like that are used as a model for rock folding. The sky was a dawn grey, but then the sun sneaked up above the ridge to the east and swept mild light across the grey-white ice. As if the sun had overheard Hadleigh the preceding evening:”At its best it is at sunrise”! Parts of the land were formed in Devonian time, at the position of present Namibia, where red sandstone was laid down under dry and hot conditions.
At Rödepynt we walked the river bed into a canyon system with sky-high, vertical red walls. The same red mineral was met again when we had a fine Zodiac cruise among ice giants at Röde ö. Basalt has intruded the sandstone and was seen as a narrow stripe – or ladder – through the red rock. The glaucous gull nested there!
And a grand final: a tasty and somewhat chilly Arctic barbecue on deck. Imagine – dining surrounded by icebergs!
