Icebergs Everywhere

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3rd travel day - although it feels already like several weeks, so much to see and to do.
Today I had the choice whether to stay another day in Greenland or continue to Canada. As I had no internet access in the Hotel in Nuuk, I had no idea what the weather would be elsewhere - in Nuuk it rained all night, clouds very low, certainly instrument flying weather.

Went to the airport, and the tower crew was very helpful - got weather for Froshiber Bay in Canada (now called Iqaluit), and that seems quite flyable, and the approach charts just in case. I even made the flight plan, but then checked the overview chart - to get to Iqaluit, I had to cross a front twice, and it looked like the front would be just about the same time at the airport as me - no fun. On the other side - in the North of Greenland the weather seemed fine, and the latest weather from Ilulissat was actually quite good (earlier they had reported low clouds). So another change of plans - go to Ilulissat, but first 100 l extra fuel into DDN as Ilulissat has no Avgas.

Leave at 12 UTC (10 hrs local time), climb through the clouds to 11000 ft altitude, and see only clouds from above for the first hour of flight. But then they get more broken, and finally disappear completely, nice sunshine, and below in the sea a most spectacular view of icebergs.

I got eventually down to 1500 ft to take some nice pictures of the sight. Very spectacular from air, but probably better even from boat - I'll try that later in the midnight cruise (we are here at 69 deg North - real midnight sun). By the way - Ilulissat means iceberg in Inuit. Good name for this place.

Its quite touristic here, so much so that the tower crew didn't think I would find a hotel room. But I was lucky - first try was successful, and I ended up in the excellent Arctic Hotel. And I have internet access again (although still quite expensive, but much better than in Nuuk).

In the meantime, I have uploaded many pictures to my Picasa site. You can find them under

picasaweb.google.com/mendeman.esa
and there in the folder
110706 Oshkosh trip

Now its time for dinner, and at 22:00 LT starts the midnight cruise to the Icebergs. Looking forward to it...

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Photos

the trip so far
..will grow further in the next days

iceberg creation
many icebergs in the water

DDN after 17 flying hours
a good machine

harbor with iceberg
fishing harbor with a small iceberg floating around

Comments

[Keith & Dru]

Picaso photos excellent
great photos on Picaso ,

[jana]

wowie
that looks super awesome! can't wait for the calendar of this trip, already loads of nice pictures for it :p nice to have a daily update waiting for me when i get home, call sometime when you're near a cheaper connection/in the US. xx