Greenland – Aug 2019 – Day 6

Waking up in the morning, I was in a good mood – it was going to be the penultimate day on the trail. By the end of tomorrow I would finish in Sisimiut and hopefully get a warm shower. And drink a can of Coke. And have fried eggs for breakfast..

The trail went along a broad, quiet valley, hugging the stream, which later turned into a river – and it would do so for almost the whole day. It wasn’t a hard walk – a long, light descent on mostly dry paths.

I haven’t seen any arctic foxes, they must have been hunted out by this eagle

About noon I reached the next hut (NERUMAK) and met – of course – the polish guy. This time he just arrived.

We exchanged our emails and I moved on.

The stream turned into a river. The river turned into a gorge

Another river on the way, this time of the year I just crossed it over stones on its bed – that wouldn’t have worked in the spring.

There were fish in one of the few pockets with deep water on that river

While crossing the river I was surprised to see quick, big, pink-bellied and rather fat, tasty-looking fish darting to and fro in one small pocket of deeper water on that lake. The fish didn’t seem to be able to escape; may be they were actually trapped in there. Based on quick Wikipedia search later on I determined this fish to be the ‘arctic char’.

I stopped on the shore by those arctic chars for lunch, wishing I would have gear to catch at least one char and check the char’s meat out. There was fishing gear in one of the huts! But of course nothing on me. Instead I ate two fish tins, SO YUMMY!!

Then I moved on and left the chars untouched.

The gorge opened up into a smoky water landscape

First burned earth – on the other side of the river. Smoke became very much noticeable, but it didn’t really bother me

I can only imagine how this place looks when show is melting

This jacket smells of smoke until this day. I didn’t mind: about 2 days into the trip my hygiene standarts relaxed dramatically (so to speak), so smoke wasn’t the worst

The river led to a big lake, the hill on the right is black with ash. The huts are over the hill beyond the lake

Sometimes the path went through real forests of these dwarfish trees. The hut on the top is closed

As I went up the hill beyond the lake, I discovered a few things:

The hut right on the top looks proper, but on closer inspection it was closed. Building materials and tools inside, it wasn’t ready yet
Another hut on the right beyond the hill is livable, but – according to travelers – firefighters occupied it for the time being – first week August 2019
The GPS mark for the second hut on the hill, a few hundred meters from the closed hut is wrong: there is nothing there (wherever I got that GPX track from, I don’t remember anymore)
The actual fires – several clearly visible smoke columns raising from the burned land – looked fairly harmless. It was more of a smoldering situation than an open fire

Beyond the hill on the other side. The hut to the right is closed. The hut on the shore was for firefighters (but otherwise available). The actual hut is about 3 km to the left on the heights

After about 40 minutes I reached the last hut before Sisimiut, having wasted some time to go down to the closed hut and find the way back.

Expecting the hut to be empty – after all, I left the polish guy behind – to my great surprise I found it occupied by three women. I don’t think I was very presentable at that time of the day (around 20:00), but they were kind enough to let me in and take the lower bunk.

I was quite glad because I was really, really tired and didn’t want to mess with the tent at all.