Walk On The Wild Side

Away from the polar bears and ice cap is a little-known hiking trail that traces the line of the Arctic Circle. Intrigued, we packed our sense of adventure and headed north…

- Phoebe Smith

There are some places in the world that seem to have truly earned their name. Consider the Valley of the Rocks in southern England, a place defined by its castle-like stone structures; or the Land of the DawnLit Mountains (a literal translation of India’s Arunachal Pradesh), a state famed for its iconic undulations, which do indeed catch the morning light in spectacular fashion. But when it comes to Greenland, I’ve always felt its name was something of a misnomer. Renowned for its icebergs and huge ice sheet (the second-largest of its kind outside of Antarctica), not to mention polar bears and epic expeditions across its frozen interior – surely Whiteland would have been more apt?

So, when I heard that this country, a land defined by a frosty tundra I had only ever spied through the porthole of an aircraft en route to North America, was home to a hike called the Arctic Circle Trail, and that it required neither crampons nor the ability to perform a crevasse rescue, I was intrigued. And so it was that I found myself stood on the aforementioned ice sheet, 20km from the town of Kangerlussuaq airport and with solid fields of white stretching out to the horizon.

Faced with classic Arctic terrain, I was yet to be convinced I was in the right place for a summer stroll. Known as Point 66, this is the only place you can access the great ice sheet by road, albeit by using an all-terrain vehicle. Without requiring even ice grippers, a small group of us explored these frozen hillocks for a few hours until, with the light fading, the cold got the better of us and we headed back to town, passing the woolly shapes of be-horned musk-oxen as we went.