X’GREENLAND ICECAP WEST-EAST 2025

FOLLOW Andy, Christian, Jouke, Marsha, Martin , Rob & Caroline

BLIZZARS WIZZARS ARE COUNTING DOWN

Day 0, May 4th – Kangerlussuaq

Everybody trickled in to Kangerlusssuaq for the 1st May meeting date. The days have been well spent on going through the trip, getting to know each other, preparing food and equipment, go through safty and options, teamwork and targets - and getting the shoulders down 😊
Now it is just hours before they will drive to the edge of the ice. The place is called ‘Høyde 660’ (Hight 660) and is a landmark known and treasured to all Greenland Explorers.

From here they will get all their equipment onto and up to the ice and snow so that the camp is on snow and not on the stony moraine surface around the place the road stops.

Tomorrow they start the expedition proper!

We will aim to follow them closely as they plan to send us short summaries of the day, written by the team.

Stay tuned!

Day 1 / HIGHT 660 / N 67.163887° W 49.443970°

Happy to finally be on the skis and get some good kilometres done. We entered a complex zone of the glacier called the icefall. There was a small amount of snow on top of the ice so we were able to ski from the beginning to our campsite this evening. Some of us will have to adapt to the light in the night. The sun is shining bright and we need to wear our sunglasses inside the tent. We hope to do more kilometers tomorrow but we know that we will still be accessing the plateau so we need to work hard to deserve the view up there where it will be all flat!

Day 2 / LOWER ICEFALL / N 67.163898° W 49.443970°

Today was an excellent day! We woke up at 6h to be ready to continue our way trough the section called Icefall. In between small pounds, and little crevasses, beautiful hills, there is a lot to see. We felt sometimes because there was no visibility and we don’t see the depth of the snow in front of us. We push ourselves up to finish the day at a comfortable and good spot where it’s flat. It’s not easy to find flat ground here. Andy gave us candies for cinco de Mayo!

Day 3 / iNTO THE UPPER ICEFALL / N 67.163887° W 49.443970°

Another amazing day on the ice! Woke up with no wind but low visibility, that didn’t stop from having a good time.

We crossed a bigcrevasse field. Big day for everyone!! The whole team got the chance to take lead, some followed the compass and some wanted to make a snake on the snow. The day couldn’t have ended a better way than Dutch cookies sponsored by Jouke.

Day 4 / CLIMBING CLIMBING / N 67.161956° V 49.102771°

Today we discovered a hidden talent, we are experts at building toilets. It was a Windy day so we decided to set up a tent for lunch so we could all share a good time and rest a bit from the wind. Andy the Mexican, was excited to try tacos Real Turmat style unfortunately she spilled her bag so tacos will have to wait until taco Friday!

All done for today! Lets keep rolling

Day 5 / N 67.105662° V 48.680162° / POLAR BEAR!?!?!?

Nope. Still looking for one…Can’t be a bad day if the sun is out. Big things happened today: we took our last bend and now we go on a straight line. The team was so happy at the end of the last leg and decided to push a bit more to hit the 20km mark. Wooho!! Grab your hot water bottles and get cozy because temperatures are dropping below -20°

Day 6 / N 67.039690° W48.427885° / Rough day in the office.

The wind had no mercy and blew straight to our faces all day long. We learned a few things today:

* if you have a facemask make sure is not upside down so can breathe peacefully.

* Make sure you start putting your mittens on 5 minutes before the break is over.

* If you are pulling a sled, make sure it is right behind you. Not on your right not on your left.

* If you have a spoon make sure you remember where you put it.

As wise woman said “It’s all about the details” so we keep learning every day

Day 7 / tennt bound /

We couldn’t get out of the tents today, the wind is really strong. Great decision from our guide Caroline to have a rest day.

We spent the day repairing gear, hydrating relaxing and hoping the weather will get better soon

N 67°2'23.129'' W 48°25'40.191'' = N 67.039744° V 48.427606°

Day 8 / N 66.936253° V 48.056924°

We woke up hoping Caroline would show up and call another rest day because the wind was still blowing hard. Fortunately she didn’t show up and we had one of the best days so far. The team is slowly getting into rhythm of the expedition. Breaks are now more efficient and the pace getting faster.

Day 9 / N 66.859295° V 47.664485°

First time the team is ready by 9:00am, that makes Caroline very happy and proud. It was a speedy day, since we finally swap long skins to short. The snow conditions were flawless and we decided to ski until we hit 20k.

Every 4 days we have new tentmates to make sure we don’t kill each other by the end of the trip. Time to make new friends

Day 10 / N 66.791886° V 47.393174°

Whatever problem we have, Caro’s solution is - put it in your sleeping bag. Frozen glove? Sleeping bag. Frozen bottle? Sleeping bag. Skin coming off your ski? That’s where we got scared, do we now have to sleep with the ski? But no, - the skin in the sleeping bag. Lucky us!

The day started with poor visibility, but perfect snow. Finally, we could ski properly! ….For two legs. The temperature has gone from -21°C to -2°C today. Things got very tough once the snow warmed up. It suddenly felt as if our sledge turned into concrete, and snow piled up underneath our skis - to the point that it was as if we were walking on 8cm wedges. Icing on the cake…

But while we struggle on our snow heels, the real fun was navigating when you cannot tell where the snow stops and the sky starts. Everything was white, so you either stare at the compass full time, or have someone behind you yell LEFT, RIGHT, LEEEEEFT, to avoid we turn this into a 1’000km trip instead.

The highlight of the day was when we spotted something on the ice. Definitely people! Another party crossing the ice? Or maybe navy seals..?

… birds.

We’re back in camp with a wind that may blow our gloves back to Kangerlussuaq, so for now, we will try to keep our toothpaste out of our face and recover from this tough day!

(Marsha, guest blogger of the day)

Day 11 / N 66.709220° V 47.113109°

Today we had a fashion show. Everyone put on their snow Louis Vuitton 👠. Who said skiing with high heels is not fun? The sticky snow piled up under our skis and made it really tough to ski after lunch. With this warm weather we don’t know if we are in Greenland or all inclusive resort in Mexico, don’t be fooled the wind is blowing really really hard.
But, the team is really optimistic because the weather will improve a week from now. 🤪

DYE II / N 66.494966° V 46.324561°

Message that ticked in Sunday morning 08:00: Yes we arrived at DYE with the best possible snow and weather. We celebrated 17 th of May !

Homebase comment: It has been sone eventfull days with big wind gusts hitting almost 40ms (hurcane force). They have been playing cat and mouse with the winds and used the periods with better conditions. Last night Carolines commet was: All good, really big blasts! Tents are in good shape and everyone ok :) Now calming down. We will do night shift today.

Day 12 / 13 / 14 / catch up from the ice / DAY II

Sorry friends, we didn’t have time to write the blog, we had intense days in the office. We were busy building wall to protect ourselves and survive the big storm. Everything went well!! The tents resisted the big winds for 27 hours. 27-37m/s We couldn’t move for 41 hours. Yesterday at 7pm we took our chance and put our skis on for the longest day so far! Good effort from the team (we had extra motivation to make it to DYE II, a radar station in the middle of nowhere )

Exciting day today as we get to go in and hopefully don’t see any ghosts.

Yesterday we celebrated Norway’s national day as Martin sang the national anthem during the sunset. We couldn’t have celebrated a better than drinking aquavit! CHEERS!!!

Day 15 / out of DYE / 66.4807222°, -46.1440278°

Today was a special as we finally reached DYE II, an abandoned radar station. We toured around and found some cool stuff along the way. The whole team really enjoyed the visit and we got to sign our names on the bar.
Late in the day we took to the skies and did a short day. Now the bearing is set on Summit, the highest point on the route a small week away.

Day 16 / N 66.444991°, W 45.630298°

With 2 days in the tent since the beginning of the expedition, we now have to get the kilometers back on the track. Today was perfect to complete a huge 24k distance. We had to do a small rescue mission of the binding of Rob’s ski that just decided to detach from it. Also, big news; we changed our socks and underwear because it’s now the middle of the expedition;) so we feel all new and (clean) again! We want to reach the highest point of our route this week so now we need to go to sleep to get up early tomorrow!

Day 17 / N 66.459292° V 45.087783°

And today finally everything clicked. It took us 17 days to step up our game! The team is looking strong and with high spirits. 11m/s wind for us at this point is like no wind at all. We had a blast skiing for 9 legs and breaking our personal record of 25k.

Homebase comment: After a series of sunny days (they really deserved that), they are now nearing the highest point on the crossing. With this we usually get a change in weather as we move from the western weather system over to the eastern. 

The norm is that the relentless southeast headwind will gradually change to northwest and later to north.

This is due to the catabatic systems of winds following the terrain and cold inland ice air being sucked out to wards the ocean where warm air rises and creates a vacume that the cold air fills.

Mostly, there are calm winds. But the catabatic system can, in some extreme situations, create sudden and violent storms. These are most common on the East Coast, where the Danish Strait is a moody weather-beast. These sudden storms are called Pitareaq. They can be super local and hit 50 to 80 m/s (180–288 km/h; 111–178 mph).

The Piteraq season is from winter and tails of during first part of May (normally).

On February 6, 1970, at about 6:00 PM, the community of Tasiilaq was hit by the worst documented piteraq ever in Greenland (estimated at 90 m/s — about 325 km/h or 200 mph) (Stronger than a category five Atlantic hurricane), causing severe damage.

It seems our skiers will get most cloudy weather next week, but winds will mellow and turn around to north-north-east.

Day 19 / SUMMIT / N 66.444100° V 43.974087°

So much happened today. It was a shiny special morning where we all went and found Marsha in her tent to sing a happy birthday song to her in Dutch, Norsk, Spanish French and English all together. She received a cake with candles made of snow…

We shared happiness at each ski step going forward because we knew that we could reach the summit and we did just before 18h30 with 24,5k distance done. After, in the evening we gathered together under the tent for good stories and some rhum and Switzerland chocolates. Tomorrow, -13 and some wind in our back. Let’s hope we can continue nice distances!

Courage :)

day 20 / N 66.377506° V 43.395073°

White + white = white that’s the only math Caroline can do at this moment. Today we focused on precision, the conditions were tough everyone put on a good performance. The team had the option to stop after 8 legs but was too ambitious and decided to go for one more to finish the day with 27k. Now that the wind has gone down we can actually have proper conversations during breaks.

2/3 of the expedition done! Let’s keep going

Day 22 / N 66.285056° V 42.218914°

The finish line is so close but we need to keep focus and take it one day at a time. No time to think about the lives we left at home. We carry our homes in our sleds that makes us realize that we don’t need much to enjoy life. Here really appreciate the little things, for example Marteen getting 500grams of otameal or Caroline eating an extra Chocolate bar. We are losing elevation and the sleds are getting lighter, that means we are getting faster. The 5 day forecast allows us to feel safe after the first 15 days of the expedition. It’s nice to listen to the silence.

Day 23 / N 66.235296° V 41.648827°

Since we are getting close to the coast we decided to strip down to our base layer and get the beach feeling at least for one leg. Really warm day at the office. It feels like a summer camp since we made it out of the windy days. We took advantage of the sun, some people had snow bath, some ran around the tent with bare feet and we all enjoyed dinner around the picnic table.This evening was one of the greatest moments of the expedition.

Day 24 / N 66.189022° V 41.105626° / 50 shades of white

It’s easy to see that more we go through the days of the expedition, the more everyone is able to navigate better and better in whiteout conditions. We needed to practice first but now we can go all in a foggy and snowy environment and we thrive!

It’s all what the day was about. Getting a bit closer to the goal, the last part of the game, the last kilometers. 127k left already.

This morning we woke up celebrating Leif’s birthday of one years old son of Caroline that is waiting for her at home. Happy birthday little one.

Tomorrow let’s see how far we can go with the same weather as today, a total beautiful white scenery!

Day 25 / N 66.177553° V 40.990999°

First break day for the team. A well deserved stop before we go down. Time to rest and reset, drinking and eating before we start again tomorrow morning for the last and final leg: ~125k ! A lot of snow has fallen in the last hours, there is a feeling of Christmas around here. we are just missing the presents. We had time to rearrange our sleds and get rid of 3 kilos of ice. We ate ridiculous amounts of chocolate today…I guess we need the extra energy for the last push.

Day 26 / N 66.154175° V 40.558112°

We said to ourselves only 21k done, that is not a lot! But we had to go through so many different challenges during the day. One of them was the sticky snow that just started to melt with the sun under our skis from 13h to 18h. After all, we were thinking that not so many days ago at the beginning of the expedition we were dreaming to do 21k! So now before going to sleep, we think it’s not so bad. We do some short meetings in the breaks to see how we can improve our performance in this last part of the expedition.

Day 27 / N 66.086615° V 40.025854° / 100 to go

Rise and shine early birds. Alarms went off at 5:30 for chefs on the team, that means boiling water for 40 minutes before waking up your tentmates with breakfast in hand.

We found out this team doesn’t like early mornings. The plan was to start at 8:00am but isn’t manage to get moving until 8:20. The snow was marvelous and some of us really enjoyed finally the downhill. Sun is out no clouds in the sky so why not enjoy dinner outside?
Less than 100kms to go! We saw a seagull, the ocean is cold.

Day 28 / N 65.967697° V 39.460402° / first mountains

The expedition isn’t over until it’s finally over. Day 28, one of the roughest days so far! Non stop wind! Caroline told us to be stay close and be efficient, we took a few steps and the wind knocked over 2 sleds. It took a us 3 different tries to finally get it right and move on.
Later in the afternoon we had problems with our bindings, lots of ice in them. Some people thought they would get to sleep with their skis on. But not eveowas bad today, it was super exciting to see the first mountains from the distance. 50k to the coast! Wooho!!

Day 29 / N 65.815401° V 38.930461° / heading out

Today was a fast one!! We lost more than 500mts of elevation, it felt like we were downhill skiing in Switzerland. It took us some time to get a hang of holding the sled while going down. Found the coolest camp spot for the last night in the tent. The view from the mountains is just unbelievable. 24.3kms until we are done! Wow what a journey!! Tonight we’ll do bear watch for the 1st time. 1 hour each from 11pm-7:00am

So close to the finish line

down & out! / N 65.610352° V 38.856261°

WE MADE IT 🥳 the day started early with the bear watch. Everyone had to find some courage to get out of the sleeping bag and walk outside with crazy winds and stay there for an hour. The start was rough, really icy conditions.
We put our Batman capes and went down so fast sitting in our sleds, then we put on our long skins to slow us down. Boom out of sudden all white, the fog from the sea just hit us straight. From there it was all serious business no messing around or you might fall in a crevasse. Caroline showed her impressive navigation skills and lead us safely through the complicated terrain.
We stopped 5 minutes before arriving to the end point to take a moment as a team and acknowledged what we accomplished together. It wasn’t an easy ride but we everyone gave their best to make it possible.
Fingers crossed so we can fly out of here Tuesday evening.

Tasiilaq / east greenland / Last blog

It was when we saw the helicopter flying overhead that we understood it was over. This lifetime trip changed us in a way that we never thought possible. Landscapes for sure were stunning but what really makes this expedition unique is how much we collectively managed to collaborate together. This is a story of leadership and resilience in a cold environment where only the snow can feel at its place. Humans not welcomed to the ice sheet better be prepared to face this crossing challenge.

By skiing this rugged and icy land, you don’t have a choice other than being brave enough and go forward. And you just realize at the end that you could live simply that way, with only a tent, a sled, a sleeping bag and food for so long. Now my friends, the journey of our team the Blizzard Wizards is about to end, but our friendship through the time, will strive.

To join me and a team on our next polar chapter in Greenland, contact us.

Best regards to our friends and families that followed our adventure.

Caroline