I loosen my belt, and lean across the aircraft to look down on the sea ice below. Cold air hisses through the leaking seals in the rear hatch just behind me, but we're in our arctic garb--heavy bibs, thick flannel shirts, absurdly bulky boots--and the temperature feels fine. For hours, we've kept a strange, silent company, we four crew and two pilots in this Twin Otter. We couldn't talk if we wanted: our ears are plugged against the heavy drone of the props. But beyond the the noise there hangs a deeper silence. It's something in the significance of our deployment and the commitment it entails, the foreboding landscape, maybe the the penetrating vibration of the aircraft, that lulls each into their own reflexive mind.
Our eyes are cast down on the unsympathetic terrain below. Endless fields of sea ice, a million broken fragments strung along the distant coastline. Frozen high plateaus, delicately lit but scarcely warmed by the weak first rays of the returning spring sun. Slender pinnacles and aretes, dropping untold distances in a landscape absent any human scale. Ribbons of deeply crevassed glacial ice, forming pitted barriers almost unthinkable to cross on foot.
We're returning to Summit Station, and somewhere among the frozen fjords of this wild East Greenland landscape is a small fuel depot. We've threaded our way inland from the Denmark Strait, following the frozen fjords, and will be landing soon. Bracing against the cold auxiliary fuel tank that occupies much of the plane interior, I crane upward, looking through the cockpit windshield. Down the length of the fjord, a few dark structures, then the unmistakable seam of a runway, appear against the pale landscape.
Nerlerit Inaat. Constable Point. A lineup of quonset-hut hangers, utility vehicles, and a strip of modular housing up on blocks. And fuel tanks--from this last coastal outpost, we're still hours from the summit of the ice sheet, and the big fuel tank I'm leaning against will need to be refilled. We land, don our gear, and file out the rear hatch. In a rare glimmer of experience, I move our bags from the plane floor onto the seats before climbing out, saving them from the fuel that will be doubtless spilled in a couple minutes.
We step out onto the apron, and away from the planes. A second Twin Otter, carrying the rest of our crew, has been flying a few minutes ahead of us, and is on the ground too, already being refueled. Within a few minutes, they're again airborne and Summit-bound.
On this, my second trip through Constable Point, I explore a bit more, wandering behind the main building to find their weather stations, antenna towers, and a long view down the fjord. On my previous trip, I'd stuck to the heels of mechanic Paul, trailing him into the basic waiting room with magazines, a map of Greenland, and a hallway to the chemical toilet. This way station meets our needs, nothing more or less, and in its isolated, pragmatic character, fits the tone for our wintertime trip into the ice sheet.
We soon see a wave from the pilots, and file back into the plane, avoiding the new fuel spills. The windsock is limp, and we take off back in the direction of the open water, then trace a broad arc over Constable Point and towards the summit of the ice sheet. For nearly an hour, we fly over a raw, unfinished landscape of glaciers and mountain peaks. In this brutal arena of rock and ice, each element brings immense forces to bear on the other. A tremendous ice stream grinds seaward on a bed of rock, constrained by a steep-walled valley of its own creation. On the ice surface, dark seams of stone and dirt trace slow currents in the inexorable flow. The skyward reach of slender rock spires is echoed by the upthrust ice seracs, as if both seek to escape the conflict below.
Rock surrenders to ice. Moving inland, the glacial streams merge, their common source the vast flowing plateau of the ice sheet. A few lone nunatuks break the surface, anchored against the tide, splitting the fluid ice like the prow of a boat. Below, hidden mountainsides are agonized by erosion, and their presence only disclosed by the shattered geometry of crevasse fields above. Then these last signs of rock and flow are gone, and only the wind-blown textures of the ice sheet remain. The unbroken ice sheet extends to all directions, for many hundreds of miles, and still we travel on, the ice surface beneath us rising to over ten thousand feet.
Our destination--safety, fuel, food--is a mote caught in the endless ice. To find such a small station in this expanse: a feat of navigation, only a hundred years past! But today such accomplishment is routine, and the co-pilot turns, and casually flashes his hand to show five minutes remaining. We get suited. Peering again through the cockpit window, I see the dome of the Big House. Below us, the approaching surface, with the fresh track of a snow machine marking the runway centerline and offering visual scale to the pilots. Then we're down among the sastrugi and spindrift, the newest residents of Summit Station.
