#2: [04-Jul-13]

16-Jul-2006 -- Still, Greenland turned out to be a “white place” with respect to the number of visited confluence points (CPs). While hiking in West Greenland from the polar circle up to the Disko bay, we made an attempt to contribute some (11) CP dots to this picture. Among them, N67/W53 was considered to be a nice challenge, namely the rare case of a CP near to the top of a summit.

The starting point of our hiking tour was Kangerlussuaq, West Greenland’s international airport, located closely to N67 and thus to the polar circle. The destination was the west-coast town Sisimiut/Holsteinborg, 160-180 km away. We followed the so-called “polar route” or “arctic circle trail”, thereby touching three CPs on N67, namely W51, W52, and W53. Then, on board of a ship to Aasiaat/Egedesminde we came very close to N67/W54 and got a glimpse of N68/W54. On board of another ship heading for Qeqertarsuaq/Godhab the CP N69/W53 was approached. Later on the same vessel brought us to the neighbourhood of N70/W51 and close to N70/W52, from where we could even look and see (!) CP N70/W53. The last hiking trip allowed us to visit “en passant” N69/W51. While flying home we got another view of our first CP, i. e. N67/W51, as well as the great panorama of N67/W50, located on the ice cap.

The easiest possibility to visit the CP N67/W53 is within a five day hiking from and back to Sisimiut/Holsteinborg, although we arrived from the opposite direction by following the “polar route” as noticed in the 1: 100 000 hiking map “Sisimiut”. Hiking without a tent is possible due to huts, well distributed along the route. One hut is at N67, 0.208’/W52, 57.609’. On a Sunday afternoon (2.00 p. m.), July 16th, we started from that hut for climbing the 835 m summit. After crossing a nearby river, we followed the valley to south east (SE) and, near to the first brook running from a small lake half the way to the top, we had a steep ascent to south west (SW) - c. f. Pictures 8, 9. Another steep ascent to NW followed when the lake was reached, leading us to 800 m altitude and the desired CP (arrival at 4.00 p. m.). Two other visitors, namely a ren and a snow hare did, unfortunately, not pose for a CP picture.

We had an overwhelming view from the summit (c. f. Picture 7, view NNW from the nearby summit), but the CP itself was found a few hundred meters away embedded between walls of stone, except for view E (Picture 1, the hiking stick marks the CP).

The shortest and less steep ascent to the CP, especially when arriving from Sisimiut/Holsteinborg, could be from the SW direction. Picture 10 was made two days later from the saddle point (9 km to the CP) along the route between the two fjords Kangerluarsuk Tulleq and Amerloq, respectively.