We skied through about fifteen days in one today: the weather kept changing on us, the wind spinning around and poking us from different directions, roaring at us one moment and then vanishing completely the next, as if the grey clouds blew from mouths that kept clamping closed to tightly pursed lips and then opening up to yawn lazily at us.

The temperature veered up and down and the visibility went from from thirty-odd miles (all the way back to the icecap itself, shimmering in the far distance) to a few feet in front of us as we stumbled through fog and spindrift. When the mist parted, the vast face of the mountain range to our right (leading up to Gunnbjornsfjeld or Hvitserk, Greenland's highest peak) was one of the most stunning sights I've ever seen, striated black and white with a vivid blue icefall paused in mid-collapse high on its flank.

Tarka was leading and I half wish I'd stopped him to give us time to try to photograph it, but I'm not sure any lens or chip or screen could ever have come close to capturing and conveying the experience of that brief moment. I turned back to face our direction of travel, one hundred and fifty seven degrees, and followed Tarka's tram-line tracks toward the faintly glowing horizon.