The day dawned with a broken cloud base around 4,000 ft with a generally good weather forecast for Greenland. The group had planned to go to the little airfield of Ilulissat some 150 nm north of Sondre Stroemfjord (Kangerlussaq) but as the TAF for that airfield gave a 40% probability of fog at the time of our arrival (and we were the last to depart), we decided to go to Sondre Stroemfjord instead together with the German crew. This turned out to be a good decision as the fog did indeed come down just about the time that our ETA would have been at Ilulissat and a photograph appeared on the group blog showing the Beech Kingair shrouded in fog. Sondre Stroemfjord was clear and we briefly met our German friends there before we both left for Iqaluit. As we climbed towards the coast on departure, we could see the sea fog lingering over the west coast of Greenland.
The best bit of the flight was approaching and departing Greenland when we could see lots of icebergs floating about and several glaciers calving along the coastline. Flying over the ice cap was not so interesting; just much whiteness and we could easily understand how a number of pilots over the years have suffered ‘whiteout’ and come to grief on the icecap.
As we approached Canada, the sea fog cleared to the desolate landscape of Baffin Island – rocky lichen interspersed with numerous lakes. We landed at Iqaluit in sunny, warm conditions with a moderate breeze, which kept the mozzies well away, shortly behind the German crew. The rest of group arrived later having spent some time at Ilulissat out in a boat whale watching. We all met up for dinner later in the hotel and recounted our various adventures of the day.
Iqaluit was an interesting small town; we climbed a hill for a good view of the surrounding area and then wandered among melting icebergs on the beach. We found the public library which had an interesting sections tracing the history of the local people and describing the influence of the Hudson Bay Company in setting up trading posts in this far north region. All the buildings were on stilts because permafrost prevented any underground foundations.
The sun set for a short time but it remained light all night and later on, as forecast, the fog came down.
BIRK (Reykjavik) to BGSF (Sondre Stromfjord/Kangerlussuaq) 737 nm in 3 hr 01 min
BGSF (Sondre Stromfjord) to CYFB (Iqaluit) 487 nm in 2 hr 04 min