April 14, 2014
Coords: 65.86 N, 38.58 W
Day 1: Drop-off on Hahn Glacier (1255 m)
A year ago I stood with four near-strangers at the edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet. With my back to hundreds of miles of empty glacier I watched the helicopter jump up and away, asking myself “what the hell have you gotten yourself into now?”
When it was gone I took a moment to breathe in the most intensely quiet place I have ever been. Then we headed west.

April 14, 2014
Coords: 65.88 N, 38.74 W
Day 1: Camp 1 (1300 m)
The first day was easy. Deceptively easy. We were dropped off in the late morning and actually traveled slightly downhill for the first few kilometers. We could see the glint of the sea off to the south, as well as a chain of mountains, including some nunataks sticking out from the ice. We skiied 7.7km (4.8mi) pulling fully loaded sleds. We set up camp, cooked a warm dinner, and unrolled the giant laminated topographic map that Robert, our Icelandic guide, had had printed. This would be our routine each night for the remainder of the trip: boil water, eat, check the map, go to sleep. Robert first plotted our drop-off point, then the location of our first camp. They were nearly on top of each other. We hadn’t gone anywhere. The icy horizon stretched out before us as we went to bed.

April 15, 2014
Coords: 65.88 N, 38.74 W
Day 2: Camp 2 (1375 m)
Temp -10 to -15C, wind 10-20 m/s (20-40 mph)
Traveled 15.3km, Total 23.0km
Someone wants out. At the end of a rough Day 2, with biting wind leaving our cheeks frozen, the oldest member of the team, at 66, decided that it was too much for him. He had previously skied the Last Degree (about 100km) to each of the poles but the Greenland Ice Sheet is another story. Robert called a helicopter at dinner. We waited.

April 16, 2014
Coords: 65.88 N, 38.74 W
Day 3: Camp 2 (1375 m)
Temp -5 to -19C, wind 5-30 m/s (10-60 mph)
Traveled 0.0km, Total 23.0km
We got up on Day 3 to a blue-bird morning. The sky was clear, the wind was light — perfect for skiing. But we didn’t ski. We sat. We sat and waited for the helicopter to take our companion away, but it was too busy taking rich tourists heli-skiing out of Tasiilaq… because it was a blue-bird day, perfect for skiing!

In between sitting around, we unpacked and repacked all of the food to account for the missing person. It’s hard — really hard — to abandon food when you’re in the wilderness, even if you don’t think you’ll need it. You never know what might happen. Then again, someone has to carry it (or drag it, in our case) so you can’t take everything. We started the expedition with 30 days of food at about 6 kilos (12 lbs) of food per day, for a total of 180 kilos (400 lbs). We should have left 1/5 of that amount but we packed extra… just in case.

In the afternoon, the weather started to deteriorate — snow began accumulating and we got the word that the helicopter wasn’t coming, but something else was… a storm. We began the fortification of our camp. By dinner the wind had picked up and the tents were shaking.