Out on the water

A voyage to the mouth of the icefiord

Today once again began right around 8AM. For whatever reason, I didn’t sleep as well as I had hoped last night. I kept waking up and feeling like I couldn’t get back to sleep easily. This caused me to feel pretty out of sorts this morning, but my excitment for the day eventually won me over, and I managed to get myself up and ready.

Today I had a single activity planned: a boat tour that would take me to the mouth of the icefiord! At around 10:30AM, I went to the harbor and boarded a boat with a few other people and set off for an adventure on the water. Coming from a land-locked state, the opportunity to do this excited me greatly. I remember absolutely loving the boat tour I took around Nuuk in 2023, and I had no doubt this would eclipse that experience by a longshot. I was not wrong.

Trey on a boat near the Ilulissat icefiord!

Almost as soon as we left the vicinity of Ilulissat we began to encounter the massive icebergs that I first got a good look at yesterday during my hike.

Once again, I cannot stress how big these icebergs are. The pictures really do not do justice to their size and magnificence. Our guide told us that the largest recorded iceberg claved from the glacier was the size of Manhattan in NYC. We didn’t see any THAT big, but that helps puts things into perspective a bit better than the pictures can alone. Another fact that I read is that the total amount of ice calved from the glacier each year is enough to cover the USA’s entire annual water consumption. It’s a HUGE amount of ice.

View of icebergs from the boat’s starboard side. The boat itself was classified as a small icebreaker, capable of pushing through thin ice. We often rammed through small bits ice, which would cause a thud/scraping noise.

Our guide joked that the ice caves seen in this image were “whale parking garages”!

I love the spires on this iceberg.

The lighting and weather were perfect for being out on the water and marveling at all the ice.

We saw some other boats out among the icebergs as well, which helped put into perspective how big the icebergs were. Most of the other boats we saw were fishing vessels.

My pictures also fail to capture all of the intricate variations in color and texture that I could see with my eyes (which is maybe more the fault of my camera). There were blues, browns, and hints of reds. Sometimes we would see “black ice” - ice that contains very few or no air bubbles, which makes it incredibly clear and apparently “black” when sitting in the dark water.

This image has a few small chunks of “black” ice in the water. Our guide told us that this the most dangerous kind of ice for boats because they sit lower in the water (and are thus harder to see) than the other chunks of ice due to their lack of air bubbles.

Amazingly, we also saw a humpback whale! It surfaced just in front of our boat and gave us a show for a few moments before diving.

Humpback whale diving right in front of the boat.

Our guide told us that whales are fairly uncommon during this time of year, as summer is typical peak whale season. He said they had seen a few in the last few weeks though.

After spending a couple of hours navigating around the huge icebergs at the mouth of the icefiord¹, we headed back to town. By this time I was rather hungry, and decided to grab some lunch at a cafe near my hotel.

Muskox burger with fries

The rest of the day has been spent alternating between walking around town and resting in the hotel room.

A picture from one of my walks. Note the many stairs that I had just climbed!

Before I visited Greenland, a couple of people asked me if Greenlanders celebrate Halloween and/or Christmas. The answer is yes! I arrived in Nuuk just a couple days after Halloween and there were quite a few decorations still up. More and more I’ve been seeing Christmas-themed decorations, and today I spotted Santa’s sleigh!

Santa’s sleigh spotted while walking around town.

Frankly, I’ve struggled to write this post. It is almost 10:30PM now. I’m tired and I hope that means I’ll sleep well tonight. I’ll find out soon!

Oh! And one last thing: I found out today that the northern lights picture I included in my 2025-11-04: Ilulissat at Dawn post was not the northern lights. it turns out that this was exhaust from the Ariane 6 rocket that deployed the new Sentinel-1D earth-observing satellite! I originally thought this was the beginning of the northern lights (we saw them around the time this dissipated), but it was just coincidence! The exhaust from the Ariane 6 rocket was also observed over Maine.

What I originally thought was the northern lights was actually exhaust from the Ariane 6 rocket.

Footnotes

1. we could only sail near the mouth of the icefiord, and not directly into it because it is too dangerous. If a major calving event occurs while in the fiord, the waves can become too much for a boat to handle.