Every travel-adventure starts with packing

How does your luggage look like when leaving your home for two years and your new domicile is on another continent, with an ocean in between? To start with, do we actually have enough suitcases? Thanks to Anna’s cousin Michela and her family we were provided with a sufficent number of baggages (they are really great, Michela!). Nevertheless, our belongings must be condensed to what is essentially needed. Since our final destination was close to the Arctic Circle, our limited luggage space was dominated by things we related to a rather cold and rough climate: warm jackets, shoes, pants, socks, blankets etc., and some equipment for the mountains. Besides very few books and cooking pans, there was not much more space left to fill… Looking back at our “packing strategy”, now that we have settled in Fairbanks, we can confirm that it’s totally fine to spend the summer just with three T-shirts and one running outfit only!

With our few suitcases and bags we left Rutschwil, with a tear in one eye but rather a smile in the other, since we could finally start our adventure after quite intense bureaucratic (and not only) work in the past couple of months.

Schweizerland Alps in Greenland

Before arriving in Alaska though, we had the chance to get a glance at Greenland by airplane. The few times we flew over Greenland so far, which is roughly halfway from Europe to North America, the island was always covered by clouds. This time, however, this was not the case and we could see some of the outlet glaciers of the Greenland Ice Sheet on the southeastern coast. These glaciers terminate into the ocean and their mass loss therefore contributes directly to global sea level rise. Greenland is currently losing about 360 cubic kilometers of ice per year, which is as much as the current volume of all the glaciers in the Alps - quite impressive!

Helheim Glacier, seen on the right picture above, is one of the largest outlet glaciers in Greenland. The other one, Midgaard Glacier, is much smaller, but originates in the center of the so-called Schweizerland Alps. This region was named by Alfred De Quervain, a Swiss Arctic Explorer, whose first west-east-traverse of the ice sheet in 1912 ended at the Sermilik Fjord (danish: Egede og Rothes Fjord, see map below).