Notebook: Icebergs at Point 660

Near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, 67.143N, 50.082W. Icebergs floating in an ice-dammed lake.

In the summer of 1991, after Robin and Ruth headed back for the UK, Debbie and I stayed on at the Russell Glacier field site through September and into the middle of October. Base camp was at the front of the Russell, and we walked up the north side of the glacier to set up a high camp closer to point 660, from where we could visit the periodically draining lake close to where the Russell and the Isunguata Sermia come off the edge of the ice sheet. We were two day's walk from Kangerlussuaq and things were beginning to freeze up. The surface of the lake was covered in ice that was starting to cement the floating icebergs in place. On the day I took this picture Debbie had awful toothache brought on by the cold. I always think I can see that in the way she is standing. This was Debbie's "Farthest North".

When we were there it felt remarkably remote, and that was a large part of its charm. We were a day from the nearest track and two days from the nearest people. If you find the spot now on google earth you will see that they have built a road all the way up alongside the glacier and right onto the ice sheet at point 660. You could drive there now. For me, that's terribly sad, but I suppose for people who want to use the road it's very convenient. For me, until the road disappears again, this site is no longer the wilderness that it was when this photo was taken, and the site exists, to some extent, only in my memory... with Debbie looking out over the frozen lake.

I was involved in some research on this lake, and the floods that come from it, including: Sugden, D.E, Clapperton, C.M. and Knight, P.G. (1985) A jokulhlaup near Sondre Stromfjord, West Greenland, and some effects on the ice-sheet margin JOURNAL OF GLACIOLOGY, Vol.31 No.109, pp.366-368, and Knight, P.G. and Russell A.J. (1993) Most recent observations of the drainage of an ice-dammed lake at Russell Glacier, West Greenland, and a new hypothesis regarding mechanisms of drainage.  JOURNAL OF GLACIOLOGY vol. 39 no. 133 pp701-703  http://www.igsoc.org/journal.old/39/133/igs_journal_vol39_issue133_pg701-703.pdf
More recent work by others eg Russell et al (2011) has kept the story up to date.