This second trail starts at the heliport just on the outskirts south of Ilulissat. This is where the yellow trail (see previous blog) ends. Again there is

The walk started with a steep climb up the stairs and then some great views over the surrounding area.
But 1st there was this beautiful work of art on top of the stairs…

 

 

The Red Trail is a 1 kilometre/0,5 hrs walk from the GL Heliport to the Kangia Icefjord at Holms Bakke (Holms Hill).

 

The above graph shows the elevation level on route…

From the Heliport 2 (or 3) other trails start. The yellow trail, which I walked in the morning ends (or start if you walk the other way around). Then there’s the UNESCO World Heritage trail via Sermermiut to the Kangia Icefjord and the blue trail from the Heliport via Sermermiut and the Kangia Icefjord to the Quarry.

There the trail starts with a short walk through some sled dog areas, where sled dogs are kept on a chain during the summer months. The walk is then ascending towards a large quite level area leading towards the fjord.

After a short while the icebergs of the fjord are starting to show. In front is the small Sermermiut Tasia (Sermermiut lake) (3 on the elevation diagram)

From the trail it was possible to see heaps of stone with large wooden poles in them. These were marker poles. They indicated the border of the Unesco World Heritage area of the Kangia Icefjord…

Towards the end of the trail, the path started to rise again and climbed Seqinniarfik/Holms Bakke (3 and 4 on the elevation diagram) .

Small alpine plants were blooming for a brief period, where the sun had melted the snow on top…

Then The Wandelgek climbed the hill of Holms Bakke…

Every minute climbing higher, the view over the Icefjord became more spectacular and the best thing was that the clouds were disslving leaving a blue sky, which colored the ice quite different from the colors it had in the morning…

Looking back at the trail you could see the red marker dots that indicated where the trail was…

And then, at the top of Holms Bakke the view became simply jaw dropping, mind blowingly awesome… This, exactly this was why I had been travelling to this total outback of the world.

I have seldom been so flabbergasted when looking at a panoramic sight then at this specific moment and thepicture above is one of my absolute favorites captures of this moment…

Holms Bakke is also the place where all citizens of Ilulissat gather at about 13.00hrs on the 13th of january, the moment when after a long period of complete darkness, the sun rises again for the very 1st time of the new year. Only briefly of course, but from that moment every day a bit more, until in summer there’s even a long period where it doesn’t disappear at all 🙂

I kept absorbing this landscape and again listened to all those noises the ice makes. The view overhere is every day different because of the floating ice, which flows, breaks, collapses, tumbles, calves, causes mini tsunamis to hit the coast and even explodes when air bubbles captured in the ice break free…

The icebergs overhere were very large, but still adrift, because thefjord was over 1000 metres deep. Only at the entrance at the Disco Bay , the icebergs get blocked for a while as they need to get pushed over the heap of moraine debris that was left overthere by the glacier over 8000 years ago (6000 years b.C.).

On top of Holms Bakke the red trail ended joining the blue trail, but more of that in my next blog about Greenland …