About one-third of the way up the western coast of Greenland, just above the Arctic Circle, is the town of Ilulissat—regarded as the iceberg capital of the Arctic. Here, at the mouth of an 18-mile fjord, icebergs of all shapes, hues, and sizes slowly drift past the small outpost and its picturesque environs of brightly colored settlements and dwellings on their way to the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s presumed by many that the iceberg that did in the Titanic actually originated from this fjord. It’s also been estimated that enough ice is calved daily from the glacier at the other end of the fjord to satisfy the fresh water needs of the city of New York for an entire year!

Not far from Ilulissat, one can embark on a strenuous two-day hike from the coast, right up and onto the Greenland icecap—a fascinating realm of glacial rivers, chasms, crevasses and other ice oddities and anomalies.

–Photos and text by Bill Cain, nine-time Wilderness Travel adventurer, Greenland Explorer

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