FIRST NIGHT AT ILÍMAUSSAQ: Taseq slope/mid-level east

After twenty minutes at the ‘hotel’ I attempt to convince a majority that despite exhaustion from over 24 hours continuous travel, a hike up nearby Taseq slope is now in order. Amazingly enough, all agree.

A truck pulls up, and in pile Howie, Mark, and myself, along with all our gear. Three minute’s drive from our Rock Hut and we reach the very outskirts of town. A helipad and waste recycling facility appear on our left as last monuments to civilization. The road suddenly pitches to the right and becomes rougher, and we wind our way along the coast, where an iceberg-littered bay punches in toward shore. A huge valley opens to our right: Narsaq valley.

Dark Kvanefjeld stands on the left; tall Mt. Ilímaussaq in the far distance, just outside the alkaline complex that took its name; the flattened gray summit of Nakkaalaaq up towards the right, and below it, Taseq slope, rolls gently down to the valley floor, carved by the Narsaq elv (“elv” means river).

The stark moon-like gray color of Nakkaalaaq and its Taseq slope catches our attention. These are the nepheline syenites that contain the minerals we are interested in finding.

And the place is huge.

A farmhouse with two barking dogs stands at the valley threshold and we pass its open gates and over a tiny flood-ravaged metal bridge. I quietly wonder if the supports will hold.

The valley road is rough but serviceable, and we crouch down in our seats to catch sight of the towering outcrops along the way. Taseq slope is mostly ash gray; it’s lower half fissured by deep gullies, the middle steepens and has snow pack in the sections the sun has failed to melt by mid-July. Its uppermost reaches appear to flatten out somewhat, but the enormity of Taseq slope has escaped my months of staring at maps and photographs. It is very much bigger when seen in person.

Fifteen minutes farther along and we come to a fork: to the left the road hairpins its way up to Kvanefjeld, the tailings from its uranium mine adit now clearly visible to us. The locals told us the ore from that adit had been placed into mounds, a few meters tall by tens of meters long, and in the sequence mined, and we pass them on our left now. To the right the road continues on, we follow, and soon come to a pullout on the right. We get out of the truck and grab our gear.

“Is this it”? Peter glances over, sensing my excitement, grins and confirms that it is.

This office worker soon finds how awkward it is to throw on a pack loaded down with 5-lb crack hammer, heavy 12-volt lead-acid batteries, ultraviolet light, rain gear, chisels, barbeque grill cover, liter of water, and other assorted necessities. From where I stand, by our truck, Taseq slope looks more like a mountain than its photos had me imagine.

I am not the first to head off. I tug on the straps and finally follow the others, heading off along a narrow path. But before going up, we have to walk down—down to the Narsaq elv. We walk now through a mossy field and down the steep slope to the river below. A small footbridge—4 meters long and barely a meter across, appears before us. No wonder this was where we’d parked the truck. As we get closer the sound of rushing melt water makes clear the value of that footbridge. The water is far too high to cross without it.

We still have to balance our way over rocks to reach shore on the far side though, and do so, digging boots into the crumbly gray earth, and stand up on the start of Taseq slope proper. The place is immense.

Howie and Mark, having been here before, immediately head off up to the left, and I follow as quickly as I can. It is still quite bright out for 7:00 p.m. I keep my eyes pealed but everywhere see only gray—gray and more gray—in an endless variety of patterns and shades, but all gray nonetheless.

I am looking anxiously for the pinkish hint on that most famous of Ilímaussaq fluorescents, tugtupite. Most tugtupite I’d seen is red or pink in daylight, and glows with a vivid red color under short-wave ultraviolet. In my enthusiasm I half expect to see mounds of red and pink tugtupite lining the slope. This is not the case. The more time I spend looking the farther I fall behind the boys. They seem to be purposefully trudging up to a place they must have been before, but I am seeing it all for the first time and decide to concentrate on what I am walking over. Suddenly, I see red.

Could it be? And huge! It's a block almost a meter across. Wow. I bend down to look more closely. Could the reddish mineral be tugtupite? There is only one way to be certain. I take off my backpack, and begin to pull out my ultraviolet light, it’s heavy and clumsy 12-volt battery, and the feeble cords that connect one to the other. Next out comes the barbeque grill cover. This is a real necessity in a place where the sun practically never sets; the thick black grill cover is opaque, and just big enough for me to sit under to inspect rocks under ultraviolet. A few minutes spent fumbling with cords under the grill cover and I hit the ‘on’ switch.

Nothing. Is this light working? For the moment, the dim violet glow confirms that it is, as does the bright blue-white glow of my pants leg. The rock? Dead as a doornail. Black. Nothing. What the..!? I come out from under the grill cover and look closely at what I’ve stumbled across at the bottom of Taseq slope—it is eudialyte—a fascinating signature mineral for alkaline intrusions of this type, but wholly non-fluorescent. It's branded by me hereafter ‘false tugtupite’. The boulder stays right where it is.

I now look up and see that my buddies as distant specks high on a ridgeline. Hurriedly, I pack up my gear, throw the pack back on, and start hiking upwards and to the left. Sweaty and out of breath, I’ve managed to almost exhaust myself before even starting the climb.

The lower level of Taseq slope is not good for traversing across, I soon find—boots sink deeply into the loose gray gravel. Uphill work is slow and tiring. Also, I'm moving over the gullies at about their deepest point, so gain altitude only to plunge back down into the next depression and have to climb back out. Almost an hour of panting, sweaty progress I manage to nearly catch up to where the boys reached. But what a view.

They’ve stopped on a ridge between two gullies, about 200 meters up from the stream, and well east of our bridge crossing. It is 9:00 p.m. before I reach this spot and 9:30 p.m. before I catch my breath and sink into the gravel for a rest. All I’ve seen so far is gray. The lesson of the ‘false tugtupite’ still stings, so think twice before unpacking my UV observing kit again.

I clamber over to where Mark and Howie are working and ask what they’re finding. Tugtupite! Nice, brilliant red-fluorescing tugtupite. It is considered bad form to dig directly under their feet, and also hazardous, so I move a few meters away and set up camp. Out comes the barbeque grill cover and associated gear. But my scouring of the steep incline produces only moderately bright orange fluorescent sodalite. Mark finds a fist-sized mass of bright white fluorescing sorensenite, unusually bright but weathered, and tosses it up to me.

Annoyed that I’ve managed to find nothing myself after the two hour slog, I toss it to Howie, who wisely keeps it. Sorensenite is rarely as brightly fluorescent as that piece, and finding it up on Taseq slope, rather than across the valley on Kvanefjeld, where the mineral was first reported from, is interesting as well. At about 10 p.m. the sun moves behind Kvanefjeld, creating arctic shade, and I take a few more photos.

Another hour ticks by with no great finds for me. But I am glad to be here. Mark soon announces it's time to head back. Before I can argue, Howie and Ulrik are several gullies away and almost down to the footbridge. I'm now so thoroughly tired that I wonder if I can make the descent to the river. One sorry step at a time, I trudge back down the gullies, gravel filling my boots, as darkness begins to make itself apparent.

It is 11:30 p.m. There are almost no rocks in my backpack. I'm exhausted and already secretly hoping tomorrow’s weather might give us a ‘day off.’ We make it to the bridge, then up the wet, mossy slope to the truck, get in, and drive back to our Rock Hut.

It has been a long ‘day’; the highlight a hot shower.

I sleep like a rock.

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