DAY TEN: Taseq West

This is my last full day on the ground in Greenland; tomorrow I begin the long trip home. Last night we thought about an overnight camp out at a special area of Taseq slope, but it started to rain, so we decided against it.

The weather doesn’t look much more promising this morning: the sky is lead gray, and a cold drizzle is falling. The dark hills that loom over town have vanished now in fog and mist, and the forecast calls for more of the same. Still, it is my last full day here and I am determined to make good use of it. Mark agrees. We decide to visit the area of Taseq I’d researched the previous winter.

Back in the 1960s, the Russian researcher E. I. Semenov located an area of beryllium mineralization high on the west end of Taseq slope, close to the lake at the top (‘Taseq’ means lake). Surveys were made with a portable ‘beryllometer’—a radioactive neutron generator carried over the ground to measure Be content in-situ—and a summary report prepared. I spent the previous winter reading geological papers on Ilímaussaq, and stumbled across one which describes the vein systems which host chkalovite, tugtupite, and other unusual species. Our goal today is to find this area.

Peter thinks we are both crazy to insist on going in the rain, but agrees to ask his brother Finn to drive us to the base of Taseq slope early this morning. It will be a long day—the target area very high on the slope indeed. Finn picks us up at 7:00 a.m. sharp and we are at the base of Taseq strapping on backpacks at 7:30 a.m. It is chilly, and wet.

The tops of all the surrounding mountains, including the top of Taseq slope, is shrouded in cloud. It is still drizzling. As we watched, another mass of cloud moves in so that even the middle levels on Taseq disappear.

We descend the water-logged meadow to the river. At the footbridge the water is unusually high.

We've brought along GPS devices, however, and carefully calculated the positions of the target area previously. We programmed the center of one of the vein systems in and watch the ‘distance to target’ readout as we hike.

We crossed the river and head up slope, diagonally, to the right. One step up at a time, in the wet, we make slow but steady progress. After an hour and a half of uphill hiking, we come up against steep rock bands, and skirt right, underneath them. We also pass snow banks. Suddenly, some freshly broken whiter rock appears through the mist. I stop to look, and though it is interesting (epistolite), there is no apparent tugtupite or chkalovite, and we proceed onwards. The GPS device indicated we still have a way to go.

Finally the rock changes from gray to dark brown, and has a different angle of repose. I suspect we've moved off the Ilímaussaq intrusion and might now be in the mixed volcanic rocks of the adjacent mountain. Looking down, I see a boulder covered with a thin (< 1 cm) discontinuous coating of dark purple fluorite. I’d noticed fluorite on the maps we’d studied previously, and recall a band of it being to the west of our target area, beyond where we wanted to go.

Mark double-checks and finds his GPS unit says we now have farther to go than we did twenty minutes ago—we've accidentally overshot.

We head back left, and up, towards the very top. We are completely enveloped in a thick fog and can see 10 meters at most. Looking down, I see some red Roman numbers painted on the rocks. Interesting. The maps for our special area had a number of points recorded with numbers in the same range.

Soon, I began to see traces of the familiar white rock that hosts our favorite species. Then much more of it, and in a few minutes several pieces of chkalovite and tugtupite. I yell for Mark.

He appears out of the cloud and agrees we’ve found a ‘hot spot’. Base camp is made at the foot of a very large boulder. Inspecting the right side of the boulder reveals yet more tugtupite—a solid vein of pinkish red tugtupite outcrops right along its base. I know it will take much time and effort to work a sample loose, so instead take a few photos and leave it as I’d found it.

The skies suddenly clear and there is a burst of bright sunshine. Below, Narsaq valley is still shrouded in cloud, as are the lower levels of Taseq. Only we, near the very top of the slope, are in the sun today.

I spend the next few hours cracking rock and selecting samples to bring back. Mark wanders farther, probing the limits of this area, and finds another ‘hot spot’ about thirty meters higher up slope.

We soon move camp and spend the rest of the day working that area. Numbers are painted in red here as well, and they matched those on our maps. We have arrived.

Specimens of chkalovite and tugtupite, sodalite, and analcime fluorescing in a variety of blues, soon pile high. Particularly vivid patterns occur here: polka dots of red, green, pale blue fluorescing minerals.

I locate a block almost a meter long covered on one side with 1-cm pink fluorescing spots of tugtupite; other samples include brilliant mixtures of sodalite and tugtupite, and unusual bright blue-white fluorescing analcime.

(After I leave Greenland, Mark will return the this area to camp out, and have the privilege of lamping the ground at night. He'll come away with yet more new fluorescent specimens including a fine-grained, brightly fluorescent ‘silver’ polylithionite, admixed with peach fluorescing tugtupite.)

All too soon it's once again time to consider the descent. I have to choose carefully this time, the hike up has been particularly long, and we can see that down below is all cloud and wet, making things especially treacherous.

We've had a most productive day. I put so much rock in my pack I have to prop it up on some rocks to get into it—more than I can lift from the ground.

At 7:30 p.m.—twelve hours after we set out, we walk back across the footbridge over the Narsaq elv.

It has been a collecting day to remember for a lifetime.

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