Greenland: Hiking around Igaliku

There’s hardly a better sight when opening the door of the tent: The beautiful village of Igaliku facing the fjord and under a sunny sky.

It was the perfect day to take a walk to the surrounding mountains of Illerfissalik.

Of all the available hikes, we decided to walk in the direction of Qooroq Ice Fjord. To climb to Illerfissalik Peak we would have needed more time and a better equipment.
We didn’t wake up very early, but our aim was to get to the ice Fjord by lunch time.

For the first part of the walk, we followed the tractor road until there was no mre road..
Then there was some climbing on a rocky way.

The map showed that there were some Norse ruins around, but I couldn’t figure anything.
Anyway, the previous day we had already visited the most important nearby ruins at the Garðar archaeological complex.

Our first stop on the way was on the shores of a beautiful lake. The large rocks in the water could be a small version of the beautiful beaches at the Tayrona National Park in Colombia.

After this flat part we continued to climb, and some clouds covered the sun in the sky. We just hoped it wouldn’t rain.

We reached a point where the landscape changed dramatically. We had been surrounded by grass and vegetation but surprisingly we got to an almost desert mountain.
There were only grey and black stones and we even thought we were lost.

From out of nowhere, we saw a wild hare jumping and he sat in front of us, a few metres away.
This lucky rabbit was huge, and we thought that if we found him, our way shouldn’t be that far.

We were right, not far away we found one o those red points that mark the hiking paths, so we knew that we were in the right direction.

We reached our destination just in time for lunch.... and the sun was shining again!

We had our sandwiches with a terrific view of Tunulliarfik Fjord in front of us, and Qooroq Ice fjord on the right side.

When sailing to Itilleq we passed some of the stranded icebergs on the moraine and we saw Qooroq Ice fjord from the distance.

But watching from above all these icebergs floating and the huge glacier at the end of the fjord was incredible!

We decided to take another walking path to get back to Igaliku. We hiked over the other side of the plateau, keeping an eye on Eiriksfjord.

This way was truly beautiful. There are several small lakes on top of the plateau, and they reflected the sky and everything above them on this clear and sunny day.

Suddenly, we saw a couple of animals playing in the distance.
They looked at us with a curious sight before running away, probably scared.

They were arctic foxes!

It’s a shame that I couldn’t take a picture of these beautiful animals, but I’m really happy that I could observe them in their wild environment.

During the whole day hike we didn’t see a single human being!
Only the sea, Icebergs, plants, mountains, rocks, lakes, foxes and a hare: I guess that’s called getting into the wild, isn’t it?

We got back quite late to spend our last night in Igaliku.
The next morning we hiked again to Itilleq and took a boat to the town of Qassiarsuk.

Click here to read about Qassiarsuk.

Greenland Links:

Greenland on Trip Advisor
Greenland Official Tourism board
Lonely Planet Greenland guides
Compare flights to Greenland

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