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My Remote @ Thule Air Base Greenland
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| After living on Top Of the World for a few months the reality of where you are starts to sink in. I can best describe it as living on the moon, sure your still part of the world but so far north cut off from the daily conveniences. A tour at Thule Air Base is the remote of remotes. And to think I had to suffer through this tour with the speed of instant e-mail home, Internet news at my finger tips, liberal moral telephone calls weekly re-supply via airlift out of the states and mid-tour leave to get reacquainted with the family. Wow I had it rough, NOT. When this base first opened up were no phone calls home, calls home were via short wave radio, no e-mail, a yearly re-supply via the seaport and NO mid tour leave. Those dudes had it tuff. I'm grateful I had my tour when I did. | ||||||||||
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| This shot looks directly into the ice cave and clearly shows the ice rings, periods of time trapped forever in the ice. The cave was approx 30 yds wide by 150 yds long. Walking through the cave you got the spooky feeling that if it fell in on you, you were dead, but hey it’s been there for thousands of years. | Midway through the cave, can you say light at the end of the tunnel? | |||||||||
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| After the polar bear swim. Was it cold YES and painful but I'm glad I did it. One of the many off the wall stories I'll have to tell my grandkids. | ||||||||||
| What else do you do in the high arctic for fun? Why not swim in the bay when the water temp is 28 degrees? Thule's Annual Polar Bear swim held in Aug is one of the highlights of everyones tour to Thule, only if your one of the brave few. I'm pictured to the left and the guy on the far right is Robert H. "Big Hern" one of my dorm mates. The guy in the middle, I'm not sure but I was so cold I did not care. | ||||||||||
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| Thule Air base, Greenland on map. How far north is Thule? Most people just don't get when I try and tell them how remote Thule is. This map best shows just how far north we were. "Top of the World' baby. | ||||||||||
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| One of Thule's natural phenomenon is the halo effect around the sun caused by frozen particles in the atmosphere. Thule is to far North for the Northern Lights but this is a pretty cool second. This photo has Dundas Mt in the background, a favorite get away spot. On nice days many of us would climb to the top taking in some wonderful views of the bay, glacier, icebergs and the base. I made it to the top 3 times once in just over 14 minutes the record being 6 min 36 seconds. | ||||||||||
| Another wonderful photo of Thule Air Base with Saunders Island in the foreground . | ||||||||||
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| What did I do that I enjoyed the most at Thule? Sounds crazy but I enjoyed throwing rocks at Icebergs. One nice weeks I would hike out to this point near Dundas Mt. and throw rocks at icebergs as they sailed by. How much fun could that be? Well if you hit the iceberg just right, knocking off a big enough piece of ice, it would upset the balance causing the whole iceberg to roll over in the bay. If you were really lucky the iceberg might spilt in two and cause a big splash. That was the reward, plus what else was I going to do. | ||||||||||