Day 4

 The day I met Tunugdliarfik!  On the northern side of the fjord the complex drops down to the water at about a 45 degree angle.  About halfway up is a vein of sodalite, ussingite, and other minerals that traverses the slope horizontally and contains a myriad of minerals.  I decided to hike up on my own and spend the day prying glowing gems out of the ground.  Little did I know what was in store.

 Harry (another friend with a boat – always good to have several friends who own boats!) dropped me off in the morning.  There’s a whitish line about half way up the cliff (200 meters) that demarks the sodalite and ussingite.  I had to climb (what at times seemed) an almost vertical wall of crumbling rocks, stepping over/on sodalite fallen from above – often having to drop to all fours to make the climb, sometimes actually doing a “wall climb” like you see in the movies.  It took over an hour to reach the line and I started exploring laterally.  It’s hard to capture a picture showing the height and difficulty of the climb due to a lack of perspective – but believe me – it’s steep and high!  Found first a cropping of unusual rocks (whitish fl) and a bunch of low quality sodalite.  More traversing and I came upon some bright yellow sodalite – boulders and boulders.  More exploring resulted in some minor ussingite, poly with other minerals.  By this time simply had too much to carry.  Started back down and came upon some white sodalite (actually bluish white) – beautiful in natural state, orange FL – of course had to retrieve more.  By this time my backpack was in complete overload - (30 kilos?)  and I basically had to work my way down on my butt – fell a couple of times, risky area,  Loose rock everywhere.  Took better part of two hours to get down (I wonder if being so close to the ground had anything to do with it – had to keep stopping to examine the rocks along the way).  I was a hurt puppy upon reaching the bottom.  My pants had holes worn through to my butt, my backpack suffered a few tears in the bottom (lesson: next time bring a backpack with a leather bottom), but my ego was only bruised slightly (I fell once while coming down, started to roll and abruptly ended on my back like a turtle in distress.  Legs and arms waving in the air but simply could not turn back over.  The weight of my backpack held me firmly to the ground, upside down.  finally grabbed a small brush to pull myself over.  This is one time I’m glad no one had a camera to snap a picture!).

 Harry was waiting for me when I reached the bottom, but his boat had been grounded by the tide (OK by me – I just found the closest flat rock and collapsed).  We finally got back to Narsaq for dinner, check the day’s haul and a deep night’s sleep.

 Piece of good news when we got back – while I was out playing in the mountains Peter shipped 290 kilos of rocks back to the states!  It’ll be 6-8 weeks until they arrive.

 It’s been three days now and I‘ve not been able to talk to my youngest daughter.  Phones are a rare commodity in Narsaq and I only get to use one when I go to Peter’s house.  Tomorrow I’ll call before we leave (even though it means waking her up – gotta talk to her).

On to Day 5