As I mentioned earlier this week, I am off until mid August on a sea kayaking expedition in northwest Greenland. I’ll be writing about it in my other newsletter, Today on Trail, so if you’re interested here is an excerpt and an invitation. If not, no worries, the Tabs will return in August.
It was the day before Christmas, 2025, and I was waiting for a Zoom call with a Frenchman in Ushuaia, so he could divine whether we had a soul connection. He was in Ushuaia because he had been kayak guiding for an Antarctic cruise line, and Tierra del Fuego was the ship’s home port during the cruise season. He needed to know if we had a soul connection or not because I needed his blessing to join him and a small group of other sea kayakers who planned to travel to Etah, in far northwestern Greenland, and then kayak 100 miles or so south along the coast to Qaanaaq.
Out for a training paddle at dawn in December, I stopped at Fort Georges.
One thing that hiking the whole A.T. proved to me was that I need some adventure in my life. But it also proved that I absolutely don’t need six-plus months of adventure all at once. So last summer I was already thinking about what might be next, before I had even finished the last section of trail, when I went to a talk by my Peaks Island neighbor and longtime acquaintance Jack Soley about sea kayaking in Greenland.
I’ve been kayaking since I moved to Peaks Island in 2001, because Casco Bay is one of the best places in the world to paddle. There are innumerable islands to visit and lots of route options depending on the weather. I’ve done dozens of trips down the bay and back over the years—I think the longest was five or six days. But for all that, when you live on an island and you’re necessarily always leaving from and returning to that island, even a kayaking wonderland can get kind of same-y after a while. I reached a point where I needed to either start going further up the coast and getting a ride back with my boat, or doing something else. The logistics of extended kayak travel didn’t really fit into my life at the time, so instead I started doing more hiking, because if you get bored with one mountain, you can always just drive to another. Obviously we all know how that turned out.
When Jack reached the same point in his paddling career, he started organizing bigger expeditions for himself. First he went to Newfoundland and Labrador, then he sailed a sailboat to Antarctica to paddle there. He said he’d never do that again. Eventually, he started traveling to the spiritual and historical home of sea kayaking: Greenland. The last couple years he’s been guiding for a Canadian company in western Greenland, but for 2026 he had a new plan: Etah.
Etah is a legendary place. Etah has been visited or occupied, off and on, for at least four thousand years, by at least four different human cultures. Only about 35 miles west of Etah, across the nearly year-round ice of the southern end of the Nares Strait, lies Ellesmere Island and Arctic Canada. In 1865, Etah was the destination of the last migration of Inuit people from Baffin Island, up the coast of Ellesmere Island, and finally across the ice to Greenland. Their descendants still live nearby, in Siorapaluk and Qaanaaq. More recently, in the early twentieth century, it was the base camp for Knud Rasmussen’s Thule Expeditions and the place Robert Peary learned to adopt Inuit technologies to survive in the Arctic, as well as near where he stole their only source of iron for tools and some of their children. Peary later retired here to Casco Bay, where his summer home on Eagle Island is a Maine state historic site and museum. Some of his descendants still live near Etah too.
Chart of Hatherton Bight south to Cape Alexander, in northwest Greenland. Etah is near the middle, in Foulke Fjord. Inset is Greenland as a whole showing Etah marked with a pin. Our destination, Qaanaaq, is about six more fjords south from the bottom of this chart.
Etah can be difficult to get to, because of that rock labeled Kap Alexander in the chart, landlocked by the outflows of Dodge Glacier and the ominously named Storm Glacier. It sticks out into the winds and currents flowing between the north end of Baffin Bay and the southern outlet of the Nares Strait, and the waves can reportedly kick up some when they want to. For a taste of what the conditions can be like, here’s a report from a kayaking expedition in 2012 which attempted to cross the strait to Ellesmere and… almost made it. For the record, even I think those guys were crazy. But we have a plan…
Continue reading at Today on Trail to find out about the plan (or “““The”””” ““““““Plan““““““ with many sarcastic air quotes, as my wife calls it) as well as the team and the numerous challenges we face. So far everyone seems to be surprised when the phrase “narwhal hunters” crops up, so if you’re on the fence at least go see what that’s about. You will also find out how you can track our progress live, and help sponsor the expedition if you want to.
Whether you join me virtually on this adventure or not, I genuinely appreciate the support and patience that Tabs readers have shown for my occasional need to disappear into the wilderness. This break will be a lot shorter than last time! Enjoy the summer vacation and I will see you in August.
Otherwise: Onward, to the North →
Training this winter, in Casco Bay. It’s a lot colder than the blue sky and turquoise sea would lead you to believe.
