The footprints were about the size of my two hands put together. Five separate paw prints, each maybe a metre and a half apart, striding a line across the little patch of snow. I tried to dismiss them as mere shapes etched into the snow by the wind, but no matter from what angle I looked at them, no matter how hard I squinted, they sure looked like Polar bear tracks to me.

I wasn’t far from the rest of the group, maybe a ten minute scramble across the barren windswept rocks, but that was far enough. Ten minutes would feel like an eternity with the hot breath of a Polar bear down my neck. Ever try to outrun a polar bear? I don’t suppose there’s too many who can make such a claim. For a moment a tingle of excitement got the better of me and I followed the line of ‘paw-prints’ to peer over the next rise of rocks, eager to catch a glimpse of what had left them. One more step and my reasoning called me back. Looking around, I imagined the sight of a polar bear padding its way toward me and submitting to my inherent desire for self preservation, I beat a retreat back toward the rest of the group. At least there I might be able to make an escape while someone else is eaten first. It was only later that Freddy, our native Greenlandic translator and all round good-egg, reliably informed me that Polar bears are almost never seen this far south in Greenland. This of course didn’t explain the how the skull of one previously unlucky bear now sat on display in the village school, a bullet hole punched through the bone as a reward for the bear’s nomadic tendency. Having almost put my mind at rest, Freddy rounded off his Discovery-Channel speech. "But if they do come this far, then they'll certainly be very hungry and will attack anything that moves." Yeah thanks Freddy. Either way I made a mental note not to stray too far from the town again, lest there be one fewer mouths turning up at dinner.

Greenland is one of those mysterious places falling in the same category as Zanzibar, or the Hindu-kush. Everyone has heard of it, but when pushed, no-one really seems to be able to place it on the map. The popular mistake is to place it in the spot where Iceland sits, which in turn places Iceland in a bit of a geographical situation. You can forgive this common mix-up between the two places to an extent. After all Greenland, being largely buried under an icecap, is far from green and well, Iceland… OK that isn’t green either, but it has less ice than Greenland. Now I’m glad we’ve cleared that one up.

I hadn’t known what to expect from Greenland. There is a black-hole on the bookstore shelf where the book "Greenland: a tourists guide to Polar bear avoidance" should sit. After Greece the alphabetically arranged titles jump neatly and conveniently to Hungary (that’s HungAry not hungry as in ‘hungry Polar bear’). Greenland, although part of Denmark doesn’t get a look in. The World’s biggest island has never been a big tourist destination (perhaps because of two thirds of it are buried under ice all year round), but there are moves afoot to change this, at least the tourist situation; there’s not too much they can do about the ice. Greenland is sparsely populated and outside of the few major towns, its inhabitants spread out along the East and West coasts in small fishing communities. It was one of these communities, located on its namesake the tiny island of Kangaamuit that was to play host to our group for the week. It seemed strange that a community should choose to set up it’s town on an island rather than on the mainland, but then why not? When fishing is both the main breadwinner and food larder, and boats form the main mode of transport, then building your community on an island really starts to make sense. You just have to look from the inside outwards, not from the outside in. Easy eh?

We flew into Manitsoq and after two cold hours speeding through fjords on a boat, the brightly painted wooden houses of Kangaamuit loomed into sight. This would be our base from which we’d explore the new heli-ski terrain that was opening up in the area. All we needed now was to build a landing zone for the heli (nobody had used Kangaamuit before as a base for heli-skiing) and wait for the heli to turn up. To the North of the island was as yet still largely unexplored terrain, and definitely unskied peaks. In fact so dense were the mountains all around the island that first descents were going to be unavoidable. Damn don’t you just hate that?

We’d been given the chance to explore this new heli terrain by the nice people at Right Guard Extreme Sport. Looking for the ultimate location to product test their Extreme brand of deodorant, the PR types at RGXS had settled upon Greenland as a location as good as any other. We didn’t want to point out that deodorant was probably the least likely thing you’d pack for a trip to a land of permafrost and settled on the idea that perhaps, if we weren’t going to sweat, then it would be useful to mask our scent from stray Polar Bears. And so with the grateful help of RGXS, a motley crew of British snowboarders, journalists, PR girls and a photographer alighted from the boat to enjoy the warm homes and hospitality of some very accommodating locals in Kangaamuit.

Now Kangaamuit is remote in a beautiful way. In May you could spend hours just immersing yourself in the remoteness of it all; the strange Arctic light, the Innuit language, the occasional piece of pack ice that floated by, that is if it wasn’t so cold. The town is small enough for everyone to know everyone else’s business, yet big enough to support two shops, both capturing the frontier feel. Their shelves were stocked with everything and anything that could be of use combating the long cold winters. Cornflakes sat alongside seal-pelts and shotguns, peanut butter beside boat propellers. The fact that Kangamuuit has only 500 inhabitants meant that meeting up wouldn’t be a problem. It wasn’t like you needed to get a bus and the island had only one car –a dented old Landrover- meaning everyone walked, slid or got dragged by sledge to wherever they were going. One family was to take care of the catering for the whole group, and as one of two vegetarians on the trip, I was looking forward to dinner with a degree of apprehension; afterall, the only other boat I’d seen at the dock was fronted by a harpoon. In Greenland, if it moves, it’s edible and perhaps justifiably so. The chef was the type of woman who would have prospered on the Ark, having a recipe for almost every animal on the planet. Evening entertainment began with a game of ‘guess the meat’ before Freddy would reveal the identity of the mystery flesh. Most it seemed managed the Caribou and the Whale meat, but I detected certain envious glances at my vegetarian supper the night Kevin announced he’d just seen a guy "carving up a seal down at the dock".

Greenland isn’t for the faint hearted and the only foreigners you’re likely to see are either polar explorers or US airmen stationed in the North at missile-tracking stations. The first are mad and the second are posted there by mad people. And so it takes a certain type of fellow to hide out here Heli-guiding for groups of yellow-bellied, vegetarian city-slickers like us. This type of survivor had found a home in two skiers called Pete Paterson and Kevin O’Rourke, two of the USA’s best ambassadors for heli-skiing. These guys were so into their mountains that they’d brought drag-sleds with them and had been away touring the wilderness of the icecap, discovering the delights of male bonding. Their heli-guiding backgrounds with Idaho’s Sun-Valley and Utah’s Wasatch Powderbirds and meant they knew which end of the heli to climb into, which was a start, and Pete’s Himalayan experiences meant he was right at home among the crevasses and seracs. And as a bonus each guide came supplied with a bundle of good laughs for free. Kind of like ‘batteries included’ deal.

 

Pete and Kevin emitted good vibes right from the outset, putting to rest our anxieties that the guides, like some others we’d flown with before, would be too restrictive and anal about safety. Unlike Alaska, the storms around Greenland tend to dissipate after only a couple of days and the snowpack is often more stable, safety was still important, it’s just the guides didn’t make a lot of noise about it. When a couple of moments when things slid out on us Pete retained the all encompassing calmness that he exuded in any situation. While some guides might stress about you taking a certain line, Pete watched, smiled and would just say "that was awesome, just awesome", being genuinely stoked by the lines Johno and James were choosing to ride. Kevin was the same, his face cracked by an ear-to ear grin as weflew to the first drop. It was another powder run for him; what did he have to get uptight about? These guys were so laid back that soon our own faces ached from trying to match them smile for smile. Once or twice we had to split them up, they were enjoying themselves so much. What happened to that look of suffering under the burden of responsibility and making your clients feel intimidated? Guiding sure ain’t what it used to be! Dropped on the top of a Greenland peak, James rode his line, showering the snow from his turns off the edge of a 100m cliff. Watching from below, Kevin just smiled in appreciation and radioed Bent the pilot, for another pick up.

But if it takes a certain type of person to guide in Greenland, it takes another to fly heli’s there. Our Norwegian pilot was usually employed flying ‘long-line’ cargo in the Arctic and had a self-confessed fear of heights. This he confided in us as we sat about drinking $5 cans of beer and guessing the identity of the animal about to be consumed. He followed this with the revelation that, as good as he was with offloading freight, he’d also never flown heli-skiing parties before. The desire to land on the top of a mountain was as alien to him as the desire to ride down the thing. After waiting two days for the heli to show up due to ‘technical difficulties’ and then being grounded by a storm for the next 24 hours, flying with Bent was starting to sound as appetising as a whale fondue. Shit! The next day we were to be dropped on the top of a mountain in the middle of Greenland by a Norwegian with vertigo. I pushed this thought to the back of my mind, taking 89cent gulps of Greenland brew until $60 bottles of vodka saw to it that I would be stumbling back to my hosts house in the twilight that served for darkness in May.

But whatever concern we’d had that night, it dissolved once we were airborne. Heli-skiing is contagious, even for the pilot, and our guides excitability was infectious. After a couple of aborted landings due to spindrift, Bent soon got in the swing of things, and let his flying skills speak for themselves. After a day he was easily egged on into performing a multitude of alarming aeronautics, though he saved the most hair-raising and visually gob-stopping until we were watching from the ground. By the third day, it became as much a challenge to find him a harder LZ as it was to spot a harder descent.The guides soon proved their worth, taking us to spots they knew and others they’d always had a longing to get to know. They plotted their way across the map like aspiring conquerers in a game of Risk, using us as pawns to leave their tag on a descent and claim a new spot. We zig-zagged our way across the countless islands that dotted the coastline, each new peak we landed on meant another heli flight over another sun-dappled, gold-plated fjord or inlet. Slowly we joined the dots across Hamburgerland and on into unskied territory, leaving behind us only the ephemeral scars of snowboards in the snow.

Naming a first descent became a game, not as easy as it first appears and riddled with rules for the first timer. A peak to sea descent finished at a rocky shore on which lay a large piece of ice that had calved from one of the many glaciers around the fjord. It’s resemblance to an open-jawed shark leant the descent the title ‘shark-head’ and Pete duly scribed the name onto the map. Late in the day, with one group already returned to Kangaamuit, it was the light on a particular chute that caught our eye as we waited for the thud-thud of the returning heli blades. Looking up at the perfect couloir, it had to be ridden before the aging day relinquished its hold on the perfect Arctic light. On his return we suggested it to Bent; the LZ was tricky, probably just a toe-in for the heli without a proper landing spot on the ridge. He grinned and we knew it was on. He’d caught the bug good and proper. It was James and Johno’s call, after all they were the ones testing the deodorant and while we shot from below, James dropped in first to write his signature down the 1000m long chute. Ten minutes later we had regrouped and the map had a new scrawl of ink across it; ‘Piggie’s paradise’. James is after all a glutton for the best things in life, and this descent had certainly been as close to paradise as you’re likely to find.

We had had no idea of what to expect from Greenland, but it hadn’t taken long to realise that it isn’t all Igloos and Polar bears, at least not down on the south west coast. Sure, the igloos are there somewhere, along with the polar bears if you go looking for them, but the people of Kangaamuit lived in warm houses with electricity and coffee percolators and all the comforts of home. Or most comforts atleast; there are no flushing toilets on the little island, a fact that would it seem, cause as much anxiety in one of the journalists as the concept of being eaten alive by a nomadic, wandering Polar bear a little too far South for comfort.