Day 36

The temperature plummets overnight and the day dawns very cold but with perfect visibility. Even before most people emerge from their tents Marcus immediately spots a tiny white nipple on the horizon that can only be the main dome of DYE III. There is an excited buzz around the team as we get ready for the off in temperatures touching -26 with wind chill, in reality no one wants to hang around in those temperatures any more than necessary.

Sat phone call to JACO completed I lead off for the first pull of the day keen to confirm the ‘Nipple’ really is Dye III and not an optical illusion. Fortunately, the cold snap has frozen the top layer of snow hard and going is good, so much so the front man can set off with both pulks again. We make great progress and soon the nipple has grown to definite dome. Still, it takes four full and fast pulls before we crest the final snow slope up to the station. The view comes as quite a shock. It’s not buried but it’s not far off.

DYE III was a substantial radar facility abandoned in 1990 and now the icecap is doing its best to reclaim it. Over a hundred feet above the foot of the structure a wooden walkway runs around the base of the main dome. The walkway is now 20 ft below where we stand with heavily corniced snow slopes overhanging it – whilst the dome still rises proud above the snow and ice, the vast majority of the base has been reclaimed.

A short snow ridge does lead across to the balcony at one point only, and with Marcus on a body belay leading the way we edge over to the base of the dome. The snow is reassuringly compacted and the ridge safe but we nevertheless rig up a rope handline in case of slips. Once at the edge of the dome a small triangular hatch gains us access to the inside. The dome itself is full of collapsed gantries and heavily iced up. Edging across the floor we identify some heavily iced up steps that lead down into the base itself.

The next hour or so is spent exploring inside the base by the light of headtorch. We are now effectively inside the icecap. Ice crusts everything and large areas are buckled by the pressures inflicted by the moving icecap but the structural integrity of the building appears sound… for now. With care we explore what can only be described as the set for an apocalyptical horror film. Bizarrely it seems as if the Americans upped and left in the space of about five minutes, leaving everything as it was. It is like stepping back in time 35 years. Christmas decorations are still up in the communal areas, books and all manner of things are left lying around on desks and in bed spaces. In the bar, tilted now at about 20 degrees, glasses, empty bottles, cigarette butts and even crisps still sit where they were left. Polaroids of previous nights in the base bar are still pinned to ice ravaged noticeboards providing a surreal snapshot into what it may have been like before the ice took over.

Imaginations thoroughly stimulated, we retreated to the hard packed snow outside and made camp in the early afternoon sun to recharge batteries physical and electronic. Tomorrow morning we start the turn south west and with any luck the downhill run to Nuuk. 270km to go.