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.
The Plan
Our plan (which my wife keeps calling ““““The”””” ““““““Plan““““““ with many sarcastic air quotes) goes like this:
Fly from Boston via Reykjavik to Ilulissat, near the middle of Greenland’s west coast in Disko Bay. The airport radar in Ilulissat is currently being upgraded, so while it will be possible to get in and out of there much more reliably in the future, at the moment it’s somewhat less so. No travel in fog or bad weather, so this is already our first unknown. You can easily spend a week waiting in Ilulissat for fog to clear.
Assuming we can get to Ilulissat, we’ll fly from there to Qaanaaq, the northernmost large settlement in Greenland and one of the northernmost civilian-inhabited places in the world, at 77°28”N. Qaanaaq has a population of about 600, so it’s fairly cosmopolitan by Arctic standards.
In Qaanaaq we’ll raid an old U.S. military Quonset hut where numerous expeditions and outfitters have stored kayaks and gear. There are four of us altogether—Jack has his own boat there, and knows of a tandem we can take. The Frenchman, Ben, will rent a boat from a Qaanaaq local. We’re hoping there are sufficient kayak skirts and paddles and any other miscellaneous gear we need. We’ll also need to rent a couple of rifles, in case of polar bears.
If you’re keeping track, so far zero of these plan elements are a sure thing. But assuming we get to point four: now we need to hire a couple of narwhal hunters with power boats to transport us 100 miles north to Etah. We have a local fixer who is already on the case, but whether we can find two hunters who are free for the overnight journey depends on whether there are narwhals around for them to be hunting instead or not, as well as (like every other point in this plan) the weather.
If fog, whales, hunters, and weather all cooperate, and we still have at least two weeks or so left before our return flights, and we found enough paddling gear, we will travel to Etah and spend a day or two exploring, if possible, weather permitting and the good lord wills it, inshallah.
Then we set off paddling south, attempting to pick a good weather window to round Cape Alexander, which is pretty much the crux of the whole trip.
Keep paddling south—for one or two more days south of Cape Alexander the weather is more likely to be a factor. But further southeast toward Inglefield Fjord, we’ll be increasingly out of the main wind and current channel.
About halfway back to Qaanaaq is the village of Siorapaluk, population 50 or so. There’s a grocery store there, and we’ll be able to resupply if necessary. I’m told they have ice cream! This is also our bail-out point, if time or weather require it. We could get a boat ride from Siorapaluk back to Qaanaaq if we have to.
Ideally by paddle, but by motor if necessary, return the rest of the way to Qaanaaq.
My return flight departs Qaanaaq on August 6th, and I aim to be on it!
A wider view of the whole route, via Google Maps. Starred, from north to south, are Etah, Siorapaluk, and Qaanaaq.
Alternate Plans
Obviously there are a wild number of maybes here. The plan above is the “everything lines up just right” plan. Alternate plans include potentially chartering a ride up to Etah just for a visit, and returning with the hunters. Inglesfield Fjord, where Qaanaaq is located, is full of gorgeous paddling. We could take a boat as far as Siorapaluk and paddle back from there. We’re all committed first to keeping ourselves safe and healthy and returning with a good story—beyond that the only firm plan is: go to Qaanaaq and do something.
The Team
Jack Soley: Jack is a real estate developer and adventurer who lives on Peaks Island and also Western Island, in Penobscot Bay. Jack is, according to the New York Times, “a former kayak and sailing instructor for Outward Bound.”
Benoit Chausson: Ben is a French mountain guide and kayak guide. He and Jack met on a beach near Qaanaaq, when they were both up there paddling, and stayed in touch, eventually hatching the plan for this expedition together. In the Antarctic season, Ben guides for a cruise line, and in the Arctic summer he often guides trips in Greenland. He is just wrapping up a trip in Ilulissat before he meets us in Qaanaaq.
Donatus Stehle: Our fourth teammate is Donatus, a German who has likely spent more time in the Arctic than any of us. Donatus is our guide to the geography and anthropology of the region. He’s not an academic but has studied the region extensively on his own, and done a number of guided kayak trips in northwest Greenland and Arctic Canada.
Rusty Foster: And of course, last and very much least: me. I am not, on paper, especially qualified for this trip. I’ve never been to the Arctic. I haven’t done a kayak trip this long anywhere. I have been paddling for twenty five years, in all kinds of ocean conditions, and Today on Trail readers know I’ve spent a lot of time outdoors facing the various challenges the outdoors has brought me.
But back in December, on that first Zoom call, Ben wasn’t initially convinced of our soul connection. We arranged a one-on-one Whatsapp call the day after Christmas so that I could answer his questions. He asked if I have done kayak trips, and I told him about paddling and camping here in Casco Bay. Then he asked about my general experience, and I told him I’m a mountain rescue volunteer here in Maine, and that I had just finished hiking the Appalachian Trail. He asked how long that trip was, and I said “uh… six and a half months?” There was a long pause, and then he said: “Oh!” It turns out he wasn’t particularly familiar with the A.T., so I told him about it—that it’s 2,200 miles along the U.S. east coast, and climbs many of the highest mountains in the Appalachian range, and even more of the most average mountains in it as well.
That did it. “Now I know you are a mountain guy,” he said. “I can take a mountain guy and we go anywhere, because I know they are strong in the mind.” Hell yeah, brother. I was in.
Me, being strong in the mind on a day that was a lot colder than that bluebird sky would make you think.
So that’s the story. My giant rolling duffel bag is packed, we leave on Sunday, and after that who knows what happens. I won’t have any way to post when we’re out there, so my plan is to keep a journal (and keep reminding myself that it’s only three weeks, so not to be lazy about keeping a journal) then write about it when I get back home. I hope this will end up being a kind of Today on Trail Season 2, but I truly don’t know what will happen so no promises.
While we’re out there I’ll be tracking our progress with my inReach, and if you’d like to follow along, and help defray some of my up-front costs for all this, all you need to do is become an Expedition Sponsor by upgrading right here. It’s one payment only, not an ongoing subscription, and literally pay what you want—as little as $1.00 (although if you do pay $1.00 you’re basically just paying a dollar to Stripe, fyi). Upgrade for any price whatsoever and I’ll send you the link to track where we are, and you will have achieved your lifelong dream of sponsoring an Arctic expedition. This also low-key unlocks every paywalled post from Season One, if you want to go back and check out the previouslies.
Wish us luck, follow along, and I’ll be in touch when we’re back. Hit the comments if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them while I’m traveling.
