The Store Glacier in Western Greenland is one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world. When I say fast, I mean fast for a glacier. Store can move up to 20m per day.
Back in 2016, I visited Store as part of a documentary crew hoping film a dramatic calving event - when enormous chunks of ice break away from a glacier, creating icebergs.
I was working with Director Adam Chapman as the aerial film crew, and we were on our way to meet the rest of the team, who had already set up camp by the glacier. But when we landed in Kangerlussuaq, our helicopter was nowhere to be seen. In fact, it wasn’t even in Greenland; it was stuck in bad weather on Baffin Island, hundreds of kilometres away.
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It was July, the height of summer, when the glacier is at its fastest, and therefore most likely to calve. Calving events occur, on average, every 3-4 weeks. Every day we spent at the airport risked us missing the only event that would happen during our shoot.
We spent nearly two weeks in the tiny airport, drinking a lot of tea and playing a lot of cards, before the chopper finally arrived. Thankfully, no major calving events took place during our unexpected detainment.
As we flew down the ice sheet and the glacier came into view, we were taken aback by its sheer scale. At more than 11km long and 100m tall, it was like something out of Game of Thrones.
This vast wall of ice continues down to the ‘foot’ of the glacier, some 400m below the surface. For the most part, the whole scene is quiet and serene, but during a calving event, the foot breaks free and rushes to the surface like a monster from the deep, and all hell breaks loose.
I say quiet and serene, but glaciers make constant groans and cracks, which constantly woke us up during the shoot. It was also the time of the Midnight Sun, so the days rolled into night and the night into days. The only delineation of time was a shadow that was cast across the front of the glacier for five hours of the day.
We had joked that the calving would probably happen on the final day, in a massive icy cliche. But by the middle of the afternoon on the final day, still nothing had happened. We were sitting by the helicopter playing Top Trumps, and were about to give up.
Suddenly, we noticed the ‘nose’ of the glacier seemed to be sitting at a different angle. Then ice started falling unmistakably from the face, a sign the foot was about to detach.
“GO! GO! GO!”
The ground crew sprinted down the hill to their cameras, while Adam and I jumped into the chopper and headed right into the action.
The first shot I wanted to get was looking down the face from above. We positioned the helicopter above the edge where we had seen the falling ice, and sure enough, the whole edge collapsed below us. It gave us a weird sense of vertigo as the ‘ground’ dropped away and crashed into the water below, sending tidal waves rolling in all directions and shooting huge plumes of water and ice back up towards the camera.
With the first shot in the bag, the second shot I wanted was the same action, but this time from the face onto the wall. Again, the ice gave way right on cue.
But our smugness was short-lived. This time, the resulting plume of water, along with truck-sized chunks of ice, shot beyond the top of the ice wall and continued above the helicopter. Our pilot was forced to perform sudden and dramatic evasive manoeuvres to avoid the chopper being bombarded by the ice on its return journey.
It was an adrenaline-filled wake-up call. We realised in an instant that, had we attempted the first shot on this fall, we would have been knocked clean out of the sky.
But we had little time to dwell on what-could-have-beens. All along the glacier, the ice was collapsing and 500-metre tall mountains of ice were emerging from below the surface as far as the eye could see.
Some rolled and tumbled while others emerged, then collapsed entirely into tiny blocks of ice and sank. It seemed to defy physics.
We were right in among the action, dodging between the icebergs as they formed, rolling in clouds of mist and snow in the golden twilight of the midnight sun. It was like witnessing the birth of a new world.
It was only later, safely back on the ground, that we realised just how lucky we had been – not only to witness such an event, but to survive it. A sober reminder never to underestimate the power of nature.
The event also proved an useful educational exercise in expletives for the French Canadian pilot, who claimed to have learned more swear words in those precious 20 minutes than he had in his entire life. You’re welcome Canada!
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Photos by Sophie Lanfear
