新媒网 · 跨境数据社区

Ice is something I don’t know anything about. I don’t know ice is so hard. Paddling a kayak through a sea of ice is like avoiding floating rocks. The kayaks don’t punch over them - since most of the ice are underwater, even a flat piece of ice has more mass than a kayak. The kayaks also don’t push these ice away. Using your paddle to jab at ice will likely break it. What often happens is the ice will deflect the kayaks into a different direction. There are also so many different types of ice. The inuits have more than 30 words to describe different types of ice and snow. A lump of ice to me is a lump of ice , but …. Sermimineq - Lump of ice from ice on land Nilak - Lump of ice (fresh water) found in open water Qerutit - Lumps of ice frozen together Tullut - Lumps of ice which has been blown together by wind In english, icebergs are anything bigger than me, there are slurpee ice, flat ice sheets, tuck lee ice blocks, etc … all these are describing ice is different stages of melting or ways of formation. Ice is not white. It appears to us in different colours. Icebergs are pressurised snow (think using your hands to press snow together but at manifold the pressure), known as glacier ice, and this appears white to us. This is due to the bubbles trapped between the compressed ice crystals. I am astonish to see that some ice appears green or blue! And when I see those for the first time, it was incredible that ice could come in different colours other than transparent and white (later I was also introduced to black ice). The green and blue ice , often visible as bands of colours underneath the white ice, is formed by freezing of bubble-free melt water in the former crevasses in the glacier. Ice when broken, creates waves, but ice, especially large icebergs also blocks waves. The sea we paddle through is still, often like a mirror. It is also very quiet, we hear a speedboat coming and once it gets behind an iceberg, we hear nothing, until it reappears. When the sun is shinning, some of the ice melts faster. The water drip into the sea. We can collect these dripped water to drink, pure glacial water! When the sun is not shinning, the ice somehow shines brighter than the sky. When the wind is blowing, even with the sun shinning, it feels colder as the ice acts like a coolant for the passing wind. Paddling through ice, the wind is the most unknown variable. If there are many broken ice pieces, the way is not clear. The wind constantly move the pieces of ice. The lead kayaker breaks out a path and the rest follow like ducklings. It happens a few times when the kayaks further behind the group have to take a different route as the wind closes the cleared path with a mass of float ice. In the worst case scenario, we could easily be encircled by the wind blown ice , trapped by ice. We can’t walk on ice to get out of an ice trap and would have to radio for help. Everyday the ice changes in forms and shapes, and it feels like paddling through different scenery every time we paddle out. #ice #ilulissat #greenland #arctic #kayaking