Huw Thomas has made 10 trips to Greenland and loves to explore the remote parts of the arctic wilderness. In this interview Huw talks about what draws him back again and again to this challenging place, it’s wildlife and the solitude he enjoys there.
Huw Thomas grew up in Snowdonia, North Wales…UK! If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a fairly rugged area of mountains (or hills depending on your personal familiarity with bumps in the landscape)! It’s an area where Sir John Hunt brought his 1953 Everest Team to do some training before their successful expedition so it’s no walk in the park…well actually it is, the area was made a National Park in 1951!
He spent much of his youth up in this terrain, often trout fishing in the many lakes. By the time he hit his teens, he was already going night fishing alone up in those mountains. Leaving the house just before dusk and heading up into dark skies. The fishing was good at night and he often spent time just gazing up at summer night skies and wondering about all those stars, how tiny he was and about our place in the universe.
The story starts in Scotland! In 2005 Huw kept ‘leapfrogging’ with a Danish couple along the West Highland Way and during one of their passing meetings, they mentioned to him that the year before, they had walked this long-distance route in West Greenland which they had found tough but rewarding. His ears pricked up at this as he had always loved tales of the north and wondered about Greenland. He knew it was a huge island, that it was mostly covered by a thick sheet of ice, that Inuit people lived there and so forth…but it wasn’t a familiar place. It didn’t feel like a knowable place to him, it felt more like a distant land, somehow just out of reach of everyday consciousness. You never heard of much anything happening in Greenland back then. (Things have changed a lot since then with figureheads and science creating greater awareness of global warming and its much faster impacts in the Arctic). So this random and unexpected snippet of conversation lit a flame inside him…and he knew it straight away. It was there and then that he resolved to make a visit to Greenland a reality. This Danish couple had suddenly made it real, right there on his map of visitable places.
Over the next 11 months, as this stubborn flame took hold, he researched as much as he could about this hike. He knew it was called the Arctic Circle Trail (ACT) but back then, it wasn’t easy to find out much else. Today there are guidebooks, numerous online personal blogs, an official visitgreenland.com set of pages about it and also a Facebook page for the Trail (which in recent years he joined and was later made an Admin on).
In 2005 however there was precious little easily accessible information but he managed to make a contact in Sisimiut, and by e-mail, gathered as much information as he could. Still, in many kinds of detail, committing to it in July 2006 was going to be a bit of a leap into the dark (…well actually into 24hr daylight!).
Huw is happy answer any queries you may have. You can contact him through his blog HERE
Unfortunately, despite all this research, planning and expenditure, 2006 didn’t work out. He decided to abort walking the ACT from Sisimiut (on Greenland’s west coast) to Kangerlussuaq, (a small town about a 100 miles to the east at the head of a large fjord called Sondre Stromfjord). His hiking partner had become unwell and his progress painfully slow so they called it on day 4 and turned them around. He felt it would be irresponsible to push on any further…his friend did also have some spectacular blisters to add to his woes! (This was a bitter pill to swallow given that Huw had held not insignificant reservations about allowing an old friend to tag along but had relented, against his better judgment. It was a lesson he learned well and since then all his long distance hikes and much of his other activities out there, except for the goose-catching, are done alone!). Later that month, after he had returned to Kangerlussuaq, He spent about a week exploring by his self before flying home bearing a massive pall of disappointment. He was firmly resolved to return in 2007 to do the ACT…alone!
The ACT in 2006 and 2007 was Huw’s introduction to West Greenland but since then his visits are normally 3 to 5 weeks long camping trips with only 4 days spent on the ACT before he goes off into remote backcountry without trails. In some years, after walking 100+ miles east from the coast, he may be rounding up wild geese for research with a team of colleagues. Most of the time however, he walks from the coast, establishes a base in the hills and enjoys wandering extensively by himself into remote places, surveying for wild geese and generally adding to his extensive personal knowledge and familiarity with the region’s huge landscape.
You can also follow Huw on Instagram: @hiker_huw where he shares photos from his wanderings
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