DAY TWO: Tugtup agtakôrfia-I & Tunulliarfik

Day Two begins with brilliant sunshine and a cloudless blue sky. Today we're slated to use the boat and explore two locations along Tunulliarfik fjord.

Peter is expected late this morning to collect us, allowing a nice leisurely start (what’s the rush when the sun’s always out?). Aching from the hardships of the night before, I'm already anxious to break the bad collecting streak suffered last night. Surely I'll find some nice things today.

The truck arrives at 10 a.m. and we pile our gear in and drive off for the dock. A few minutes stowing everything and we are underway. The sunshine is gorgeous—icebergs incongruous in the warm summer air.

We round the point, and head back up Tunulliarfik fjord. Soon, the cliffs on either side become that characteristic gray again, indicating we are within the Ilímaussaq intrusion. We keep towards the left (northern) shore. Peter looks carefully at the shoreline, turns the wheel, and brings the small boat in to a point formed by a jumble of black rock. We carefully exit and haul our gear out, delicately stepping across the point’s wet boulders, and right, on to a rocky shore.

Last year Howie and his son were brought to a spot apparently near where we now stood, and managed to collect a few specimens of a very interesting mineral: it has three distinct fluorescent responses. Under long-wave UV it glows apricot orange; under mid-wave UV bright white; and under short-wave UV it glows a pinkish-peach color.

He’d only found a few pieces but suspects there is more.

I look around at the imposing cliffs above and was thankful we were not (then) planning to climb them. I ask Howie if we were in the right spot but he just looks off, down the shoreline, and starts walking. In a few minutes Howie is almost out of sight, and Mark and I give chase.

We find him a few meters from the water’s edge hammering on a white outcrop below some black, slate-like cliffs (a well-laminated lujavrite). Howie has already taken his barbeque grill cover out and is well into collecting fever. Clearly this was the place.

I sit down to his left—just out of range of his hammer—but not so far away as to be in different rock, and begin exploring in earnest. A quick reconnaissance with UV light confirms that there are spots and grains of the peculiar fluorescent mineral in question, though it is practically indistinguishable from barren white rock in daylight. The hammer starts swinging.

Mark circles us both, poking and prodding the surrounding rock, before finally settling in just to my left, closer to the lujavrite wall above, but still within the white rock band that roughly parallels shoreline. As luck would have it this day, the section I’ve settled into is the only one containing significant amounts of the odd mineral. Within an hour I amass a nice pile of fine specimens.

To either side the mineral’s concentration is sparse. Howie finds a few good samples, but Mark virtually none. For the only time during the trip, Mark asks, “hey, how come you’re not moving off that spot”? What a question. After the famine of the night before, now, there is feast. By noon I'm ready to pack up and call it a day. I have all I can carry.

We haul our bounty and gear back to the rocky beach and enjoy a quick lunch in the warm sunshine. Icebergs float past in the blue waters of the fjord. After lunch Mark and Peter announce there's a second spot we must visit. They point up. Oh no! The cliffs loom hundreds of meters above and the scree slope leading up is very steep—far steeper than last night's foray up Taseq slope.

Both assure us that our target is well under the steepest cliff sections and not all that far away. Reluctantly, I agree to check it out, and begin to follow up. Howie at first declines, preferring to rest by the shoreline, but soon follows and overtakes me as I climb up over the loose boulders. The sun is bright. It is a gorgeous day up here.

The water below is a beautiful shade of blue and as icebergs slowly float past we begin to see their true subsurface size from above. Busy watching the bergs, I slip, and a short awkward fall ends one pair of pants and makes a nice red splash on my left knee, but fortunately nothing worse. Within an hour I catch up with Mark and Peter. Mark is sitting on a narrow ledge looking into a fresh cave-like excavation in a large block of white rock.

Instantly recognizable from 2 meters away: ussingite. Lovely pale-violet ussingite, scattered masses of yellow sodalite, and splotches of dark arfvedsonite, all set in the white rock. Turning around, the view of the fjord below is fantastic.

Our boat is just a small speck against the shoreline. On the far side the gray bluffs of the southern extension of the intrusion rise up from the blue water, and beyond, in the far distance stands ‘The Comb’.

I brush off a clean space and setup my UV viewing station on the ledge. There are plenty of freshly broken blocks to hammer. Most contain masses of orange fluorescing sodalite. This sodalite occurs here in very large grains—5 to 10 cm across, with mild tenebrescence, and very bright fluorescence. A few have traces of bright red fluorescing tugtupite. In daylight, I notice this tugtupite is indistinguishable in the white rock. An hour of breaking rocks and I find several large specimens that also contain glassy-white chkalovite.

This chkalovite has an uneven green fluorescence under shortwave UV, and is rimmed by a 1-3 mm thick “rind” of bright red fluorescing tugtupite.

I wonder what Howie has found, as he’d outpaced me on the ascent and had traversed above the grassy patch we’d moved under. A few meters up and to the right, I find him furiously hammering away at the base of an outcrop of the white rock, chips flying in all directions. The distinctive pink of solid tugtupite beneath hammer swings makes plain the reason for his determination.

I explore a few meters further up and to the right and find Peter, resting on a ledge made in part of lavender ussingite.

Returning to the small cave I’d started with, I find Mark squatting in “my” spot, hammering away. With effort, he manages to find a few excellent, large, brightly fluorescent specimens I’d missed. Drat.

By now I’ve collected my fill—I can carry no more, and it is time to go. Peter shows us the way back down: a steep ravine leading down to the right, to a grassy slope below, and then the rocky shoreline beyond. At the very start of the descent Peter stops and points to a spot in the rock forming the top of the ravine. Through the dirt I can see bright pink: more tugtupite, but solidly in place. Much work would be needed to extract specimens from here. Work for some other day.

We descend and rest twice along the way, looking back up towards the ledge system we’d worked, and at the talus-littered slope that lies beneath it. I notice some of the rocks here are white too—the sort we focused on higher up. I stick two likely looking samples in my pockets (backpack is full), and continue the slog downwards. Howie will later return to this slope to good effect.

We make shore by 6:30 p.m., in bright sun and blue sky.

At night, back at the Rock Hut, we compare results from the day’s efforts.

Howie has collected a few good specimens of the odd tri-color fluorescent mineral from the morning work along shore. Mark recovered the best and brightest from the outcrop high above, where I’d managed a few fine, if small, bright specimens. I had many good specimens of the tri-color mineral, and Howie shows us a plastic box filled with what looks like aquarium gravel. Chips. He explains that the outcrop he’d been pounding high on that ledge never relented. He’s taken back the chips as souvenirs of the effort.

It has been an extremely productive day. Yesterday's meager results already a distant memory.

Tonight I sleep the sleep of the dead.

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