The radio towers and derelict buildings of the former village stood high on the hill in front of us. We’d weaved around football fields of jumbled pack ice for 6 hours and were only 1km away from Killiniq but now a low flat shelf of ice blocked our path. Aborted attempts to go around it brought us back to the same 30 metre wide slab of sea ice with blue sea twinkling tantalizingly beyond. While I was wondering if the thin ice pan could take our weight, Frank jumped out onto it so fast that I didn’t see how he did it. He later told us that 2 inch thick ice will hold a man’s weight and he reckoned the pan was at least 8 inches thick, even on the crumbling edges. The rest of us were less sure. JF went first and paddled at the floe as fast as he could, his bow rising over the ice to about front hatch Level before it started to slide back into the sea. Frank grabbed his kayak and pulled it onto the ice, followed by Larry’s and mine. On the seal launch off the other side, my bow got stuck on another pan and when I tried to reverse off it my rudder jammed into the berg I’d just left. I could feel how thick the ice was as I struggled to free myself.

The ice was moving all the time, blown by the fresh westerly wind, pushed by the currents and jostled by each other. A passage through one minute was gone the next. I was last in our group weaving through a narrow corridor and I watched as 2 ice floes slid together in slow motion and closed the door to clear water right in front of me. I tried to bully my way through but was no match for several tonnes of frozen water. I backed off fearing my kayak might get crushed. Frank lept out onto the ice again and pulled me through. He told us he had walked a lot on similar ice when he rowed the northwest passage.

Safely through, we made our way to the former Inuit community of port burwell on Killiniq island. We’d been told there was an older freezer building that we could camp in and we were delighted to find it close to the water. Claw marks and an almost bashed in door showed us we weren’t the first to try to gain entry and reinforced why we wanted to sleep in there. We pried open the door, swept the floor of broken glass and moved in with our 4 kayaks and 2 tents. Larry and JF fixed the door with some old nails and set up a locking system in case any bears come by.

jF and I went for a walk around the former village, peering into the old generator building with rusty equipment, a workshop containing a rusty bulldozer and lots of rotting houses. Over 100 empty barrels of fuel lie piled on top of each other near a tip of wood and metal A fairly new satellite dish and communication antenna day higher up on the hill. The view from the village is gorgeous, looking towards McLean strait where we hope to find a way through the ice tomorrow. Everyone in the village was relocated in the 1970s and I wonder about their lives. JF and I met someone who grew up here where we paddled from Kuujjuaq to Saluit in 2017. I wonder which crumbling house was his.

It’s a great trip. Full of adventure. The ice today wasn’t really scary, but exciting. No bears yet. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.