Last night I dinned on caribou steak at the Row Club, one of the fanciest restaurants in Kangerlussuaq. The restaurant's windows overlook a valley of grey, sheer granite cliffs. At the base of the cliffs is Lake Ferguson, whose waters are fed by melting ice from the Greenland sheet. The meal was a celebration of the imminent completion of the NGRIP project and to welcome the assembled VIPs and journalists, who were scheduled to leave for the NGRIP drilling site that evening. Before dinner, Sune Rasmussen, a Copenhagen University graduate student and a logistics coordinator with the Danish project, announced that the drill had reached 3078 meters below the surface of the ice sheet. And earlier in the week, a scientist using special radar had estimated that the glacier was about 3085 meters. Since the project was drilling about 5 meters a day, it was possible the drill would hit bottom while I was at the site. After dinner and with no obvious announcement or sign, everyone left the Row Club and filed out the door. They boarded a motley fleet of pickups, vans and SUVs in the parking lot -- it was time to go the airport. The passenger lounge at the National Guard operations center is nothing more than a dimly lit conference room with a few metal chairs and a folding table. On the wall, opposite the entrance, is a fanciful mural with dragons and Vikings in shades of green. Within an hour, a National Guardsman in a green flight suit announced bad cross winds had made it too dangerous to take off. The trip was rescheduled for the following night. THE FLIGHT TO GREENLAND ARRIVAL ANTICIPATION THE DRILLING SITE STRIKING BOTTOM TASIILAQ - GREENLAND VILLAGE GREENLAND TO GREENLAND, VIA ICELAND SLEDGE PATROL NEW DIGS Vikings | Inuit | Wildlife | Ice Cores | Dispatches | Teacher Guides | Credits © Copyright 2003, WBUR