Canada can be a quirky place. We were so fortunate to have NatHab adventure-guide extraordinaire, Katrina, let us in on some local secrets. On a Polar Rover, you can be traversing the tundra for long periods with only the random islands of wind-blown white spruce to break up the landscape. There are a few tricks Kat employed to keep us all awake, engaged, and laughing. Here’s a round-up of some of my favorite moments:
The Bear-walk. In a demo none of us will forget, Kat moved through the rover explaining the anatomy of a Polar Bear’s amble.
What exactly is Poutine? A typical Canadian dish of French fries covered in cheese curds and gravy. Must tastier than it sounded, I still deem the photo too unappetizing to post; better to keep it in your imagination.
Tundra bingo. We had some spirited competition marking off our newfound sightings. A suspiciously high number of the group proclaimed themselves victorious.
Miss Piggy is a wrecked plane from the ‘70s that, in typical Churchill style, is now a tourist attraction. The three men on board survived and were all found later in a local bar.
Great White Bear Polar Rover driver Val, gave us all Tundra Passports to help us follow our route (it’s hard to believe they know where the trails are) through land, water, and ice. It gave us a nice way to record what we saw when and where, a perfect aide since we saw so much wildlife.
The Polar Rover. A uniquely and locally designed vehicle, 55’ long and as wide as it is high at 14’. Tires are 5’ high and 3’ wide, to keep the 30,000-pound machine from getting stuck. Heated, well-stocked, and with a bathroom on board, it was our home-away-from-home. And Val really knows how to make good hot chocolate.
The 9 AM weather broadcast to his drivers by the owner of Great White Bears, is a kick. Like many people we met here, he obviously has a big personality. Each day he concludes the report with a crazy made-up song.
White Arctic Foxes, which we did not see have 130 hairs per inch. We did see red and silver fox which now sadly, compete in the territory.
Potato chips on the tundra. Polar Bear coloring is aptly described by the naturalists here, as like (plain) potato chips. It’s a perfect adjective and we soon learned to spot them against the white snow and rocky shoreline.
Pizza with two toppings. Code used among the rover drivers to indicate sighting of a mother Polar Bear with two cubs. We saw that combo from the air, on land we saw single cubs and mothers (mothers with single cubs are trending), like this duo. This big cub is likely a two-year-old male, explaining why he is about as large as his mom. In another few months, he’ll be on his own and she will breed again.
I finally know how to pronounce ptarmigan. And we saw lots of those cute white, furry-footed little birds.
A bear alarm siren sounds off every night at 10 PM, warning residents to either stay in, move around in groups, or be aware of any intruding Polar Bears.
Graffiti Alley along the coastal road, has dozens (if not hundreds) of names and messages illegally painted on the 2 billion-year-old Greywacke boulders.
CBD balm, anyone? The colorful manager of the helicopter service we flew with has her own concoction to help arthritis. When I heard this, my ears pricked up. I tried it and it did seem to help my hands. She doesn’t sell it because she just wants to help people, so she gives anyone interested the recipe to make their own batch . . . just not sure about the type and amount of that one key ingredient.
Nanaimo Bars are a new chocolate treat to me. Super-rich, this dessert consists of 3 layers: a wafer, nut & coconut crumb base, custard icing in the middle, topped with chocolate ganache. I saw even the healthy ones among us enjoying a taste.
When you see a Polar Bear in its wild, natural setting something comes over you. You forget your annoying facemask, stiff limbs from waiting, and the cold – nothing else matters. I lost count, but thankfully someone in our wonderful group of 15, kept track . . . we have had 21 bear sightings during our two days on the tundra with Nat Hab!
Today we watched bears amble across the snow, spar with one another, sleep in the willow, forage among the kelp along the shore of Hudson Bay, and come check us out in our Great White Bear Polar Rover.
Fate has thrown us together with 13 very compatible, interesting fellow bear-lovers on this adventure. All guided by Katrina who has kept us on track, educated, and entertained every step of the way. I will go into more detail about the many other quirky, unique, and interesting experiences we’ve had on our trip in a follow-up post.
These trips only run for six weeks in the fall, while the bears are transitioning back to the ice that will soon form on Hudson Bay. Once there, they will resume seal-hunting and fatten-up, regaining the 30% of their weight lost since the ice melted last June. A big percentage of the world’s Polar Bears, 850-950, return to this region annually and when they arrive fat and happy, males can be as large as 1,500 lbs, with females about half that size. Their paws are about 12” and when we weren’t seeing bears, we were seeing their tracks everywhere in the fresh snow.
At the end of the day, we were honored to see another female with her COY (cub of the year). The duo stayed some distance and the mother seemed a bit tentative, maybe she could smell a male somewhere nearby. A male would be a big threat and will kill unrelated cubs. We only saw single cubs and sightings of multiple births have not been seen as frequently as in the past. Cubs stay with their mother for up to two and a half years, resulting in males like we spotted yesterday, that can be as large as their mother.
It was another amazing day.
We saw the first Polar Bears, a mother and cub, appear out of the morning fog – it was mystical and magical. As the day with Nat Hab progressed, our Great White Bear Polar Rover plowed through ice and uneven terrain on the tundra in the Churchill Wildlife Management Area, and got the job done. We saw some bears more than once and lost track of how many sightings. Most of my time was spent behind binoculars, not a camera, but these are my favorite shots of the day. Enough said!
We made it to Churchill!
Our flight north from Winnipeg to Churchill was close to three hours due to headwinds. The landscape we flew over was strikingly alien -looking to this Florida girl. We arrived to find an unseasonably sunny, gorgeous day, with temps in the upper 20s to low 30s and no wind at ground level.
We are traveling with Natural Habitat Adventures, a premier company for wildlife tours. Our enthusiastic, informative guide Katrina planned for us to have our first trip on the sub-Arctic tundra for sunset and dinner in our rover, but none of us expected we would end up being treated to such an amazing display of the Northern Lights. Even our local driver could not stop taking pics. The lights started out golden, reds showed up through the camera lens, and they just kept getting bigger and more dramatic, filling the sky all around us. It’s true, the colors are greatly enhanced by the camera. As the lights grew they danced and flowed, alternating between appearing like a sci-fi special effect one minute to a smooth glissando on a piano keyboard the next. At one point we had a light arc above us that was as amazing to experience as it was impossible to record.
The pic above was shot with my hand held iPhone, from our vehicle’s open window. To get pics like the pros you need some serious equipment, a tripod, patience, and luck. We hit the jackpot as far as luck goes.
Not to be overlooked, we got to go dog sledding today, completing the “Iditamile”and it was such fun. Once again we were in luck, since it snowed recently and they have only been able to start using the sleds the last couple of days.
Big Dog Dave and his family are multigenerational indigenous Métis who run Wapusk Adventures. Dave is a champion dog-musher who has about 40 dogs and he gave a very interesting presentation about his family’s history as well as the art and science of caring for and training sled dogs. He also loaned me his great fur hat for our ride.
Tomorrow is a big day since we will head out very early to search for Polar Bears. So, I’ll close with a couple of pics and call it a night.
