A Path Less Traveled

Pinched between Somerset Island and the Boothia Peninsula, we were at the mercy of nature surrounded by impassable multiyear sea ice in the famously narrow Bellot Strait. This was a taste of the precarious nature of the Northwest Passage; 30hrs pass as we wait for a Canadian Icebreaker to grant us safe passage.  Time slowed down as the scene froze still, our odd scent likely wafting through the clean frigid air, and from various directions, about a dozen large male polar bears curiously wandered in the distance. Adrenaline coursed through the ship when the ice breaker finally arrived and freed us. Everyone gathered outside to watch the ice give way when we noticed a mother and two cubs making their way across the ice. It was evident she was leading her cubs away from the potential danger of the large males in the area. They carefully switch back up a 200m cliff face, near Zenith Point, the most northerly reach of continental North America. The speck of these giants against the coastline, gave scale to the goliath cliffs often truncated by the vast ocean and ice that surrounds it. The near 90 ° cliff face was not the safest or most conventional path for this young family, but slowly and surely it was a safer option than the company of the large males below. What I witnessed was a true test of determination in what was a potentially dangerous situation. It was heartwarming to see the three ‘polar dots’ of bears disappearing over top of the cliff as we continued sailing for far off Greenland.