October 31
Good Morning
We ventured north again on the weekend. A 4 am wake up call, a 4:30 am departure to the airport and a 6:30 am flight from Edmonton to Churchill delivered us to Canada’s Polar Bear capital for an adventurous day.
Once we arrived at Churchill, we boarded a tundra buggy to head east of town along the Hudson Bay coast. The annual life cycle of polar bears is opposite of the bears further south. Polar bears eat in the winter, mainly feeding off ring seals they catch on the ice. When the ice melts in the spring, they return to land and don’t eat for four months, unless they are lucky and find some washed up whale.
Churchill is located close to the area where the sea ice first forms in the fall. A combination of cold sea currents coming from the north and a high volume of fresh water entering the bay from the Churchill and other rivers produces the early ice. So the polar bears congregate in the area waiting for the ice to form.
The tundra buggies are large four wheel drive vehicles with huge tire that seat about 40 people. Think of a bus with dune buggy wheels. They have a top speed of about 10 mph and it takes them about an hour to reach the area that the bears are. They cross large puddles and partially frozen ponds and bounce back and forth across the land. The landscape is the mostly rolling barren land barren with small trees and willows. It is where the boreal forest meats the tundra and is called tiaga.
We were lucky and got to see 5 bears up close and a couple in the distance. Only one of the bears was on move. The rest were laying around waiting for the ice. We watched on bear while we were having lunch for over an hour and it only raised its head a couple times to shift position to sleep the day away. It was stil there when we went by 3 hours later
The highlight of the day was seeing a mother and cub close to the tundra buggy The cub was a typical youngster, wanting to play while its Mom wanted to rest. It provided us with lots of entertainment chewing on willows, rolling around and snuggling with its mother.
We also saw willow ptarmigan in their winter plumage and some snow buntings that were yet to leave for their warm southern winter spots in Alberta and Saskatchewan,
We ended the day in Churchill with some shopping and a diner hosted a the community centre. We flew back to Edmonton, arrived home at 11 pm, went to bed and slept soundly until the alarm woke us up Monday morning to start the week.
Stay Well !
Click on photos to see full size
