Explore the top of the world
Cruises are a chill new way to experience the Northwest Passage
Afierce storm rages as the Ocean Endeavour curves around the northern end of King William Island. It’s only September, but already the temperature is below freezing, and the precipitation is coming down as a blizzard of snow. The wind is a piercing 50 knots. The sea is a snarl of huge waves.
In short, it’s a miserable day. But for students of polar history such as Les Williams, 67, of Duncan, British Columbia, it’s all part of the experience of a voyage into the Northwest Passage — the fabled Arctic sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific.
King William Island is roughly halfway through the icy waterway, and it was not far from its shore, in 1846, that British explorer John Franklin’s legendary expedition in search of the crossing ran into its own sort of misery, with ice closing in around his two ships. He and his 128 men were never seen again.
“This weather gives you a little taste of what those explorers were up against,” Williams says.
Chartered by tour company Adventure Canada, the 198-passenger vessel is one of a growing number of expedition cruise ships carrying intrepid travelers such as Williams into the Northwest Passage, which cuts through the maze of frozen islands at the top of Canada.
Until the past decade or so, traveling through this area remained almost as daunting as it was during Franklin’s time. But rapidly shrinking ice coverage across the Arctic, driven by climate change, is making it more accessible. This year alone, nearly half a dozen expedition ships have sailed into the passage, some of them multiple times. The waterway also recently saw its first giant cruise ship, the 1,070-passenger Crystal Serenity.
Like most of the vessels, the Ocean Endeavour isn’t making a full transit. Flying deep into the Arctic on a chartered airplane, passengers board the ship in Kugluktuk, an Inuit community toward the western end of the passage. The vessel then heads east in the direction of Greenland.
A typical cruise it isn’t. In place of Broadway-style shows and decktop amusements, there are lectures on polar bears and climate change and the local Inuit culture. The “ports” are forlorn, windswept islands that as often as not are covered in thick snow. Bundled-up is the dress code.
Still, these aren’t typical cruisers. These passengers, most of them from Canada and the United States, are willing to endure sometimes harsh conditions to experience one of the world’s last great wild places.
As is common with expedition ships, the Ocean Endeavour carries motorized rubber boats for exploring, and nearly every day of the two-week voyage brings some sort of adventure. The trip kicks off with a landing along Victoria Island, where boggy fields of lichen-covered rocks and low-lying grasses are typical of the region.
There is an austere beauty to the place, which passengers soak in during long hikes led by guides carrying rifles for protection against polar bears. This far north, nothing grows more than a few inches off the ground, and wildlife is sparse. One group spots the white ball of fluff that is the Arctic hare; another comes across a huge tundra swan. The massive mammals of the Arctic remain elusive, though not for long.
Continuing eastward, the ship soon has its first encounter with that King of the North, the polar bear. A guide spots a single male lounging on a football-field-size piece of ice. As the ship maneuvers closer, the giant marine mammal turns to the vessel, seemingly posing for photos. Dozens of cameras fire as if they are one.
Seeing the Arctic’s wildlife — not just polar bears but Arctic fox, narwhals and muskox — is high on the agenda, but so too are his- toric sites related to early explorers. At Beechey Island, where Franklin spent the winter of 1845, passengers gaze somberly at the graves of three of his men. At Somerset Island, they view a cairn built by his would-be rescuers.
Originally built in 1982 as a Baltic ferry, the Ocean Endeavour is a somewhat basic if functional vessel. Still, whatever it lacks in style is more than made up for in the programming offered on board. The ship sails with a stunning array of Arctic specialists, many leaders in their field. Offering as many as four lectures a day, they include Mark Mallory, one of Canada’s top biologists; Arctic filmmakers Julia Szucs and Steve Smith; and circumpolar archaeologist Latonia Hartery.
The Northwest Passage isn’t all passengers see. Emerging from the Canadian Arctic, the Ocean Endeavour crosses Baffin Bay to the mountainous west coast of Greenland. Sailing past huge icebergs shorn from the Greenland ice sheet, the vessel arrives at such colorful Arctic settlements as Ilulissat — home to an iceberg-jammed fjord that is a marvel of the north.
It’s a fitting end to an Arctic adventure relatively few have done.
“The Northwest Passage has been on my list for years,” says Geir Ulstein, 59, of Stavanger, Norway. “It’s a thrill to see it.”