Beyond the ice: The hidden Arctic
It’s out of the way, but travelers don’t mind.
BOLSHEVIK ISLAND, Russian Arctic – As vacation destinations go, Baranov Station is a bit bleak. Located on a remote, ice-covered island deep in the Russian Arctic, the small research outpost offers such attractions as a view of weathered meteorological huts and a walk past rusted oil drums. But Alan Shenkin, 74, of Glasgow, Scotland, and his companions from the expedition ship Bremen aren’t complaining. Just setting foot on this spot – halfway along the little-traveled Arctic sea route known as the Northeast Passage – is a feat of off-thebeaten-path travel. More people get to the North Pole each year than get here. “There’s something special about traveling to a place that has been so rarely explored,” says Shenkin, gazing across an ice-clogged coastline that wasn’t even known to the world until a 1913 polar expedition. “I’ve been to many out-of-the-way places, but never something like this.”
Operated by Germany-based HapagLloyd Cruises, the 155-passenger Bremen is one of the first western cruise ships to carry travelers across the Northeast Passage, which connects Europe to the Far East by way of the icy Arctic seas at the top of Russia.
Until just the last decade or so, traveling across the waterway meant a trip in a Russian icebreaker – or a ship following one. But rapidly shrinking ice coverage across the Arctic, driven by climate change, is making it more accessible to traditional cruise vessels – at least those that are “ice-strengthened” to operate in such regions. In addition to Hapag-Lloyd, at least three more western cruise lines with expedition ships plan to offer voyages across the Northeast Passage in the coming years.
Not that the route ever will be mainstream. Even as it becomes more accessible, it’s just too far off the grid. Setting off from Tromso, Norway, long a hub for Arctic exploration, Bremen travels for four weeks and more than 4,000 miles without passing a single town where it can resupply. The “port calls” are forlorn, wind-swept islands that as often as not are covered in thick glaciers. Bundled up is the dress code.
Still, the passengers on board are far from mainstream cruisers. Coming from 12 countries including Germany, the United States, South Africa and China, they are that rarer subset of travelers willing to endure sometimes harsh conditions including freezing temperatures to experience one of the world’s most unusual environments.
“is why we came here,” says Hal Osteen, 75, of Boulder, Colorado, as Bremen plows through a field of floating ice in the East Siberian Sea.
Standing at Bremen’s bow in full winter gear with his wife, Midge, the selfdescribed “Arctic junkie” is almost giddy with excitement as he watches the ice- rated vessel slice through meaty chunks of year-old ice with ease.
The landscape of the Arctic, he notes, “is primordial, powerful, raw.”
Indeed, stretching across 14 time zones, the Northeast Passage is an otherworldly and, at times, forbidding place. Crossing it involves navigating five frigid seas – the Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi – that in some parts traditionally freeze over during much of the year and only partially thaw during brief weeks of summer. Along the way, sometimes spread apart by hundreds of miles, are glaciertopped, often mountainous archipelagos and island groups that range from desolate to delightful.
The trip kicks off with a landing along the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya, a finger-like archipelago where fields of lichen-stained rocks and ground-hugging saxifrage are typical of the region. There is an austere beauty, which passengers soak in during a hike led by a local ranger carrying a rifle for protection against polar bears. This far north, nothing grows more than a couple inches off the ground, and the wildlife is sparse. One group spots Arctic terns, known for their great migrations from the Arctic to Antarctica and back; another discovers a cluster of kittiwakes.
Seeing the Arctic’s iconic wildlife – not just polar bears but Arctic fox, walrus, seals and muskox – is a big allure, but so too is seeing historic sites related to the region’s early exploration. At Hooker Island in Franz Josef Land, passengers wander around the clapboard structures of Tichaya Station, a major base for polar expeditions. Built by the Soviets in 1929, it is located at the edge of a glacier-lined bay visited 15 years earlier by the ill-fated Sedov Expedition to the North Pole. A wooden cross on a hill marks the grave of one of Sedov’s men who died of scurvy.
It wasn’t until 1932 that a vessel went through the Northeast Passage in a single season.
Tourism in the Northeast Passage is a more recent phenomenon. While a few Russian vessels have taken travelers across the waterway, it wasn’t until 2014 that a western cruise vessel transited the route. The voyage took place on Hapag-Lloyd’s 175-passenger Hanseatic, a sister to Bremen, and Hapag-Lloyd remains the only western cruise line that has operated such a trip. The current sailing is its fourth.
Like other long-distance voyages, the trips feature a number of sea days where there is little to do except watch for seabirds, and even on days when landings are scheduled, the stops can be brief. In addition, the severe environment of the Arctic means its carrying capacity for wildlife is limited.
Still, on this trip, there are plenty of moments of wonder. And for many passengers, it is the very act of transiting the waterway that is the greatest allure of the voyage.