For The Love of Travel

Some nasty history re the Island. The Canadian govt ‘removed’ some Inuit from another area and forced them to live on Ellesmere, as part of a ‘staking a land claim strategy’ vis a vis Norway. The Inuit were totally unprepared for the tough conditions and died within 2 years…..

A walk ashore off Grise Fjord today….we saw a little lemming….they are hardy !! animals living below the ice for months on end before they surface in the summer melt. 0 degrees with wind chill! Very barren terrain with lots of rocks to clamber over, testing one’s balance and giving the legs, particularly knees, a good work out. 

We passed the Willcox glacier on our way to Philpots Island.

‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ our entertainment tonight.

 

Up at 4.30am this morning and can’t get back to sleep. Go down to the Internet cafe and process some photos for the blog, anticipating the posts when I get to Edmonton….woo hoo!

We go ashore for a walk and it’s good to stretch the legs for 5-6 kms……more Thule hut remains to be seen, and a brown bear paw print in the estuary sand! The next best thing to seeing the bear itself. 

Deb feels good and is doing a ‘ I feel on top of the world’ pose. The other photo is of her, her husband Jim and Jean – the 3 of them have been mates from previous Lindbland voyages. We all get on very well together.

Ray, the ‘Icemaster’ was at our dinner table tonight and had lots of interesting stories to tell about Ellesmere Island (towards which we are headed) and the history of the Hudson Bay Co…..and about himself and brothers in the ship navigation game. Fascinating!

I was woken with the crunching of the ship through ice. A beautiful blue hue to the horizon this morning with the fog having lifted.

We continue through Nunavut territory waters, but we have had to reverse our pathway overnight as the Strait we were travelling through, was too frozen over. Ice charts indicate our passage to Kugluktuk is no longer possible, so we won’t catch our flight from there to Edmonton. Staff are busy organising an alternate charter in 4 days time, probably taking off from Resolute. That’s the plan today anyway.

We are now back in the Prince Regent Inlet and making our way to Croker Bay.

Wildlife sighting for the morning: a bearded seal relaxing on an ice float just in front of the ship! And afternoon: a polar bear and 2 cubs. That makes our tally 53 bears to date.

We are in the general area where Captain John Franklin’s voyage of Arctic exploration came unstuck in 1845. The combined evidence of all studies to establish what happened to Franklin and his 128 men suggests that hypothermia, starvation, disease (scurvy), along with general exposure to a hostile environment whilst lacking adequate clothing and nutrition, killed everyone on board. (Cut marks on human bones were seen as signs that cannibalism! had taken place).