In August 2013 we took a trip up the east coast of Baffin Island and down the southwestern corner of Greenland on a small ship. We started by flying from Ottawa to Iqaluit. We worked our way mostly north looking for bears, whales, ice and cultural history. Then we headed across to Greenland and looked mostly for whales and ice. One of the surprising things about Greenland was how much more developed it is. While all of Baffin island is thoroughly wrapped in ice most of the year, southwestern greenland is ice free year-round. Greenland also allows quite open hunting of polar bears so there are many fewer of them in Greenland.
Around Baffin Island we had great success looking for polar bears. The official count was 61 bears, with many mothers with cubs. We also saw narwal, bowhead whales, killer whales, humpback whales and fin whales. We did not see any beluga whales or walrus which was a bit of a surprise. An even bigger surprise is that we saw only one caribou and did not see any muskox until we got to Greenland.
Here are some highlights from the trip.
Our trip began in Ottawa where we spent a day to adjust to the time and to walk around the city.
The next day we took an early morning charter flight to Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut. We had a tour of the town before heading out.
Overnight we headed out Frobisher Bay, a long tapered bay with very high tides. We headed into international waters to be refueled from a tanker that normally supplies fishing boats off of Greenland. We then headed in to Noble Inlet for our first hike and our first, very distance, bear sighting.
We spent our third day watching polar bears on pack ice near Cape Hoare.
Next day we stopped at Padloping Island for a hike on shore in the morning near a former weather station that was being cleaned up. In the afternoon we took a short but interesting hike around a lake at Durban Harbour. Late in the day we had fantasic views of killer whales.
On our fifth day we hiked at Arctic Harbour in the morning and saw bowhead whales from the ship in Isabella Bay in the afternoon. We ended the day with a cruise past a 3.7km long iceberg. We counted 4 bears on the berg.
The next day started with early morning sightings of narwal in Buchan Gulf and the fjords feeding into Buchan Gulf. We saw many narwal, but unlike the killer whales, they stayed well away from the ship. We spent much of the day looking for narwal and looking at the scenery in the fjords. In the afternoon we went ashore in Fecham Bay for a hike.
Overnight we worked our way north throught Eclipse Sound to avoid the weather on Baffin Bay. In the afteroon we went ashore at Dundas Harbour on Devon Island. This was our north-most landing and the weather let us know it.
Staying near Devon Island, we spent all of the next day in sea ice in Lancaster Sound. Here we saw many bears including mothers with cubs.
The next day we turned east and headed back to Bylot Island where we cruised the bird-covered cliffs of Cape Hay in the morning and hiked near the mouth of the Kilutea River in the afternoon.
Our last stop in Canada was at Pond Inlet where we walked along the beach to the remains of a Thule settlement and were treated to a cultural show at the community center.
We spent the next day at sea crossing Baffin Bay.
Our first day in Greenland started with an amazing sunrise with an almost full moon near Qilakitsoq. In the morning we went ashore to view a Thule burrial area. In the afternoon we had good views of fin whales. In the evening we had very good views of ice with the rising full moon.
The next day we were supposed to go ashore at Ilulissat for a busy day of tours and views of the Ilulissat Glacier, the world's fastest flowing glacier. Unfortunately, the fast moving glacier dumped too much ice in the water and we could not get to the town. Instead we headed off to Disko Island where we went kayaking next to small ice bergs and the cliffs of columnar basalt. We ended the day with fin whales, humpback whales and the sun setting into a massive fog bank as we headed south.
Overnight we sailed to Sisimiut where we viewed remains from the Thule people as well as more recent whaling activity before walking around the town.
Our last stop was Kangerlussuaq, which started in World War II as an airbase used to refuel fly aircraft on their way to the UK from North America. It was used throughout the cold war by the US Airforce. In the 1990's it was turned over to the Greenlandic government and is now the largest commercial airport in Greenland. That is probably due to its good weather--the US Airforce chose the location carefully. Kangerlussuaq is also the town that is closest to the the Greenlandic icecap so we took a tour to the icecap. On the way there we saw our first arctic hare and muskox of the trip. From Kangerlussuaq we flew back to Ottawa.