The Northwest Passage: A Journey Across the Roof of the World

Entering Conningham Bay, the tide required judging to perfection. It was a biting, cold morning when Ian, the pilot of our zodiac inflatable, paused in choppy swell at the shallow entrance of this horseshoe-shaped bay. He revved the engine with the next tidal surge, and we crested through. The bay inside was vegetation-less; its glacial shattered rocks harboured little pockets of diminishing snow. It was along the foreshore. However, our interest was piqued—dozens of whitened skeletons of beluga whales.

We weren’t here for an anatomy class, though. Conningham Bay present the best opportunity in Arctic Canada’s Northwest Passage to see polar bears. Hungry ones, too. For the beluga that swims into this bay, it can be a death trap because when the tide ebbs, they may become stranded in the shallows, and the bears pounce for a fatty, easy meal. ‘There’s something on the shoreline at one o’clock,” called Ian, our zodiac driver. He doesn’t rev hard but pootles slowly towards a large male bear. The bear’s nuzzle is still stained red from a recent meal. He watches us impassively around 100 metres away as we photograph him and whisper our excitement. Eventually, he turns inland and vanishes. Ian suggests he’ll be back to look for another meal when the tide has drained, long after we are ensconced back on our warm expedition ship. 

It wasn’t long ago that traversing the Northwest Passage was the quest of gnarled explorers, some of whom would never leave this perishingly harsh environment. The inimitable Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was credited with the first traverse in 1905. He had completed a holy grail that has been ongoing for several hundred years: forging a high northern hemisphere passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. 

It seems remarkable, given the deprivations the explorers endured, that it is now possible to transit the passage in style and comfort. It’s a short season, between late July and early September, to make the transit, even despite research showing Arctic sea ice is decreasing fast. A NASA report awhile back found a 45cm thinning of ice between 2019-21, a loss of 16% volume. Yet even now, a successful transit is no certainty, and since 2018, there have been a couple of summer seasons when the sea ice has been impenetrable to pass through. The Northwest Passage does not yield easily for either person or vessel.