Day 4: The bears have left, northern lights, & hampsters

November 15, 2012 • 1 Comment

Day 4

Weather report: Sunny and 15 below zero, with a wind chill of -23.

2 words. Polar bears and the Northern freakin’ Lights!! OK, maybe that’s more than 2 words, but tough, we’re having a BLAST!

Today was the first day on the tundra in the Polar Rovers. These are large ‘school bus’ type vehicles, with humongous tires, a back deck for viewing,, windows that open for every passenger, a heater, and are high enough up off the ground that it would be hard for a bear to climb in thru the window. Top speed is around 25 MPH, but they typically cruise at about 5-10 MPH, so it takes a while to get anywhere. Our destination was the Tundra Lodge, which is a series of similar vehicles, arranged in railway car fashion, but you can live in them for the entire length of the tour. We chose the option of staying in town and going out everyday.
Upon arriving at the lodge, there was our first bear and it got everyone very excited! Cameras were frantically clicking off photos, as everyone clamored for a view. There were several other rovers in the area, and the bear was gracious enough to wander around all of us for about an hour, giving everyone a chance to take pictures. After a while, it laid down, took a nap, but then got restless, got back up and gave us another chance at photos. At one point, I thought he might stand up and try to peek in our rover (see video), but instead he/she just headed off into the willows and disappeared. Later that day we saw another bear and spent some time with it, but in talking with our guide, it seems we’ll be lucky to see anymore on this trip
The bears congregate in Churchill this time of the year, waiting for the Hudson Bay to freeze over, and when it does, the bears immediately take off onto the ice looking for ring seals to snack on for the winter. The forecast had been the bay would freeze over in early December, but the weather turned cold so quickly, the bay was already freezing up and the bears were saying ‘Hasta la vista’. In fact the bears were so quick to leave the area, our tour company was calling guests booked for the next several weeks of tours and see if they wanted to cancel their trip, since there may not be anything to see. On a more positive note, during the slow ride back to town, our guide told us the northern lights activity level was a 9 on a scale of 1-9, in other words, spectacular!!! We really were fortunate it was a clear sky, or we wouldn’t have seen anything in the sky, or on the ice, with the bears leaving.
When we got back into town around 5:00pm, the faint green glow was already starting to appear in the sky. We quickly ate dinner and headed back out of town to see the show, and WOW, what a show it was!!! If you’ve never seen the northern lights, it’s a trip. The primary color is a neon green of various intensities, and can be either ribbons of constantly moving color directly overhead, or spikes of color coming up from the horizon. For several hours, we had both, and it was intense. If it wasn’t so cold and my face wouldn’t freeze off, I could have spent the entire evening out there. As it was, we got back around 8:45, but the show lasted well past midnight.

This was only our first day and I’d seen everything I wanted to see, so I could have gone home right then and been a cappy hampster.

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Chris(non-registered)

That certainly puts the green flash to shame - gorgeous!

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Day 4: The bears have left, northern lights, & hampsters

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