Tracking polar bears in Churchill
Polar bears are the main attraction here in Churchill. The “bear season” lasts about six weeks, from early October until mid-November, ending once the Hudson Bay has frozen over, and the bears can go off and hunt seals on the ice all winter.
This morning our little group of 16 people gathered at about 7:45am (long before sunrise), and was shuttled out to the Tundra Buggy launching station, 15 minutes outside of town. We were dressed in our snowsuits and hats, and ready for the first of our two days tracking polar bears.
Our shuttle bus driver was a young Dutch man, who is travelling around Canada for a year. When I asked, “Why are you travelling around Canada for a year?” he gave a very pragmatic, Dutch answer: “Canada is a big country, and I figured it would take a year to travel around it.”
Tundra Buggies are purpose-built vehicles for exploring the marshy tundra terrain around Churchill, looking for polar bears. Because water doesn’t drain well through the permafrost, the flat landscape is dotted with large, shallow (2-3 feet deep) lakes. Each buggy is a cross between a diesel-powered monster truck (five-foot high tires and a heavy duty chassis) an old municipal bus (a 30-foot long, big-windowed white box, all riveted together), and an amphibious landing vehicle. Each Tundra Buggy also has an open-air viewing deck on the back. It is ideally suited for driving on the rough roads and through the shallow icy lakes around Churchill. The theoretical maximum speed of a Tundra Buggy is 25 miles per hour, but we spent most of our time crawling along (bumpily) at about 10 mph.
Our Tundra Buggy driver and guide, Marc, is a Churchill classic. He is a French Canadian, and works as a river guide in the Yukon during the summer, and as a dog-sled guide in the Canadian Rockies during the winter. The six-week bear season in Churchill fits in perfectly, so he has been driving a Tundra Buggy for the last ten years. Mark is very handsome, friendly and competent, and was particularly sweet to Zola and Charlsi. India conveyed her general approval by telling me “Marc must get a lot of babes during bear season.”
We drove around in the Tundra Buggy from about 8:30am to 5pm, which is a lot of time in a Tundra Buggy. Fortunately, within the first hour we saw a mother bear and her two-year old cub. Obligingly they came right up to the vehicle, sniffed the tires, and were very photogenic and accommodating.
After looking at the first pair for nearly an hour, we drove around and looked at other bears, sleeping, trotting along, drinking water. Marc told us that this is a “waiting time,” and that the bears don’t want to expend a lot of energy until they can start hunting. That didn’t matter, they were awesome to look at (very picturesque against the brown vegetation and black water of the glacial lakes and the Hudson Bay).
When we switched off the diesel engines, and I could stand on the back deck in the cool wind, smelling the water and watching the bears do their thing, it was just great.
All in we saw eleven bears today, although it seems a little too special to keep track just by quantifying the sightings. We also saw (and tracked) an Arctic fox, and many, many ptarmigans. Ptarmigans, I found out, are medium-sized white ground birds, which are at the bottom of the food chain for every predator in the Arctic. As we rolled slowly across the tundra, Marc explained a lot about the ecosystem and its animals, and he regaled us with tales of the north country.
It was a wonderful day.