Report 3: at last!! a polar bear

The first day of our Tundra Buggy tour started with the most marvellous breakfast, consisting of french toast, fresh fruit and sausages. Jolene makes all the bread from top grade Manitoba wheat that she grinds herself every few days in a noisy old electric mill. She makes about five loaves every other day for the guests. Our french toast was topped with tundra berry jam, from berries collected by Jenafor. Other breakfasts were amazing pancakes, fruit and bacom, cut from a slab from a butcher who does his own or bacon or sausages and eggs. You COULD have a cold breakfast, but no one did.

After breakfast i bundled up in my long johns, silk undershirt, black turleneck sweater, jeans, hiking socks and boots, bulky jacket, hat, hood and scarf, and went outside to wait for the bus pickup. As we stood there in the dark morning we heard warning bangs in the back of the house, which being on the very edge of town, looked out onto bare tundra... this indicated that there was a bear close to town. We looked and looked, but i saw nothing, and turned to pet Thunder, the retired sled dog. K claims she DID see some bears in the distance, but i missed it.... the bus arrived, we climbed aboard, and were off for a half hour drive to where the tundra buggies were parked and we passed the bear jail. In the past, bears who came to close to town were captured and put into a compound and you could see them there, but now they are housed in a hangar like building, and there are no visitors. They want to avoid the bears becoming used to people. They are transferred from the jail back to the wild by helicopter. They tranquilize the bear, and put him/her in a sling, which is raised by the helicopter, and delivered far from town.

We passed deserted rocket installations, DEW line (Distant Early Warning) facilities and empty army buildings. The land was flat, covered in miles of glacier-moved rocks and nothing much else. The rocks had a certain beauty, as they were covered by wonderful, brilliant lichens and mosses... pale green, deep reddish green, bright orange and yellow! Finally we pulled up to a row of tundra buggies. they are HUGE and very high off the ground. The wheels alone are 6 feet high and about 3 feet across. Essentially they are boxes with seats, a bathroom, and an oil heater sitting on this HUMUNGOUS wheel base. Luckily it is not a full bus, and we all are able to have a double seat to ourselves. At the rear there is an outdoor platform for viewing.

We gently, and slowly rumble away. Our guide is a pleasant young man who has grown up in Churchill, and turns out to be very knowledgeable about the flora and fauna. Prior to the government declaring this area to be a protective ecological reserve, two companies had been using these trails. They are the only two now allowed to go into this area. THey MUST keep on the trails, not going off them so as not to further damage the very fragile ground. The trails are total mud, puddles, and sludge. We move very slowly, crossing large 'lakes' that are about two feet deep, stopping and using binoculars to search for bears...There are lots of white rocks, and they fool you. We saw a few at a distance, but it wasn't til lunch that we finally saw our first bear closeup. He was sleeping in the brush. we stopped not far from him, and sat and watched. He was magnificent. He would stand up, stretch, and then lay down again. SNAP snap snap of photos being taken. Polar bears go into a 'walking hibernation' in the summer. They don't eat, sleep a lot, move around slowly, waiting till freeze up so they can go out on the ice to feed. This is when the cubs are born as well. This is why Churchill has so many bears at this time of the year. They are coming down to the shore waiting for freezeup, so they are pretty sluggish. This bear was going nowhere, and after a while we left him to nap.

Moving on, we saw a snow white ptarmigans, a gigantic arctic hare, a caribou, and then finally, another bear could be seen slowly loping towards the road. We were the third buggy in a convoy that was heading back and we all stopped. The bear came along, standing and staring into the drivers window of the first bus, and then lumbering down the road towards us. The back of the bus has an open platform and we were crowded there watching the bear approach. He paused below us, then lumbered by. They are so HUGE!!! they are totally beautiful with their sloping white noses, and gigantic, pigeon toed feet.

The next day, Sunday, was a lazy day, checking out the one and only local general 'store', called the Northern. All food is nearly twice the price of down south and there is very little 'green'. Winter means a lot of root vegetables...turnips, carrots, potatoes, etc. The library and museum were closed, so I continued to walk along a back road that edged along Hudson Bay. that alone was an amazing experience, realizing that i was on the edge of Hudson Bay. One is enveloped by greyness... the dark grey, bumpy, stone covered land shifts to the cold grey, shimmering moving grey waves of the Bay... and at the horizon, that blends into into the light grey of the overcast sky. The town itself has a grey patina.... wooden buildings, formerly painted bright colours fading and wearing away to the never ending grey....

I passed a very strange structure... A huge, and half built structure built with rows of rocks. The rocks were carefully placed in alternating rows of small and large. The structure is unfinished, and about chest high. I had been told that this was the project of a local 'nutter', who decided to build a hotel. Given that it was on crown land, had no access to water and hydro, it seems like a doomed project, but he is commited to it.It was cold and windy, and i was happy to return to the B&B to warm up by the wood stove, and sketch. Another interesting evening chatting with other guests and our hosts, and i fumbled my way to bed.

this is where we stayed.... fondly called 'the bed and sled'

and this is the company we went with....