Baffin Island: An Arctic Kingdom
“Brutal. Utterly brutal.”
This is usually how I begin to describe our experience of camping on Baffin Island in early ‘spring’ — a loose definition of the word — where temperatures are routinely at -30ºC or below, and the tents are pitched on the frozen ocean. My facial expression, however, is always at odds with the stark nature of the uttered phrase, involuntarily breaking out into a broad smile and my eyes (I imagine) sparkling. It is a smile that only those who have endured the same can know and understand. A feeling deep within. A profound satisfaction. A place to which my mind can return for refuge, for inspiration, for belief that when things feel hard it is a mental state that can be overcome.
Before Baffin I believed I knew what my limits were for cold endurance. I was wrong. Those limits are so far in the rear-view mirror that the stages of my life can almost be redefined as BB and AB (Before Baffin and After Baffin).
Why? Why would anyone spend seven nights camping on the frozen, wind-sculpted, sea ice pushing the limits of cold-weather gear and mental and physical endurance? Because despite all the above, this is a wilderness that is unsurpassed anywhere. Icebergs thousands of years old, Aurora’s bursting out of the heavens in explosions of green and red moving in mesmerising patterns across the night sky, and bears. Polar bears, fresh out of the den.
There are few things that can compare to seeing tiny, pristine polar bear cubs with their mums only a few days after leaving their dens. Not many get the chance. Fewer still grasp it. In fact, more people have travelled to space than have travelled here at this time of year as tourists. That alone shows how special this place is. It is likely that for those little cubs, we will be the only humans they ever see as mum leads them away from land and out over the frozen ocean. After missing an entire season of hunting to incubate her little ones, she needs to hunt and eat not only to sustain herself but to gain enough nutrients to suckle her dependants.
My experiences of polar bears prior to this, from small ships in Svalbard, was, I thought, the pinnacle of wildlife viewing. Simply seeing a polar bear was extraordinary. Surely alongside the Tiger it is the most ‘apex’ predator on land. Certainly among the most adapted. In fact, if I were to rank the top three predators in the world for both land and sea it would have to be the Orca, Polar Bear and Tiger — argue as you like about the order amongst them but there cannot realistically be any argument for the trio.
From their hollow hairs that trap heat to their elongated heads that are shaped to follow disappearing seals down breathing holes in the ice, to their ability to swim for hours on end and, as touched on earlier, a female’s ability to revert to a ‘brown bear’ state and hibernate through the winter in order to give birth to cubs thereby missing her prime hunting season makes polar bears surely among the most fascinating and incredible animals. These bears are also fearless. Where they hunt and live there is no predator greater and therefore everything, everything, they see is potential food. So to be on foot, on the ice, cooly (excuse the pun) watching a mother bear suckle her two tiny cubs is a truly magical experience, and one that I will never forget.
It has been a year since we rolled out of camp for the last time, checking toes and extremities were still attached, but the memories from this trip are as crisp as the day they were formed.
Originally published at https://www.beyondafricafilms.com on April 01, 2023.
