2009 Adventure Canada High Arctic Log

Arctic Adventures 2009 High Arctic Adventure Expedition Log

August 9 - 21, 2009 Written By Jerry Kobalenko & Phil Jenkins Photos by Danny Catt www.adventurecanada.com | [email protected]

Expedition Log Being the Expeditionary Log of the Adventure Canada vessel Clipper Adventure On her exemplary voyage to the arctic regions of Greenland and Canada th Between the 9 of August and the 21st in the year 2009. “The person who leaves is not the person who returns.” Day 1: August 9, 2009 – Kangerlussuaq The arc of the day took us from a static chateau to a moving cruising ship, from an anchored vertical hotel to a floating horizontal inn, the Clipper Adventurer, our longhouse for the next eleven days. The day began in the dark with the fairly orderly evacuation of the aspiring passengers from the Chateau Laurier. Departure from Ottawa Airport under the wing of First Air was around one hour behind schedule, a welcome fact exploited by a breakaway coffee hunting party. Three hours later we dropped out of the cloud into Iqaluit for a refuel and to pick-up Pakak, whom several passengers wondered if they had seen somewhere before, which they had on the big screen and Aaju, with her distinctive twin parallel tattoos on her chin, and three others. There was some debate as to whether one could truly say they had been to a place if one did not leave the plane. If asked, one must honestly reply, “Sort of.” A shorter second leg, with the chatter of proximity, during which discoveries were made; for instance, one passenger, a New Yorker had stood at both poles, making him bipolar, while another a Frenchman turned Floridian was a retired sea captain of such ships as the SS. France. Many others chose power napping. The border, written on water below, was crossed and we were down in Gronland, Greenland, at Kangerlussuaq. (Several outgoing passengers had an accent that on inquiry proved to be from the Falklands.) One of the bus drivers who ferried us to the dock, a Spaniard escaping his native construction recession, reported no rain for three weeks and an average winter snowfall a tenth that of Ottawa. Trees are now a thing of the south. The Zodiac transfer to the ship Clipper Adventure, sitting half a league offshore with a classic elegance over the white standard issue cruiser nearby, went smoothly and relieved the trepidation of the novice passengers. Sometime before the lifeboat drill we cast off as though in silent running under Captain Kenth Grankvist’s good hand. After a meet-the-staff- gathering in the main lounge—main themes Scots power and the lack

High Arctic Adventure 2009 of hair on top of some men’s heads—dinner is a chatty affair and is crowned by two birthdays; Captain Fred and Betty. Also present are one family who hold both the youngest passenger, Ian, aged seven months, and the oldest Neuendorff, who is ninety-six, Ian’s great-grandfather, travelling together. The scenery as we sail along the spine of the Faeringe Nordhaven fjord and into darkness is a magazine page come true, hills yielding to mountains wearing snow caps and economy –sized glaciers like scarves. Sometime in the early morning hours the ship passes out of the fjord entrance which is framed by two hills as bookends and we are in open water, turning to head to the North, to north-ness itself. Day 2: August 10, 2009 – Sisimiut Coast The first full day of the cruise was full indeed, still going strong at 11pm with Phil’s folk concert, accompanied at times by Heather on the fiddle. Soft morning light lit the serrated peaks of west Greenland. After breakfast, Aaju and Pakak gave us an Inuit welcome. “This is a cold place but the warm people make up for it,” says Aaju. She lit the seal oil lamp (filled, in this modern era, with Mazola) while Pakak beat the traditional drum. Our next lecturer, the intrepid Fred, gave us an introduction to Greenland’s geography, using his wonderful collection of maps and ample store of factoids: the Greenland ice sheet holds 10% of the world’s fresh water, covers 81% of Greenland, compared to 85% a mere two decades ago. Aaron Russ, world’s fastest expedition leader, next gave a briefing on Zodiac entry and exit strategies, including no backflips into the Zodiac – a restriction which clearly disappointed several of us. After lunch, the first Zodiac adventure began with a visit to Faering Nordhaven, an abandoned research station that no cruise ship had visited before. “What did they research there?” everyone asked. By the end of the shore walk, the answer was clear: They had been researching mosquitoes and blackflies. Thousands of small insects descended on us as we stepped onto the boggy shore. Enthusiastically the little dears entered our eyes, ears, and nostrils. They burrowed happily in the folds of our clothing. Were they blackflies? Would we be sent fleeing back to the ship within minutes? Although they closely resembled blackflies, there was one difference: They did not bite, or at least, very few did. Later at the daily recap came a shrewd theory that they were mating swarms of male midges or blackflies, which whirl above columns – people qualify as columns – while the odd female flew through and was fertilized. Perhaps the odd female explained the odd bite. Dr. Jim Halfpenny later noted that on the trip back to the Zodiac, the following insects easily kept up with 8 mph (according to his GPS) and fell behind after 16 mph. For at least half of us, it was our first stroll on the tundra. Many commented on the spongy, irregular surface of tussocks, that are like soft beachballs. We spotted boletus mushrooms (good eating, when fried with butter), a single arctic hare that bounded off on its hind legs in Mad Hatter style, and lichen, lichen everywhere.

Expedition Log

Later, at the evening recap, we got the scoop on the poop spotted during the hike, including bunny balls and ptarmigan tubes, and learned the distinction between guano and scat. Supper included roast muskox and chocolate volcano, a famous combination. The light outside slowly softened and reflected blue and peach colours in nearly calm Baffin Bay. Those outside on the deck experienced the trip’s first icebergs. The characteristic rifle crack of what sounded like an iceberg breaking up turned out to be the genuine rifle cracks of Inuit hunters in distant boats. Meanwhile in the lounge over nachos, Phil exercised his repertoire, rendering everything from The Northwest Passage, that classic lament for Sir John Franklin and his men, to Like a Rolling Stone, that classic lament for – well, whatever was on Dylan’s mind at the time. Day 3: August 11, 2009 – Disko Bay & Ilulissat While the ship slept, the Clipper crossed into Disko Bay, 250 km north of the Arctic Circle, which is basically an iceberg production facility. In particular the Ilulissat Ice Fjord, our destination, is the sea mouth of Sermeq Kujalleq, which is one of the few glaciers emanating from the Greenland ice cap that reaches the sea. It is one of the fastest and most active glaciers in the world, a fact we intended to see for ourselves. The morning fanfare for the passengers was a sure-handed display of first-class seamanship by the captain as he slalomed down the fjord and into the port of Ilulissat. The docking at Ilulissat was filled with wonderment, a choreography of thrusters and propellers that fitted the ship against the dock with the precision of a bricklayer. It was the talk of the other sailors in the crew and passengers. Ilulissat is a town on the go, founded in 1741 by a trader Jacob Severin, with a population of six thousand sled dogs and four thousand people. It’s a shrimp fishing town and as the home of the museum dedicated to the benign polar explorer Knud Rasmussen, enjoys steady tourism. The morning hike was advertised as towards the iceberg calfing bay, a nursery for a great many of the ice bergs that would much, much later perhaps be caught in the camera of a Newfoundlander tourist’s camera. First, a stroll through the town of Ilulissat. The deliberate use of colour on walls in a world dominated by white for three seasons spoke of the human need to brighten. In a treeless world, all the buildings we could see had arrived as cargo on ships to be assembled on ground that rarely decided to be flat. Once again here was the buzz of traffic, a southern noise that has migrated, and from under that came the sound of the dogs, heard before they were seen. They lived to either side of the road, each packed with its own parking spot, free to roam until the age of six months and then chained. Now they were on down time, and throughout the morning as one team was fed the air would fill with jealous howling. The bay and the path leading to it are, as of five years ago, an International Heritage Site, the fact of which the

High Arctic Adventure 2009 icebergs are completely unaware. But as the tourist mercury rises, and damage to the landscape increases, the town has settled on the solution of a boardwalk as far as the granite ridge vantage point. The landing party divided between the cemetery routs and the boardwalk directly to the edge of the bay. As we walked on the boards, the view of the icebergs in their magnificent diversity rose before us. The reaction among most of the party was at first respectful silence. The odyssey in the Zodiacs that afternoon was amoung the same iceberg slow-dancing formation team we had witnessed from the granite ridge at the end of the morning’s long walk. It was a journey, a beauty, that left our ability to describe it in our wake. There was a sense of the overwhelming indifference the icebergs had towards us, engrossed as they were in their own slow decay and self-sculpture. Usually within a landscape there is the sense that something living within it senses you, but not here. Then, as though to satisfy a mutual curiosity, a whale broke back and blew, then another, three in all, later confirmed as humpbacks. The most frequent adjective to describe the afternoon was “spectacular”, with breathtaking coming in close second. The weather, the view etching its way into eyeballs, the variety of iceberg architecture, none of these could not have been better. Rumours of the death of disco were dispersed that evening when in memory of the late, weird King of Pop, a mirror ball lit dance was held in the main lounge. There was some fierce costumry, and revelry and some nifty booty shaking until the wee hours. Strange to be dancing past midnight with daylight knocking on the port holes.

Expedition Log Day 4: August 12, 2009 – Karrat Fjord A perfect arctic day in blazing sunshine, amid 10,000 icebergs and the brown walls and spires of Karrat Fjord. The weather was so mild that immediately after breakfast, our stalwart crew began preparing an outdoor lunch on the back deck. While our ship maneuvered into the ice fjord, under Captain Kenth’s precision steering, we digested breakfast listening to Bob McDonald share his love affair with outer space and its ice worlds of frozen water, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen. Afterward, we streamed onto the deck for a little O2 and to soak up the icebergs that surrounded us. It was a Monument Valley of ice: crude pyramids, mittens linked underwater by a band of turquoise ice and blocky rectangles with parallel grooves scored into their surface from the surface rocks their parent glacier scraped over. Millions of bergy bits created a loose porridge in between the more solid specimens. At first, it was hard for our next lecturer, Dave Reid, to compete with the sun on deck and the icebergs, but by the end of his presentation on narwhals, the room was full. After the BBQ on the back deck, we zodiac’ed ashore on Karrat Island and explored its dry and midge-less terrain for the next three hours. People had lived here in the recent past; a small cabin still stood, and nearby, 11 graves. Two tall cairns stood on the brow of a low hill, looking west. The ridge above looked down on the Clipper Adventure and the glassy water. A light north wind grew cooler as the afternoon advanced. Back on board, Jerry Kobalenko shared pictures and tales from his adventures in the High Arctic. After the presentation, we discovered that the weather had changed abruptly. High overcast had all but replaced the blue sky. As usual in these latitudes, the cloud cover was not thick enough to totally obscure the sun. The light softened, as we joined the captain and officers for welcome cocktails. The evening was devoted to preparing for tomorrow’s soccer game against the Upernavik team. The cheerleaders of The Mighty Midges prepared their rah-rahs, the players wrote their names on their jerseys. Strangely, all the names ended in “o”, that excellent soccer suffix. Day Five: August 13, 2009 - Upernavik In blazing sunshine and rising heat, we docked just before breakfast at Upernavik (it means “the spring place), an island dishing village of 1,100 people with the odd whale jawbone sat outside a house. Some of the hunters also go out for polar bear and seal. As with many cemeteries in towns with permafrost, the ground won’t hold the dead, and so they are buried in

High Arctic Adventure 2009 graves covered with rock and concrete. A noted grave is that of Navarana Freuchen, who died on the fifth Thule expedition with Knud Rasmussen. Upernavik came to us when we were treated to an onboard concert by the local church choir, an event that conquered its setting and was genuinely moving. We learnt of the village from the museum director, and then ventured out to see for real what she had sketched for us. It was a busy village, houses being built or extended, people gathering at the noticeboard attached to the mall, and the post office did a good hour’s trade with postcards migrating back to points south with short stories on their backs. The rest of the morning was a build up to a event that is the highlight of the sporting calendar—the soccer game between the Adventure Canada ‘Mighty Midges’ and a highly skilled, undefeated team from the village. The pitch was probably one the toughest and most beautifully set in the world; the surface was racked gravel and the view off the pitch was of an icebergladen bay that went on forever. Exhorted on by a stunning squad of solar-powered cheerleaders (who later in the game set up a wall in our goal that our gallant Captain, acting as referee, was forced to clear), we took the lead in the first minute, and then set out to snatch defeat from the orca-like jaws of victory which indeed we did. The final score was, well, what does it matter what the final score was. We set sail mid-afternoon and headed north into open water, towards the call of a fjord reputed to be spectacular in its beauty, even by the standards set so far. Day 6: August 14, 2009 – Kap York Kap York is the northernmost boundary of Melville Bay and was called “The Wrecking Yard” because large numbers of wooden ships were crushed by the pack ice during the whaling season. In early morning, a bright blue sky lit the outside deck. Some clouds loomed on both the eastern and western horizons; temperature: 6 degrees C (45 degrees Fahrenheit.) The sun is sitting four diameters above the horizon (in discussion with Jerry Kobalenko, Arctic trekker and another of many walking fonts of information and experience gathered by Matthew Swan and associates, I learned that a fingers # measurement is inaccurate – number of fingers depends on the distance from your eyes – so he uses the number of the sun’s diameters – as it appears to the naked earth-bound eye - as an objective measurement.) After breakfast, Danny Catt presented “Marine Mammals of the North Atlantic.” The first lecture of the day

Expedition Log is unenviable as passengers gathered slowly from early morning routines, which did not affect Danny’s sunny disposition. Yet another in a stream of consistently informative, enthusiastic and helpful talks. Fred McLaren then lectured on the “Oceanography of Baffin Bay.” Fred’s experience oozes out of each observation and anecdote. In the final lecture of the morning, Ted Cowan built a case for a reappraisal/new appreciation of explorer John Ross. Ross’s logs, apparently, set a benchmark for descriptive and introspective detail. He connected with the Etah Inuit and questioned the civilized British view of them as savages. Following lunch, we debarked ship for a Zodiac wet landing expedition to Kap York. There is a 100 metre diameter pool of glacial melt-water below a terminal moraine from which a narrow stream flows down 50 metres to the pebbled shore. It is fed by the conjunction of three glaciers. Above the terminal moraine is a median moraine where two of the glaciers from separate valleys have joined, while on the western edge of one glacier (to our left looking up from the shore) a lateral moraine of rocky droppings is clearly visible. The glaciers are framed by steep, rock-toothed ridges reaching upward approximately 200 metres. To the southeast, a rounded peak overlooks the northern shore of Melville Bay, atop which rises a stone pillar in honour of Robert Peary, installed in 1932 either by Peary’s family or Captain Bob Bartlett (uncertain.) Aaron Russ has deployed his scouts and provided us with parameters for our hike, so we’re off! Some of us head west over a rocky headland and across moss-covered lowlands -the moss is two feet deep in places, with the sounds of hidden meltwater channels beneath.

High Arctic Adventure 2009 The ground slopes sharply up two jagged rocky ridges 200 metres high to the north with another steep valley in between. At the base of the far ridge, 50 metres from the shore, sits a small hunters’ shelter, slightly larger that the one we saw at the Karrat Ice Fjord landing. The stone foundation remains of a mud hut and separate food storage locker rest below the nearer ridge, their floors completely moss and grass covered and with no more than four courses of stone intact. A good number of our explorers climbed up beyond the terminal moraine and onto the western slope of the glacier. A thrilling sight it is to watch them from beside the pool, appearing as bug-sized figures inching up the glacier. I dare a quick plunge in the pool, the thought of splashing about at the foot of the massive ice flow being irresistible. Sarah McDougall, shipmate and artist, along with Dr. Roger Eriksson, ship’s doctor, also brave a dunking – they choose the waters off the pebbled shoreline. Roger later informs me the water temperature was 6 degrees Celsius. Cam Gillies, ornithologist, has since given me the following list of wildlife seen by a number of our group of explorers: Iceland and Glaucous Gulls, a Snow Bunting, Dovekies, Black Guillemots and Canada geese. It’s amazing we fit so much into each day, what with lectures, expeditions, dances, briefings, meals and snacks… Time for the recap, briefing and canapés. Aaju Peter gives us the words to a second song to learn so that we might present it to tomorrow’s Qaanaaq visitors on board ship. She says we did such a good job with the first song, which we performed for our Upernavik visitors, that she knows we can handle this one. As with the first song, the words are in Inuktitut. The chorus runs: “Haa ha ha siliatsiavak / Ila silatsiavaugivara / Uqaruvit vit vit nalligivarma / Aaksualuk silatsiavak.” Translated, thanks to Pakak’s help: Hey, hey, hey, it’s a beautiful day / Yes, it’s a beautiful day, / If you say you love me / It’s a really beautiful day. The long, near-endless day ends with a Beatles sing-a-long led by Adventure Canada’s troubadour and author, Phil Jenkins. Highlights include a couple of numbers by The Phils (PJ accompanied by Phil D’Onofrio on acoustic guitar;) “Come Together” sung by Gwen Hodgson accompanied by PJ; “Lady Madonna” sung by Neve Ostry Young accompanied by PJ; a lively version of “Twist and Shout,” and a soulful version of Van Morrison’s “Moondance” by Bob McDonald and PJ accompanied by Heather Daley on violin. If this is any indication then the variety show to be held later in the journey should be a pip. It’s bedtime now. A great joy and an honour to be a participant in this journey. - Peter Hodgson Day 7: August 15, 2009 – Karey Islands The day started even before the night was over, with a gentle rousting at four o’clock. We were to make our way over by Zodiac to Bjorling Island, the easternmost of the Karey Islands, which rise up in mid-water between Greenland and Ellesmere. The island of our visit is named for a young Swedish botany student, Johan Alfred Bjorling, the co-leader of an expedition, which was shipwrecked on the Kareys in 1892. A team member died there, and the others disappeared while escaping the island that had been their home for months, including some of Bjorling’s botanical specimen bottles, and of the earlier 1875 British Arctic Expedition under George Nares that built the big cairn where the young Swede left his last note. Somewhere on the island is also the grave of their crewman. The landing at Bjorling was on terrain that divided our company into the intrepid and the rightfully cautious, some going only a short walk over a bouldered beach, some venturing up into the steep cliffs towards the

Expedition Log separate pair of cairns that Bjorling’s team put up during their involuntary time there. There was somewhat of a treasure island slant to the excursion; many momentos relating to the explorers remain on the island. It is an unwelcoming and therefore beautiful place, not often visited, and so the chances of finding something historical were high, and indeed that happened. A crudely put together ski make from a wood spar of some sort was found. Safely back on ship, with all ankles intact, we steamed north again passing 76 degrees, then seventy-seven. Now we were at Qaanaaq means “eroded slope to the sea” and it’s Greenland’s northernmost town. The number of inhabitants is approximately 650 and is slowly increasing. The town of Qaanaaq was first established during the 1950s when the US airbase, which was originally built during the Cold War at Thule/Dundas, needed to be extended. The new town of Qaanaaq was built in 1953. It was from Qaanaaq that seven of polar explorer Knud Rasmussen’s expeditions set out, and it was also from here that the American explorer Robert Peary attempted to reach the North Pole in 1909. Day 8: August 16, 2009 – Smith Sound We woke with a tremendous “Clang! Krshhh!” as the Clipper Adventurer hit two solid pieces of multiyear ice: our introduction to the power and solidity of the pack. What had been an ice-free passage a week or so earlier was now blocked with a plug of old, thick, hard sea ice that covered 8/10 of the narrows into Smith Sound. Finessing north, Captain Kenth eventually pulled up just before Cape Alexander, around the spot that the Inughuit hunt walrus in the winter, our planned venture into Foulke Fjord and Etah scuppered by the vagaries of arctic ice, as it has scuppered sailors’ plans in this district since John Ross ventured here in 1818. While Aaron went scouting in a Zodiac, Dave Reid gave an overview of the natural history of the polar bear, and Bob McDonald explained why Everything You Know is Wrong. We eventually landed at a gentle beach near the base of Cape Alexander, overrun with fox tracks and decorated with the skeleton of a bearded seal, to which fragments of flesh still clung. Heavy fog still played atop the hills, sometimes settling, sometimes partially lifting. After the shore parties assembled, Matt led a motley crew in a ceremony ceding the Canadian half of Hans Island in exchange for the entire island of Greenland. The Danish King and Queen themselves ratified the fair trade. Then it was time for some to explore on foot, while others returned for a Zodiac cruise along the shore. Bird sightings included guillemots, dovekies and Brandt geese. A gyrfalcon made a run at one of the geese. One large bumblebee, seeming very out of place and lonely, flew around. Up on the hill, wary arctic hares grazed and kept watch. Our botanists botanized, while the walkers walked. An old hitching post down on the eastern beach clearly dated from the era when people tied their horses here 4-5 million years ago.

High Arctic Adventure 2009 No sooner were we back on board when a large – well, moderate – number of passengers stripped to skivvies and swimsuits for a polar dip at 78°13’ – our farthest north. They thus earned the coveted Green Glove of Matthew Swan. For most, it was the first in their collection. No doubt many plan on earning the complete set through a series of polar swims. Jerry Kobalenko’s talk on personal encounters with polar bears was followed by recap, and dinner. Afterward, while a film about Bob Bartlett played in the main lounge, Phil hosted a sing-a-long in the Clipper Lounge. As we steamed south toward Grise Fjord, the times were a changin’, and those who stayed up late enough saw the fog lift around 11pm. The ship sped up, and we could see the multiyear ice that had bedeviled our further forward progress. Day 9: August 17, 2009 – Smith Sound The usual wake up call from the expeditionary leader was preempted by the announcement, at six-thirty, of a polar bear sighting. Once up on deck, the bear took a moment’s finding, as were but then there it was, a polar bear head paddling along in scattered sea ice (ice made from a salt water recipe) with no land in sight in any direction, then scrambling onto a floe with all the grace of an overweight pool swimmer; the bear acknowledged the ship with a head wave, something ancient making a risk assessment about something modern. We were heading down the planet at the time. With ice plugging Smith Sound, the way north we had turned to port and followed the ice floe edge as fell away to the south. Normally, an ice drawbridge snookers Smith Sound throughout the winter season but it opens in the summer and is a major pathway for sea ice flushing out of the High Arctic. Day 10: August 18 – Grise Fjord Went through the Canada Customs clearance after breakfast, then disembarked on the beach of Grise Fjord. Our ship effectively doubles the size of the town for a few hours. Sixty of us stretch our legs after yesterday’s day at sea by taking an hour-long trek to a sculpture that Luti Pijamini is working on in the valley

Expedition Log behind the airstrip. Not often these days that you simply cross an airstrip like it’s an ordinary road. We brought guns, because someone had seen a polar bear in the valley the week before. Two BBC filmmakers were in town to work on a documentary on cod and other wildlife in the area for part of series about the Frozen Planet. After the fashion show in the gym, we returned to the ship and  raced across Jones Sound to Cape Hardy, which we reached at 5:30pm. The site of Frederick Cook’s overwintering site stood on a green bench on the eastern promontory of Cape Hardy. Lots of bowhead sign in and around his qammaq, including a giant old rib in the center and a smaller bone that lay on their sleeping platform and had probably fallen there from its position as a roof span. Jerry and Phil gave a background on the haunted site. Numerous other qammaqs nearby attested to the rich hunting on this part of Devon Island. The bear trap lay just across the bay. The traprock, or a piece of it, had fallen into place in the 10 years since Jerry & his wife had been there. A trapped bear, pushing from behind with its feet, would not be able to budge that secure gate. Lots of other constructions nearby: old caches, a scattering of 8 walrus skulls, a huge old meat cache on top of the nearby rise. No muskox visible, but lots of snow geese, a couple of red-throated loons, and, later, a single arctic hare far, far away. The theme dinner was arctic animals, and several showed up dressed as arctic fauna – polar bears, foxes, seals.

High Arctic Adventure 2009 As in real life, the most common animal was the arctic hare, and the best hare was Phil, with his cottontail of toilet paper, and dark nose and whiskers of mascara – or was it felt pen? Cedar showed up in a spectacular jellyfish outfit; Alana in a lobster costume. Lobsters aren’t found in the High Arctic, but that’s a fine point for a theme dinner. Day 11: August 19, 2009 – Dundas Harbour Devon Island is the largest uninhabited islanded on Earth. In the early 1920’s the Canadian government decided to establish a number of RCMP ports in an effort to support its claim to the Arctic Islands. Dundas Island RCMP post was activated in 1922 and remained open for nearly ten years. In June of 1926 Cst Victor Maisonneuve, one of the original members posted at Dundas Harbour committed suicide while alone at a hunting camp. Tragedy further visited the Dundas Harbour Detachment the following August when Cst Williams Stephens was hunting walrus near the detachment, and accidentally shot himself. The RCMP maintains a cemetery at Dundas Harbour and the Arctic Bay Detachment is responsible for an annual grave inspection. The detachment still stands, and is in surprising good shape having been occupied since 1951. Day 12: August 20, 2009 – Prince Leopold & Beechey Island The last full day saw the Clipper Adventurer in the Barren Wedge, a more hostile part of the High Arctic which begins at western Devon Island and extends west and north. The summer weather here is shleppier, plants fewer, beaches barer. Yet even here in the Northwest Passage of Lancaster Sound, which bedeviled so many ships from the Golden Age of arctic exploration, there was a noticeable lack of sea ice. No lack of birds, however, at Prince Leopold Island, site of our morning Zodiac cruise. Thick-billed murres and black-legged kittiwakes fluttered thick as snowflakes above our heads from their multi-storey ledges on the cliffs, which top out at 250 meters. A quarter of a million birds breed here. Prowling round a low point to a northerly bay, Cam picked out a jaeger on a nearby knoll. Back on board, our ship turned back east toward historic Beechey Island (actually a peninsula at low tide) on the southwestern corner of Devon.

Expedition Log This High Arctic cruise that has covered over 2,600 kilometers in 12 days is beginning to wrap up. For the first time, business cards begin to be exchanged. E-mails are jotted down. A disembarkation briefing takes place in the lounge, followed by Matthew’s presentation on the family business that is Adventure Canada. After lunch, the final recap. Finality edges closer. Yet we have one last spectacular shore landing, at the gravesites of some of John Franklin’s men on desolate Beechey Island. In 1845, the doomed expedition spent its first winter by this barren shingle beach. Four men died, perhaps from the lead seams of their canned food, and are buried here. (One of the replica markers also belongs to a later expedition.) The following year, the remainder of the men ventured further west and never returned. In the end, all 129 men perished. Some of us trekked east to a nearby point where a pile of empty cans from Franklin’s expedition formerly stood. In recent years, souvenir hunters have unfortunately removed most of the intact cans, and now only fragments remain. We all ended up over at the ruins of Northumberland House, a structure and depot built years after Franklin’s disappearance in case the missing men should return to this site and need supplies. But by then they were dead. Vanity memorials to a few modern people have also been erected by Northumberland House. Just as we were heading back to the ship, Cam spotted a gyrfalcon hovering above the beach, its white-phase plumage clearly visible. The packed last full day ended with the closely contested Whiskey Label Contest, won by the Barnett clan in a tiebreak. The evening Talent Show featured poetry recitation, singing and magic. Much of the trip has involved the magic and poetry of the High Arctic, as well as many songs, so this finale was apt.

High Arctic Adventure 2009