This trip was a long time coming. At some point a few years ago I realised that I was very keen to see and photograph polar bears before climate change made it even more difficult. The initial plan was to go to Svalbard and do a circumnavigation by water but it wasn’t happening at the ideal time for us. We eventually switched to go to Churchill in Manitoba, Canada and booked it in about January 2019 for November 2020. Then COVID happened and everything got pushed back a year. It looked unlikely that we’d get to go in 2021 too but the stars aligned, Canada opened borders and we made it. Now that I’m back and writing this there’s already a new variant and more restrictions are coming back in.
Churchill is on the edge of the Hudson Bay. Due to a number of factors it happens to be the area of the bay that freezes first. The polar bears gather to wait for the ice to form in October/November and then once it forms they head out to catch seals. They do a large circular lap up into the arctic and then back down each year. As a result of this behaviour, Churchill is one of the best places to see polar bears in the world. Churchill is a small town only accessible for tourism by rail and air.
So for our trip we made the drive over to London on a Saturday evening and stayed in an airport hotel. We then grabbed a bit of breakfast at Terminal 2 before flying to Toronto. We had a lot of paperwork due to COVID and felt extremely relieved once we made it through security. We then had an 8 hour layover where we got to spend a bit of time with most of the rest of our group for the trip before flying onto Winnipeg for the night. Our group consisted of 9 other guests along with Claire and I and also Danny Green, our photographer guide from Nature’s Images. Danny has been to photograph the bears many times and is exactly who you want to go with if you’re trying to get best results. We had a really late night into a very early breakfast at Winnipeg (involving no sleep whatsoever) before getting onto a plane up to Churchill and our trip starting in earnest. From the plane as we got close we could see there was some snow on the ground, a vital ingredient for getting photos of the bears in their iconic habitat.
After we landed we had a small tour around town to the bear jail (where polar bears that come too close to town get placed to rethiink their life choices for a little while), a plane wreck and to the local recycling centre. We weren’t really expecting to see a bear near the town and I was really looking towards the next day and hoping to see one on the tundra in all the glory of nature. Of course we saw one at the recycling centre and a mad scramble for cameras happened along with trying to shoot through the windows of our little minibus. It wasn’t how I imagined I’d see one but it was exciting and it did give us a few images with a different feel. Afterwards we grabbed lunch, got our passports stamped and had a chance to visit the local supermarket and then rest before getting some dinner.
A small number of companies operate tundra buggys which travel up and down the coastline looking for bears. Much like on a safari they can communicate and keep their colleagues updated on where the action is. The tundra buggys would be our home during daylight hours for the first 3 days and on the first we were guided by Neil Mumby. So we had a hearty breakfast with lots of eggs, bacon, sausage and potatoes and then hopped into the minibus for a drive over to where the tundra buggys are stationed. They’re very high up off the ground so they’re all docked to a wooden platform which you climb some stairs up onto and then board via the back platform of the buggy. Each buggy has around 10 rows and seating for 40 tourists. They’re very spacious and have a large back deck that you can stand on. We’d have lunch and snacks provided on the buggy and there’s even a flush toilet and heating. it does get cold though because the windows are frequently open for the photography.
Neil understood that at the top of our list was photographing the males sparring and there were male bears resting at the far end of the area that the drivers are allowed to traverse. We headed at full speed (which isn’t that fast, but can be very bumpy) to get to them. We saw a number of bears in that location and had the pleasure of photographing some during some periods of falling snow. We also got to see the males sparring and had several opportunities to photograph them doing so amongst the willows. Though Danny has brought many groups to Churchill, he had never been able to get the males sparring on the first day (and in many cases not during a trip) so we felt very fortunate.
The second day was much like the first but with even more bear opportunities. We had a pair of bears approach the back of the vehicle and we were able to get various close portraits of them. One even repeatedly reared up against the grate under our feet allowing us to get much closer than we expected to a polar bear!
Considering how well we thought the first day had gone, the second day left us feeling even better. It was out final day with Neil as we’d be getting a different buggy and driver for the remaining days. The rest of the trip would be another day on the buggy followed by two days in 4x4s and then back on the buggy before heading home.