Name: My Arctic Voyage From GREENLAND To ALASKA | The Northwest Passage
Uploaded: 2024-01-12T05:00:15.000Z
Duration: 10 min 15 s
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I embarked on this ship in Greenland and my final stop is Alaska.

I'm about to embark on one of the most epic, remote journeys you can make on this planet.

I'm sailing from Greenland to Alaska through the Northwest Passage thanks to Seabourn, who's hosting me for this trip.

The Northwest Passage is a series of channels that spans roughly 900 miles through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

In fact, this will be the first time a Seabourn ship has ever sailed through the Northwest Passage.

And this is an expedition ship, so we have the Zodiacs, the kayaks, the submarines. We are going to be getting out in it.

And the wildlife in this region is unlike anything I've ever seen.

Today we're in Ilulissat, Greenland, which is the largest town on Disko Bay, and it's known for its ice fjord.

It has some of the largest icebergs in the world, and it is one of the most picturesque places I've ever been.

There are these colorful homes built up the hillside, and then you look out and you see these icebergs that are so enormous it looks like it should be a glacier.

There are also some humpback whales in the area right now, so today is going to be spent getting out and soaking it all in.

The Ilulissat ice fjord contains the most productive glacier in the Northern hemisphere, calving off 20 billion tons of icebergs every year.

And it's hard to describe just how enormous some of these things are.

It's like an iceberg the size of a city block drifting by.

And Disko Bay is a really scenic area to visit.

We took the kayaks out on a sunny morning and it was so beautiful.

Today we're in Carrot Fjord, Greenland, which is a place I'd never heard of prior to this trip, and it was one of those mornings where I got out of bed, pulled back the curtain and my jaw dropped.

It is this beautiful fjord with giant icebergs drifting through it in a low fog and mountains on the sides.

It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever photographed.

Now I thought Carrot Fjord alone was going to be the highlight of the day, but as we sailed out to sea at sunset, a rainbow emerged among the icebergs, and it was one of the most spectacular sites of my life.

This rainbow was enormous and vibrant, and the icebergs drifted and danced around it.

It's one of the most incredible views I've ever seen.

So the expedition team jokes that these expeditions are flexpeditions because everything out here is tentative due to weather, sea conditions, wildlife spottings.

You never know how each day is going to go, but that's part of what makes it exciting.

So the way expedition style voyages work is each day we travel to a new area and explore it, whether that's on zodiac boats for some scenic cruising, landing on shore and hiking around, kayaking.

This ship even has two submarines for underwater exploring, and we always adjust our plans based on what we find.

We went out on the zodiacs on the most beautiful sunny day and came across some walruses on the rocks and in the water.

Shout out to Seabourn's drone pilot, Taylor Gray, for capturing this aerial footage.

He got some amazing shots of these animals.

I'm going to have his links down below. Check him out.

Walruses prefer shallow shelf regions to forage on the sea floor, and they really seek out physical touch with one another, so you're likely to find them clustered together.

It's about 6:00 AM and the ship just made an announcement that there is a polar bear on the shore.

Our first polar bear sighting of the trip.

And this is something that just in general is quite exciting about these expeditions is stuff is happening 24 hours a day.

It's not like the polar bear is gonna come by necessarily conveniently at lunchtime.

So the ship will make announcements if things are going on.

You can mute the speaker in your room if you don't wanna be woken up,

but if there are Northern Lights in the middle of the night or a polar bear at sunrise, you'll hear it and you just kind of gotta be ready to grab your camera and go.

Something really cool about this ship is it has a GSS camera with a 2,430 millimeter lens on it, and it can stream video throughout the screens on the ship so you can get a close view of wildlife even if it's not very close.

We saw lots of polar bears this way along our journey, but my favorite polar bear moment came on a day where we encountered some sea ice, which is all of the yellow you see on this radar.

Sea ice is different from glacier ice because it forms in the middle of the ocean from the seawater just freezing over, so you don't need to be near land or a glacier to see it.

And there were lots of walruses hanging out on this ice, so it's no surprise that we also spotted a polar bear and we did not need the GSS camera to get a good look at this one.

I think I got some of my favorite photos of the trip in these moments.

Something I also learned on this trip is that polar bears are classified as marine mammals similar to whales because of their dependence on marine ecosystems.

The Arctic isn't just a destination for scenery and wildlife, it's also full of history and culture.

The Northwest Passage was notoriously impassable for early explorers due to ice, and evidence of that is still present today, like the graves of the Franklin Expedition members on Beechey Island.

We also learned a lot about Inuit culture on this journey.

We had an Inuk guide on board with us for the entire voyage, and we visited some Inuit communities in the towns of Pond Inlet and Cambridge Bay.

And in Cambridge Bay, we even got to tour CHARS, the Canadian High Arctic Research Station.

Something really interesting about being in the Arctic specifically at this time of year is right now summer is swinging basically straight into winter.

With each passing day, we're getting significantly less daylight, darker nights, the temperatures are dropping.

It's why right now is the best time to cross through the Northwest Passage because you wanna catch it at the very, very tail end of summer where you're going to encounter less ice before everything freezes over again.

With the cold temperatures outside, I started spending a lot of time in the sauna because even though this is an expedition ship, it's still very luxurious.

I also warmed up with high tea in the Constellation Lounge in the afternoons.

The suites are comfortable and spacious with living rooms and balconies.

They do a lot of fun events like champagne on the zodiacs and the food is so good!

There's lots of restaurant options as well as 24-hour room service and a coffee bar in Seabourn Square, which is where I ended up spending a lot of time.

After three weeks at sea, we had seen a lot, but on the final night, I was still waiting for one thing.

It's 1:00 AM. I was asleep and the expedition leader just came on the intercom to say that the Northern Lights are outside.

A few short hours later, Nome, Alaska was on our horizon.

We had officially arrived at our destination.

Nome is known for gold mining and the Iditarod Sled Dog Races, and there's also musk oxen just hanging out around the town, which was a really cool way to end the trip.

Well, this is the end of my journey through the Northwest Passage and what a finale it had.

I am still in disbelief that we managed to get the Northern Lights in our final hours on board.

Huge thank you to Seabourn for inviting me to join their inaugural Northwest Passage expedition on the Seabourn Venture.

It was an adventure every step of the way up until the end as you saw.

I wasn't really sure what to expect with this Northwest Passage experience, but it ended up having a bit of everything.

Epic landscapes, cultural experiences, a lot of history, wildlife encounters, which are always my personal favorite, and then the glowing skies to top it all off.

So I would definitely say it was successful.

Thank you for watching and coming along with me on this one.

I hope you're doing well and I will see you in the next one.