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Image via CBC

Now that the Olympic Winter Games have ended, it’s time for the Arctic Winter Games, where youths from indigenous communities throughout the circumpolar regions gather to compete.

Like the Vancouver Olympics, Winter Games organizers in Grande Prairie have had to contend with unseasonably warm weather this year, as well as the difficulties inherent in being the southernmost community to ever host the games. Difficulties which seem to include a certain amount of ribbing from the visiting teams:

“Theres things called trees that we’re not used to, and that’s going to be a little bit of a surprise to our dogs,” said John Hickes, a dog-mushing coach from Rankin Inlet, Nunavut

The theme of this year’s event is the Hero’s Journey, and Sunday’s opening ceremony drew upon the stories and traditions of various northern communities.

Good luck to all the athletes!

via CBC News – Edmonton – Arctic Winter Games open in Alberta.

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Last week, I posted a link to an article about Ann Daniels, one of the Arctic explorers heading to the North Pole as part of the Catlin Arctic Survey.

In this week’s Guardian, John Crace looks into the training Daniels and her fellow expedition members Martin Hartley and Charlie Paton endure before they can tackle the pole. Crace paints a vivid picture:

Six am on a sub-zero morning in Devon. A five-mile run in the dark, ending in a couple of hill sprints. Breakfast. Circuit training in the barn; beyond any pain threshold to physical exhaustion. Lunch. Ninety minutes dragging weighted tyres up and down a 1:6 hill. The only upside is that the mud has frozen over. It’s mindless, repetitive, punishing effort, not improved by an ex-marine shouting in your ear. Tea. A three-mile run, followed by more circuits. Die

The article also creates a nuanced and detailed portrait of the explorers. One thing that struck me while I was reading, I was struck by how normal — and simultaneously how extraordinary — the explorers are. Everyday people, not superhuman, not Olympic athletes, aging (45 now, for God’s sake,” as Daniels readily admits), they tackle the pole, year after year, gathering data and working to mitigate climate change. Everyday heroes, exploring the Arctic.

Trial by ice – what it takes to be an Arctic explorer | Environment | The Guardian.

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Long-time readers of this blog might remember this post, where I mentioned that expedition Expedition Manager Tom Lennartz was up on the ice near Baffin Island with a then-unnamed Spanish film crew.

Well, the footage from that expedition — part of the series Desafio Extremo, or Extreme Challenge — is now online. And it’s pretty spectacular, capturing both the beauty and danger of diving beneath the Arctic ice.

Check out the videos online here, and if you read Spanish (or feel like cheating, as I did, with a free online translator) you can read Jesús Calleja’s account of the adventure on his blog, which really captures the adrenaline of piloting a snowmobile across the sea ice, as well as the combination of on-the-ice flexibility and strong infrastructure needed to pull off a filming expedition to the Arctic!

Here’s a teaser for the show. Visit the Desafino Extremo site for more photos and footage of the adventure!

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The jawbone of a fully grown male polar bear, believed to be somewhere between 110,000 and 130,000 years old, is giving scientists a rare glimpse into polar bear evolution.

Polar Bears: Younger than they look

DNA from the jawbone, which was discovered in Svalbard by researcher Olafur Ingolfsson of the University of Iceland in 2004, shows that polar bears are a relatively young species, having split from brown bears approximately 150,000 years ago and evolved rapidly during the climate changes that took place during the late Pleistocene. As Ingolfsson notes, in an email quoted on the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog,

I think our find shows that polar bears have been around for a while, and they probably have survived situations in the past where the Arctic was warmer and there was less seasonal sea ice than today. . .

I want to stress that we should be concerned about the polar bears’ future. There are other risks out there, mainly from chemical pollution of the Arctic (heavy metals, pcbs, etc). Also, increased traffic (oil tankers) when/if ship lanes open up across the Arctic Ocean could constitute a major threat.

Polar bear fossils are rare, as the animals spend most of their lives on the sea ice, which means that their remains rarely end up on land. The DNA taken from the jawbone gives researchers a rare glimpse into the lives of ancient polar bears. It is also the oldest mitochondrial sample from a mammal sequenced to date.

Read more:

Science Daily: Ancient DNA from rare fossil reveals that polar bears evolved recently and adapted quickly

Arctic Update: Resilient Bears, Shrinking Ice — Dot Earth Blog, NY Times.com

Unis: Oldest remains of a polar bear ever discovered.

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Inspired by yesterday’s post, this week’s new content on Flickr features some of our Ice Diving photos from the last few years.

Tom with the harpoon he found on a dive last year.

Divers beneath the ice.

A team prepares to dive.

Visit our Flickr page for photos of ice diving, dog sledding, ballooning and more. And if you’d like to read about how Tom found the harpoon in the top photo, that’s #8 on his Top Ten Floe Edge Moments from 2009!

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Sad news today from Australia — Antarctic explorer and advocate Dr. Philip Law has died at the age of 97.

Dr. Law was instrumental in the establishment of an Australian presence in Antarctica, serving as director of Australia’s Antarctic Division from 1949 until 1966, and leading the expeditions that established Australia’s first research stations on the continent.

Read More: Australian Antarctic pioneer dies at 97 – Australian Antarctic Division.

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To those accustomed to life below the Arctic Circle, life above the treeline can seem like a whole other world. No where is this more true than below the ice, where the sun filters through the ice into a dark world of creatures few ever see in the wild.

I was reminded of this today when I read about  a recent record-breaking dive beneath a frozen lake in Slovakia. While the dive — a continuous 2120 meter dive utilizing rebreather units — is indisputably impressive, no lake dive can compare to diving beneath the Arctic ice. As evidenced by the footage below, taken on Arctic Kingdom dives:

Video by Louise Murray

Want to experience the world below the ice first hand? Start your adventure today on our Dive Adventures page, or visit our Adventure Travel page for news on the variety of expeditions we have coming up!

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All this weekend, we’re at the Outdoor Adventure Show at Toronto’s International Centre. Stop by the booth for information on our expeditions, to check out the gear we’re offering for sale, or just to hear some stories from the ice! Visit the Adventure Show website for hours and directions.

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A Polar Bear Watches as an Arctic Kingdom Expedition Traverses Hudson Bay

Today on Talk of the Nation, researcher Robert Rockwell reported on the incursion of grizzly bears into the area around Hudson Bay, an area formerly the exclusive territory of polar bears.

The two bears are actually fairly close relatives — close enough to produce hybrid young, though those young are sterile. The two predators can co-exist fairly peacefully as well, since both, as top level predators, have evolved not to fight too much with other bears. This is because the bears can do so much damage to one another that infighting would would cause too much damage amongst the population — bears that fought each other regularly would have died out long ago.

At the same time, however, grizzlies create competition for the polar bears, and may even hibernate in the dens where polar bear mothers bear their young, threatening a new generation of polar bears.

Both species are federally protected in Canada, and it isn’t yet clear whether the grizzlies plan to stay in Hudson Bay. But for researchers, this is both an interesting and concerning development in the Hudson Bay ecosystem.

Read more:

Grizzlies Move Into Polar Bear Turf On Hudson Bay : NPR.

Science Daily: Grizzly Bears Move Into Polar Bear Habitat in Manitoba, Canada

Arctic Kingdom Expeditions to Hudson Bay

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